Los Angeles area on alert as high winds fan the flames

“It was overwhelming,” Bonhomme stated when requested about her personal GoFundMe marketing campaign’s success. “It’s an incredible platform that permits folks to ask for assist once they want it.”

The wildfire, which erupted amid excessive winds and dry circumstances, destroyed dozens of properties, leaving numerous households in the same predicament. Nonetheless, within the face of adversity, folks have come collectively to lend assist, together with Bonhomme who has been searching for different GoFundMe wildfire campaigns to donate to now that hers has surpassed its aim.

“My marketing campaign obtained a number of traction, and so I’m simply paying it ahead,” she stated.

Final Tuesday, when the Palisades hearth unfold, Bonhomme raced dwelling the place her son was together with his nanny. She rapidly packed up his social safety card, different vital paperwork and her family members’ ashes, leaving every little thing else, and drove her household away from the fireplace in bumper-to-bumper visitors as flames and black smoke engulfed town.

“I’ve a lot of various things that I’ve acquired over the course of my lifetime that had been in that dwelling that I’ll seemingly not be capable of get well,” Bonhomme stated.

Bonhomme described the Palisades as an ideal, walkable group and stated that she loved “each single second residing there,” and “was at all times so grateful to be there and … didn’t ever take it as a right.”

As she begins to search for a brand new place to dwell, not sure of the place she’ll be within the weeks to come back, she stated she’s grateful for the chance to ask for assist when “typically it’s the toughest factor to do.” 

“I’m simply so grateful my GoFundMe has put me in a spot the place I also can assist different folks in my group,” she stated. “[There are] 23 different models in my constructing, people who find themselves struggling, so grateful that I may also help them.”