The Red Cross responds to 65,000 disasters each year—everything from house fires to hurricanes. As the Red Cross disaster director for California, Luke Beckman, ’09, is well aware of the increasing impact of wildfires on the state’s communities and the challenges in recovering from them. “What we are seeing is a shift from what we would call an acute disaster environment to a chronic disaster environment, Beckman says. In the past, “you would sort of see a disaster here, a disaster there,” he says. “What we’re seeing [now] is there’s not the time and space between disasters. We’re seeing more overlapping disasters. And we’re seeing greater impact to people from those disasters.”
Following the January 2025 Los Angeles County fires, we asked him what recovery for survivors will look like, and what those of us concerned about fire can do ahead of time.
Photo: Jason Colston
What is the Red Cross’s role after fires like this?
What the Red Cross is up to is supporting mass care, shelter, food, and comfort—and short- and long-term recovery. So if you think about a wildfire generally speaking, firefighters work [primarily] to fight the fire. Law enforcement coordinates the evacuation. And then social services—of which Red Cross is a supporting partner—work to catch some of the people who evacuate. Taking care of people who need support, whether they showed up to a shelter or not. How do we get people and neighborhoods and communities back on their feet? That can be a process that takes decades, depending on the size and scale and the magnitude of the disaster.
Let’s talk about the scope of it.
This is a very big disaster, full stop. People measure disasters in a lot of different ways. There’s how many people get evacuated. We often talk about how many acres of fire burns. We can talk about injuries or fatalities. We can talk about number of homes destroyed or the cost. But by any of those markers, this is a big disaster.
How do you find the people who need help?
We use lots of different data sources and people and networks and partners. Most people will end up staying with family or friends. You might have 10 percent of the people who evacuate who end up in a disaster shelter. Come to us if you can, even if it’s virtually. Come visit a disaster recovery center [and apply] for resources. That may open you up to services, talking to caseworkers, to financial assistance, to staying in the network of what becomes available after we get into recovery. We can help people think through these really amorphous, complex challenges.
What should the people in L.A. who have lost their homes be thinking about in the earliest days and weeks?
I think everybody is probably in their own movie, which is totally fine and appropriate. I would offer that whatever you’re feeling now is OK. You might think that you should be feeling something, or you might have experienced some weird emotions. All of that is normal. We talk about fire brain and disaster brain, where you’re just in the fog of things where this is still very fresh for people. That’s an important thing to talk about. This crisis is not over.
Regardless of where you are in in your own story, think about how you can create some form of stability with wherever you are. If you’ve been bouncing around from one place to another over the last couple of weeks, how do we start to work to get you to a place—I say we because it takes a community, it takes your network—how can we get you to a place where you could stay for two weeks or a couple of months? If you’re staying with family or friends, how do we create conditions where multiple people can live under one roof?
Call 211. They’re trying to match people with temporary housing. That’s a big one, and there’s a giant task force of people working to figure this out. How do we, in the best way possible, rehouse people close to where home was? This is a lot of people in an area that already didn’t have a ton of extra housing. So that makes it a very specific matching game.
And the financial piece of this, we can’t ignore. If you’ve got insurance—because we have both renters and owners who’ve lost homes—file an insurance claim. There are costs associated with [evacuating and home loss], and insurance can help with that. There are government and nonprofit resources that may be able to help with that, too. And so, making the time to get documents and identification in order. Getting some of those things reset. I think that’s really where most people are.
Document everything you can that you still have with you. Take pictures of receipts to save them up into the cloud. Receipts lose a lot of their ink over time. Take a picture of it. Think of this like an expense report; the more specificity you can get in documenting, the better. Itemized receipts are important. Depending on your policy, [things you’ve purchased] might be reimbursed through your insurance claim.
I’d encourage you to call 1-800-Red-Cross. If you’ve lost your home, file with FEMA. Visit a disaster recovery center. The nice thing about a disaster recovery center is everybody [there is] providing some legit, legal, aboveboard, official service. So that’s a really good way to be able to have face-to-face conversations with people and understand what you need to do, what you’re missing, what you have.
Some small things:
Get a P.O. box so the mail can continue to be delivered.
Cancel your utilities.
Check on your doctor’s appointments. That’s something that people can kind of forget about. You want to maintain your health. If you had eyeglasses, let’s get those replaced. If you had dentures, let’s get those replaced. If you have medical equipment, let’s get that replaced. Maintain your baseline level of health. The Red Cross can help with that.
And I think the other thing I’d share for folks who’ve lost homes is know that this is a marathon and not a sprint. Debris removal—the fastest you’ve ever seen it on a small disaster might be three months in California—this could take a year. There are all kinds of steps in debris removal to keep people healthy. And then there’s the process of getting a contractor and figuring out what’s happening with zoning.
And then don’t be afraid to ask for help and support. You’re carrying a large load. And that reality might not hit for a while. And that’s OK. Just give yourself some grace.
What about people who did not lose their home, but they’re also not going to be back in that home for quite a long time?
So for somebody who knows that their home is still standing, but they haven’t been allowed back into the neighborhood, they still have loss in the sense that they have lost the use of their home. Insurance policies have a loss-of-use policy, and in the loss-of-use clause, you might be entitled to certain things. So again, keep all of your receipts.
Many of those homes may require smoke and water remediation. The fire was probably close by. Houses may have been sprayed down with water; there might be fire retardant on them. So again, be thinking about getting a claim started and filed. And then when you’re able to get back to your property—whether or not you’ve lost your home—take lots of pictures and videos, walk the property.
When you go back to your property, know that there are a lot of toxic substances in the soil and dust. You want to be thinking about your personal protection. We don’t want to be wearing short sleeves and shorts, if we can avoid it. Think about an N95 mask, not just a cloth mask, and there are people who can help with sifting through and going through different things. These are questions you can ask at a disaster recovery center.
When you get back into your house, pay attention to the water advisories or alerts. You want to make sure that you’re drinking clean water. A lot of the water system has been impacted, even though you might still have water in your home.
I’ve heard two stories of people with disabilities who died in the fires. Are there specific resources or suggestions that you have around that?
Yeah, the “who’s vulnerable in a wildfire and why?” It’s painful, and it’s hard. And it’s incredibly important that we talk about it. We know that the people who are most vulnerable to wildfire are people who have less mobility and the people who lack access to information. People [who] don’t speak English. Maybe you don’t own a car. People who couldn’t move as fast. That includes parents with small kids.
Or maybe something happened because of the fire—somebody is now less able than they were beforehand, because the way their house was set up. You had the guide rails, you had the ramp. And wherever you are now, you don’t have that. Or your home health aide, who came in two or three times a week, doesn’t come anymore because they don’t know where you are. I’d encourage you to reach out for resources. There are a lot of resources to help people through this, not only at a community level, but also at an individual level.
What do you recommend people do if their home might be at risk of wildfire?
If the fires are on your mind, there’s a couple of things I’d encourage people to do. Download the Red Cross emergency app. There’s an app called Watch Duty, which many people are using to track the progress of the fires. FEMA has an app. Sign up for your local emergency alerts. If you’re on social media, I’d encourage them to follow your fire, police, and sheriff’s departments. And then last, check the air quality. Making sure you’re taking care of your health, regardless of where you are. That’s a really important thing with wildfire smoke.
Get your phone out and record a video. Walk around your house—take five minutes—and talk about all the things in your home and document it. Pull out the drawers, open the closets so you get an inventory of the things you have in your house, save it to the cloud, wherever you save your videos. If at some point in the future you’re separated from those or you lose them, this is going to make your insurance process much smoother.
Check your insurance policy and your coverage. You can get a copy of your policy. Make sure you understand what you have. Ask the questions: “Well, if I’m evacuated, what does that mean? What do I have to do if I lose my home? And what do I do if the deck burns but the house stands?” So ask some practical questions, and your insurance company can talk you through that.
Check the wildfire risk to your home. One thing we see a lot is people will say, “Well, I don’t live in the forest, so my house isn’t going to burn. I’m in the suburbs.” Well, if you look to the edge of your suburbs, there might be some homes that are close to the forests or close to grassland or shrubbery. And wildfires kind of act like dominoes. We know that [for] well over 90 percent of the homes that burn in fires, it starts because of embers. If that ember lands on or near your home, it’s going to sit there, and when there’s high wind, it’s going to smolder for a little bit, and that is what is causing this destruction. And then, if one house goes—because of how close our houses are built in many of these places—it’s like dominoes. So check your wildfire risk. There are two places: One is a government site called wildfirerisk.org. And another is an independent organization that’s really pushing the limits of risk and hazard modeling called the First Street foundation. So firststreet.org.
And then thinking about, “What can I do to my house?” Wildfirerisk.org has great resources on how you mitigate your wildfire risk. One of the challenges for people is they say, “Well, you know, people keep telling me I need to replace my roof, and a roof is going to cost me $40,000.” But there is a lot you can do that costs very little. What we recommend as a first step is to create a no-burn zone around the perimeter of your house. If you’re in an apartment, it’s a little bit trickier. But you could talk to the building owner and say, “What are we doing for our building?”
If we can create a 5-foot space from the edge of our home out, where there’s nothing that can burn, that is one of the best things we can do to protect our homes. Because what embers do is they love to land right in that corner. People say, “I’ve just got a fence.” Well, can the fence burn? Yep, and then it goes right to your house. Or a very common one: “I love my mulch around the house.” Mulch burns.
The one other, in terms of hardening your home [at a] small cost, is think about the holes in your house. Where the dryer vent is, the attic. [Get] 1/18-inch wire mesh to cover those openings. We don’t want big openings. These embers, they try to get into our houses when the winds blow. They’re trying to find a way into the house to land on your couch and get in the pillow and start a fire, so we need to keep them out.
These fires made a lot of us wonder if we are ready for an evacuation. What if I had five minutes? What if I had an hour?
One thing that I will encourage people to think about is that action starts to put muscle memory into [your plan]. Many people think that they can get all the things they need in X amount of time. And when they actually do it, it takes them X times five. Make that a family thing to try: How fast can we get the things that are important to us in the car? Did we grab the right things? What did we miss? That’s just practice. But we do find that that really helps people home in on what is most important to them—Oh, I forgot about the dog or the cat, or Whoa! You know it does take a long time to get my kid out the door. How am I going to carry the suitcases?—so that you’re not thinking about it when the bad thing happens.
Let’s talk about what people need to take with them in a disaster.
“What are important documents for me?” Your driver’s license, your passport, your birth certificate, your marriage license, the title to your home, title to your car. I mean, there could be 20 or 30. Just figuring out what those are for you. That’s Step 1. Step 2, print them out, pull them out of a filing cabinet. Step 3, take pictures or scan them. Get them electronically. Step 4, make copies of them, so you have multiple copies. Fire-safe boxes are great, [but] they melt and burn right down with the house. And if it’s really heavy—because a lot of them are 50, 60 pounds—are you gonna lug that around?
Think about the keepsakes, the heirlooms, the things that can’t be replaced. Come up with a valuable-items plan. And I don’t mean value in terms of cost. I mean value in terms of what matters to you,
You know, we often overcomplicate things, but grab a blank piece of paper. Just write down the things [you want to take]. Tape [the list] to your fridge or take a picture. Put it on your phone, in your car. Organize those [items] so that they’re closer to where you might grab them.
What about those of us who are simply thinking about fire more right now?
Talk with your family, or whoever you live with in a home. Have a dinnertime conversation about, “What are the hazard scenarios? Do we even know?” And just understand what could happen, and then ask the quick, “Hey, if we had to leave, what does that mean? Where are we going to go? What are we going to bring with us?” There isn’t a right way or wrong way to have a plan.
Go meet a neighbor. One of the things we know about recovery and resilience is that the places that recover the strongest, the best, the fastest? It’s where people know their neighbors. That’s how you’re going to get information about what’s happening. Maybe you want to exchange numbers. Maybe you’ve got something that you don’t need that they could use. Meeting your neighbors is incredibly important, and we don’t do enough of it.
[If you’re] wanting to lean forward and be someone who’s involved, go get a CPR or first aid [certification]. Or babysitting or lifeguarding. They’re helpful, useful skills, and you may go save a life. But they’re the kinds of things that are going to prime you to helping and leaning in when there is a time of need in your community, and we need more helpers in this world. Not fewer.
On the Red Cross side, we are working day and night to tap into resources and people and networks that exist locally. Because we know that when a neighbor helps the neighbor, that is a that is a better recovery process for someone. That is a quicker recovery process. And we also know that that’s part of the healing and part of the grieving.
There is a lot of need even in people’s backyards. Where most of our volunteers actually come from is they start responding to local disasters. So, it’s a kitchen fire [and someone’s] house burns down. Fire department puts the fire out, but people are standing outside in their pajamas at 3 a.m. Where are they going to go? What are they going to do? Our disaster action teams are responding around the clock are doing that work. And oh, by the way, the training and the skill set for doing that is exactly the same training and skill set for helping people for a big fire.
Have you slept at all in the last 10 days?
I’ve been fortunate to be able to sleep. For everybody, these are marathons, these are not sprints. And this is the world we live in. And I think the more that we can think about, “What does community mean to us? Are we taking care of each other?” [the better]. Leaning in and taking agency is really important because we live in a very dynamic world. And this is not the last big wildfire that’s going to come. We just we don’t know where the next one is going to happen. But we know it will happen, and it could be a fire. It could be a tsunami. It could be a flood. It could be the power going out. And that’s not to have a doomsday mindset at all. Know that most days you wake up there’s a blue sky out there, and you’re going about your business. So how do we create more of those blue-sky days? We’re not going to find time—we’ve got to make the time to take the steps that are important, so that we can take care of ourselves, we can take care of our families, and we can take care of people who are close to us.
Summer Moore Batte, ’99, is the editor of Stanfordmag.org. Email her at summerm@stanford.edu.
