What to Do When You Feel Helpless in a Disaster
By Andy Petranek
What the January 2025 Los Angeles fires taught me about helplessness, and the small things that count.
When the fires tore through Los Angeles in January 2025, the whole thing started on an ordinary Tuesday.
Around 11 that morning, a plume of smoke went up over Pacific Palisades. Fires are part of life here. I’ve lived in LA for more than 30 years, and I spent a good stretch of them training for adventure races like the Eco-Challenge all over the Santa Monica Mountains, so I’ve been out in plenty of Santa Ana wind events.
I had never felt anything like these. Gusts up to 100 mph. And they didn’t let up.
One spark hit dry grass and the fire took off like it had been shot out of a blast furnace. It gathered heat and speed and rolled straight through Palisades Village. Nothing stopped it.
Then came the part my brain kept refusing. Friends who lived in areas everyone considered safe were suddenly in its path. Evacuation alerts. The Gelson’s grocery store, gone. Pali High, gone. I read the updates and none of it made sense.
One friend was out of the country on vacation. His house sat about a mile from that Gelson’s, on the far side of an open space park, and he’d already made peace with losing it. I thought he was jumping to the worst case. A mile felt like plenty of buffer.
Within the hour, confirmation. The house was gone, along with the 3 cars parked at it. What he had left: a few pairs of shorts and t-shirts, one pair of pants, his flip flops. And his family.
That story repeated all day and all week. People who evacuated thinking they’d be back by dinner found out there was no house to come back to.
Our home was fine. And still, the week wrecked me in a quieter way, because dozens of our friends had their lives permanently rearranged and all we could do was watch. Glued to the TV, the way the whole country was glued to it in September of 2001. Watching something you can’t stop does a particular thing to a nervous system.
Here’s where I eventually landed, and it took some sitting with.
Fire has been shaping this land for millions of years. Mother Nature destroys as thoroughly as she creates; the two have always come as a set. Knowing that doesn’t make it hurt less when the houses belong to your friends. But it gave me somewhere to stand, and from there I could finally ask a better question.
So. What can you actually do?
Maybe you pray, or send love to the specific people you know in it. Maybe you give someone a safe place to grieve. Maybe you hand over a spare bedroom, volunteer at a shelter, donate food or clothes or money.
The trap is the math. The disaster is so big and your offering is so small that giving anything feels pointless, so you freeze. Edmund Burke had that one figured out a couple hundred years ago: the greatest mistake belongs to the person who did nothing because he could only do a little.
Anything you do counts. Anything.
For us, the giving got personal fast. About a dozen families we know lost everything, 6 of them from CrossFit LA, the gym I founded, one of the first CrossFit gyms in the world, which I grew from 8 members to more than 350 before selling it. That community pulled together a fund within days to help its own people rebuild. We also gave to the local relief efforts doing the immediate work: cash cards for evacuees, meals delivered to displaced families, support for the fire department itself.
And the firefighters. Weeks of work with no end date on the calendar, protecting the homes still standing and the homes still threatened. Words feel thin next to that kind of service, so I’ll keep it simple: thank you.
Which brings me to the word I hesitated to use in the middle of all that grief: opportunity.
Out of the worst of it comes rebuilding. For individuals, for families, for whole neighborhoods, for the city itself. I watched it start within days. Funds, spare rooms, meals, people showing up for each other before the smoke had cleared.
We are strong. And we’re stronger together.
If you’re reading this in the middle of your own disaster, whatever shape it’s taken, the same sequence is available to you. Grieve what’s gone. Accept what’s true. Then do the small thing in front of you, because the small thing is how the rebuild starts.
With love, Andy