Don\u2019t get me wrong. It\u2019s hard to be optimistic if I look back at the past 365 days too narrowly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This year of fire and ICE flew by, but the days often dragged on in what feels like the most challenging and consequential 12 months Los Angeles has faced since \u2026 well, since the previous 365 days? And the year before that? When was the lockdown again? Could we possibly feel nostalgic for that time when we all stayed home?<\/p>\n
Back in the first few terrifying months of the COVID shelter-in-place orders, LA felt pretty united. That unity was a silver lining for a sprawling metropolis that is often divided by freeways, arguments about what is really the true Eastside and social class.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Half a decade later, LA County\u2019s roughly 10 million residents began 2025 arguing about housing, traffic, local and national politics, restaurant closures and the Golden Globes \u2014 bracing, as always, for whatever the titular angels who guide this beautiful, messy metropolis might throw at us.<\/p>\n
Then the wind picked up.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And the fires came.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some 39,000 acres scorched<\/a> resulting in 32 deaths, 100,000 people displaced, and more than 16,000 structures burned. And those deaths are not counting<\/a> the smoke inhalation-related fatalities that officials are still trying to unravel.\u00a0<\/p>\n But what followed wasn\u2019t just those massive losses.<\/p>\n It was neighbors knocking on doors, group chats turning into supply chains, mutual aid networks scaling overnight because they\u2019d already been rehearsing during years of unreliable leadership, soaring health care costs, workers\u2019 strikes and post-pandemic growing pains.\u00a0<\/p>\n As that humble hero of a bygone era, Fred Rogers, once noted, \u201cLook for the helpers,\u201d and you will find good even amid the horrific. As the fires blazed with seemingly no end in sight, the people of Los Angeles came together to help the people of LA. Angelenos opened their homes to displaced families they\u2019d never met, while neighborhood Facebook groups became<\/a> ad-hoc logistics hubs \u2014 coordinating spare bedrooms, pet fostering, N95s, diapers and generators. Local restaurants cooked<\/a> for free, feeding evacuees and first responders even as their own dining rooms sat empty. Mutual aid groups that once organized rent support and grocery runs during the pandemic pivoted<\/a> overnight to fire relief.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/DSF8186.jpg\")
<\/a>A man sorts through donations at Boyle Heights City Hall. Photo by Andrew Lopez \/ Boyle Heights Beat<\/p>\n