FanPost Friday: The West Coast is on fire

I’ll be honest, I am out of levity and jokes this week. It’s been a rough one, both personally and for the region, the West Coast, and the country at large. There was even a large fire that broke out not far from where I grew up in Sumner, WA. I am fortunate to still be safe and have a roof over my head and I truly hope all LLers out there can still say the same. If you’ve been directly impacted by the forest fires, please let us know in the comments and we can try to band some aid together or a GoFundMe or something. Whatever we can do to help.

On that note, here are some ways to donate to forest fire relief and aid.

• United Way of Northern California, Whitman County and Jackson County are providing emergency cash grants to those who lost their homes.
• Latino Community Foundation NorCal Wildfire Relief Fund: Supporting frontline community partners, who are helping those affected by the August 2020 wildfires.
• GoFundMe: Here is a centralized hub of fundraisers that will help residents who have lost their homes and have been displaced by the fires. In addition, they have launched California Wildfire Cause General Fund to offer relief to Californians in need.
• United Way of the Mid-Willamette Valley has set up a Mid-Valley Wildfire Relief Fund.

For Washington, here are a bunch of specific county and tribal agencies you can donate directly to:

• Adams, Grant and north Yakima counties: OIC of Washington - Steve Mitchell, 509-248-6751
• Asotin County: Community Action Partnership Association of Idaho - Lisa Stoddard, 208-746-3351
• Chelan and Douglas County: Chelan-Douglas Community Action Council - Alan Walker, 509-662-6156
• Chelan, Douglas and Okanogan counties: Community Foundation of North Central Washington - Beth Stipe, 509-663-7716
• Colville Tribe: North Star Fire Donation Center
• Ferry, Lincoln, Pend Oreille and Stevens counties: Rural Resources Community Action - Donna Moulton, 509-684-8421
• Klickitat and Skamania counties: Washington-Gorge Action Partners - Leslie Naramore, 509-493-2662
• Okanogan County: Okanogan County Community Action Council - Lael Duncan, 509-422-4041
• Spokane County: Spokane Neighborhood Action Partners - Julie Honekamp, 509-456-7111
• Spokane Tribe: Rawhide Press

You can find more resources here and here, but I just wanted to share links to ones that go directly to the impacted communities as much as possible.

So, no real prompt this week, but I wanted to give folks a chance to talk in the comments about the fires and reach out for help and support if needed. Or just vent about how much this sucks and how this is the probably the last stretch of nice weather we’ll have in Western Washington for 8 months and the air outside is unsafe to breath. That’s pretty shitty! Feels bad, man.

Hopefully the Mariners will give us a distraction this weekend with some baseball joy, but if not, hang in there, folks. Do what you can to help and be kind to each other.