Relief, 21st-century style: As wildfires burn, GoFundMe becomes a repository of harrowing stories
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They seem endless, these sapping stories of loss. A grandfather starts over in his 90s. A family loses their dream home. People who were already struggling are dealt new, brutal blows. As California's massive wildfires burn, a barrage of GoFundMe campaigns for victims have become an outlet for onlookers transfixed by the blazes and eager to do something to help. Those appeals for help — plastered with photos of saffron flames or the charcoal aftermath or, most of all, the faces of the people at the center of the plea — are personalizing a tragedy too big to comprehend.
“I feel connected in a strange way to all these people that I don’t know,” says Rachel Davies, a 27-year-old writer in New York, who went through hundreds of GoFundMe's wildfire campaigns and felt drawn in to stories of strangers, donating to fundraisers for landscapers, housekeepers and a cook.
Davies was moved by the little details of victims' stories — like the fact that someone lost their home just as they were bringing a baby home from the hospital — and compiled and circulated a list of GoFundMe sites, thinking others would feel the same and be spurred to donate.
“Those stories," Davies says, “will stick with me.”. They're offering glimpses into lives you might never see. The pages feel intimate. They serve up glimpses into the lives of a compassionate nurse or a goofy driver, and into the things they lost — be it a prized sneaker collection or the tools they counted on for work. Here, each is not some faraway, faceless victim. They're Todd or Ulli or Susan.
