The Brief

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the fires in Los Angeles. If you're watching from afar and want to help, sending money to a trusted relief organization may be more effective than donating items or heading to the front lines to see how you can lend hand.

If you are wondering where to start, Los Angeles County has set up an online portal with links to local funds that have been set up to help first responders and fire victims with housing, employment, and recovery.

Unsolicited donations of goods — such as clothing, or canned food — can cause more trouble for aid organizations already in place. " I've seen pallets of clothing just left outside in a parking lot for months after some disasters, because there's no place to put it, people don't have resources to sort it," said Drew Hanna, who has led relief efforts after wildfires in California, Hawaii and elsewhere for the nonprofit Team Rubicon.

In fact, several aid groups, including the local YMCA, have already asked people to stop bringing clothes to its donation centers. "The one thing we really do not need is clothing," Christina Bragg, a YMCA spokesperson told LAist.

Just a few days after the Eaton Fire devastated Altadena and parts of Pasadena, the city of Pasadena, in a post on X, also wrote that it was "incredibly grateful for the donations of food and other items. However, at this time, we are overwhelmed with the amount and we are no longer accepting additional donations."

At news conference on Sunday, L.A. Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley said  "there are donations of food, water supplies, literally  spilling over and out into our local fire stations."

The community support is heartwarming.

But no one wants supplies — and the hard-earned money people spent to purchase them — to go to waste.

Many organizations say donating money and/or signing up to be a trained volunteer (for the current and future disasters) is the best way to help.

L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony C. Marrone has been encouraging people who want to help to visit the website of the Emergency Network Los Angeles. For volunteer opportunities, L.A. Works has information about how to help with housing, child care, food and specific needs from local nonprofits.

Also, the state's CaliforniansForAll.ca.gov serves as a clearinghouse for volunteer opportunities.

One quick way to know what an agency does or doesn't need is to check their website and social media channels. Organizations will often broadcast needs there first. You can also try calling, but understand some agencies may not have the bandwidth to answer phones.

Why donations can get overwhelming

Families who lost their homes in the fires have tremendous needs. But it may be difficult for them to get to the places where donations are being distributed. They also likely have no place right now to store many of the things they'll need to rebuild their lives.

For volunteer coordinators, trying to manage donated objects like clothes, blankets and food can be difficult.

"That is countless hours of work by volunteer agencies, by survivors themselves, to navigate the piles and piles of donated clothing," Hanna from Team Rubicon said.

A recent post on the group's website tells the story of useless donations given by well-meaning people in the wake of disasters, including thousands of winter coats donated to Houston residents impacted by Hurricane Harvey in the hot, sticky summer of 2017.

"Coats weren’t what the city’s residents needed," the article reads. "Thousands of donors’ well-intended impact became a logistical nightmare for community organizations and relief volunteers who could have been focused instead on the emergent needs of a ravaged city."

Volunteering takes time

If you'd like to get your hands dirty and help people one-on-one, it's not always as easy as just showing up. Local community groups may host events and drives, but big organizations like the Red Cross say it takes a bit of time before you can become a volunteer.

It may be a week of training at least before they can deploy you to assist people. They accept applications here.

Don't be too disappointed that you can't volunteer right away, though, because many services are needed well after the flames are extinguished. For example, volunteers might work with people to connect them with the right organizations and providers to help them get back on their feet.

How can I help, right now

That said, here are a few options if you want to get involved right now:

• Check out the list of volunteer opportunities posted at L.A. Works
• Join LAIT911's disaster response and recovery team, where the work includes collecting donations and assisting with delivery
• Foster a dog or cat from a family displaced by the fires. Email the Pasadena Humane Society or stop by their office for more info
• Contact your local community group or religious organization to find out how they're trying to help

Where to donate money, and some specific items

Public officials in L.A. are encouraging people who want to help to donate to specific, well-vetted organizations and funds. These include:

• California Community Foundation's Wildfire Recovery Fund
• American Red Cross
• Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation
• The county's online relief portal with links to numerous local funds for fire victims
  

If you'd rather donate to a specific individual or family, GoFundMe has set up a dedicated page where you can donate to SoCal fire victims, first responders and others through their separate fundraising accounts.

If you have more stuff than cash, the YMCA is accepting donations of essential items for families affected the fires, minus clothing. Check out the YMCA's social media for updated needs.

The Pasadena Humane Society is seeking monetary donations to feed and care for the more than 300 pets they've taken in since the Eaton Fire broke out.

Donation drops through the city

City Council members have announced locations for donations, asking that people do not drop off at fire stations, shelters or other locations:

Councilmember Traci Park

Council District 11 Office
Location: 7166 W. Manchester Ave., Westchester
Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Items requested:

• Individually-wrapped items
• Non-perishable goods
• Personal hygiene products
• Canned goods
• Baby food
• Dog food
• Water and Gatorade 

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez

North Valley Caring Services Food Pantry
Location: 15453 Rayen St., North Hills
Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday and noon to 2 p.m. on Friday

Items requested:

• Non perishable foods
• Blankets
• Bottled Water
• Diaper and wipes
• Microwaves
• Fresh produce — Please only drop off on Thursdays

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson

It’s Bigger Than Us
Location: 4308 Crenshaw Blvd., Los Angeles
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Sunday

Items requested (new items only):

• Men, women and children's clothing
• Air mattresses
• Bedding
• Toiletries
• Non-perishable foods
• Monetary donations to It’s Bigger Than Us are also welcomed and can be made here.

Organizations seeking volunteers

• Volunteer Collective has an updated list of volunteer opportunities and drives.
• Volunteers are needed by Canine Rescue Club to offer temporary foster care for dogs displaced by the fires. You can apply to temporarily house an affected dog by filling out an online form.
• The LA Regional Food Bank is also accepting food donations and volunteers. These locations are open from 8 .a.m to 5 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday:
  
  • Vernon: 1734 East 41st St., Los Angeles
  • Industry: 2300 Pellissier Place, Industry
• Help people get connected to food and supplies via No Res Gourmet. There are three way to volunteer: help cook, package and distribute meals. Donate funds with 100% of donations going directly to fire relief. Donations aretax-deductible. Drop-off supplies — Bring essential food, prep items, and care supplies to our drop-off location. View more details and lists of items needed.
• Project Angel Food is seeking immediate volunteers for both delivery and in the kitchen over the next several days. Contact Volunteers@angelfood.org to get started.
• Los Angeles Animal Services has issued an urgent plea for fosters and adopters to take pets from their crowded shelters. This will open space in shelters for displaced animals and pets. Visit their foster page to sign up.
• Volunteers are urgently needed by OBKLA (Our Big Kitchen LA) while they prepare hot meals for those in need and for firefighters and emergency personnel. Contact info@obkla.org to volunteer.
• Mercy Chefs is also looking for volunteers and donations for its hot meal service to impacted residents and first responders.
• Sign up to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity's wildfire relief efforts. As specific opportunities arise, you will be notified.
• Local schools, YMCAs and community centers have partnered with the American Red Cross to collect donations for those affected by the wildfires. They need help transporting and distributing goods. Many YMCA's are also offering emergency child care.

Note: This story was first published in October 2019 and updated to include information relevant to victims and evacuees from the Palisades, Eaton and other fires burning in SoCal in January 2025. Sarah Steinman contributed to this report.

Since its opening in 1919, Fosselman’s Ice Cream Co. has learned a thing or two about the art of ice cream, offering more than 50 flavors, ranging from the classics to the regionally inspired.

Co-owner John Fosselman sat down with Austin Cross, who hosts AirTalk Friday on LAist 89.3, to discuss the history of his family's business and how four generations have had a hand in keeping the business alive.

About the owners

The original concept for the ice cream venture came from Christian Fosselman, who started his business as a young man in Waverly, Iowa. While attending a bottling convention, he got his first taste of ice cream. Family lore says he was fascinated by the latest ice cream manufacturing equipment available. This led him to start a new business and move his family to Pasadena in 1924.

Fast forward to today, the business is now in the hands of the third generation of Fosselmans — Chris and John.

They currently run two brick-and-mortar locations: Fosselman's Ice Cream Co. in Alhambra, and The Ice Cream Shop in Glendora.

What goes into making their ice cream?

In the case of their "Coffee & Cookies" flavor, a lot went into perfecting it.

Freeze-dried Colombian coffee is how they capture the taste. By minimizing the amount of water used in the process, they're able to keep the ice cream quality high.

John Fosselman says they've been using this blend for 70 years.

"We've tried every other alternative — cold brew and different brewing techniques — but the best way to nail it is the freeze-dried that we use," he said.

The best way to experience Fosselman's

Photo of Fosselman's ice cream sundae

(

Courtesy Grace Fosselman

)

Sample all the flavors you want or ask their clerks for their favorites.

If you aren't in the mood for just ice cream, John suggests a malt, shake or even a hot fudge sundae.

Shop details:

A fleet of Fosselman's Ice Cream cars and drivers.

(

Courtesy Grace Fosselman

)

• Originally founded in Iowa in 1919, the family came to California’s San Gabriel Valley in 1924.
• What started as a wholesale dairy company was mostly shuttered in the 1970s when the family shifted attention to their ice cream shop in Alhambra.
• In 2019, as they reached their centennial, they opened The Ice Cream Shop in Glendora.
• John and Chris, both third-generation Fosselmans, have led the shops’ operations for 40 years.

Flavors we tried

• Fresh Peach
• Coffee & Cookies
• Cookie Monster
• Chocolate Dipped Strawberry
• Watermelon Sorbet

What should we try next?

The federal government, under a court order to immediately improve conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, said late Thursday it is working with the private contractor that runs the facility to improve conditions.

Allegations of inhumane conditions at Adelanto have been at the center of protests for months. Located 90 miles from downtown Los Angeles, the privately run detention facility in San Bernardino County is now over capacity, after being nearly empty 18 months ago.

Four people have died at Adelanto since September 2025.

On July 16, a U.S. District judge ordered federal officials to immediately improve medical care, disability accommodations and daily conditions for people held at the Adelanto.

In her order, Judge Sunshine Suzanne Sykes gave the Department of Homeland Security 14 days to submit a plan to address alleged deficiencies long term.

The government’s response, filed just ahead of Thursday’s deadline for a long-term improvement plan, was short on details and included pushback. Lawyers for the federal government notified the court they plan to appeal the order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and asked the court to hold off on enforcing the July 16 order until that appeal is decided.

What we know:

• According to filings, the defendants and plaintiffs have agreed on candidates for a monitor to keep an eye on overall conditions at the facility. They have not agreed on a monitor to focus on medical conditions. The government has proposed two candidates in court filings.

• In their remediation plan, federal officials told the court that the privately run facility is already in compliance with several of the standards set in the court order, including providing timely diagnostic testing for health issues, ensuring continuous access to over-the-counter and prescribed medications and informing people held at the facility of their patients’ rights.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said in their filed plan that they have been reviewing the contract with The GEO Group, which runs Adelanto, and will work to bring the facility into compliance with the full court order.

Reaction to the latest developments

A spokesperson for GEO referred LAist to ICE for comment.

In an emailed, unsigned statement, the Department of Homeland Security said claims that conditions at Adelanto are substandard are false.

“All detainees are provided with proper meals, water, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” the statement read, in part.

Ryan Smith, an ICE assistant field office director, told the court in a declaration that the July 16 preliminary injunction “frustrates and impedes” the agency's ability to enforce immigration laws.

Smith’s declaration said the facility already complies with many of the immediate requirements of the injunction, and that other requirements would create safety risks or an “undue burden” for ICE.

Carl Bergquist is general counsel for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights — known as CHIRLA — which is one of the organizations representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit. He said the plaintiffs plan to formally oppose the government’s request to stay the injunction.

He also expressed concern that other aspects of the court order — including an immediate requirement to provide 24-hour access to clean drinking water, healthy meals and hygiene products — remain unaddressed, despite the government’s claims.

“All of that was supposed to be immediate upon the order coming out,” said Bergquist. “We believe we've seen instances of some of that not happening already. So that's a problem.”

Bergquist said his organization has monitored conditions at Adelanto since the July 16 order through visits once or twice a week to the detention center. He said CHIRLA has also taken new reports from people who are detained there either through the organization's hotline or through family members.

Background on the lawsuit

Adelanto has a long history of complaints about its conditions. The facility was nearly shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic because of unsafe conditions.

A court ordered the facility to stop accepting new detainees, and the population remained relatively low, down to fewer than a handful of detainees by the end of the Biden administration.

The population climbed sharply with the start of intense ICE enforcement in the L.A. area in June 2025.

Bergquist called the rapid change from a nearly empty facility to one that is now over capacity “a recipe for what we're seeing now.”

Concerns about current conditions at Adelanto have been documented by state officials for more than a year. An amicus brief filed in June by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose office inspects immigration detention centers in the state, details several problems at the facility found during a July 2025 inspection.

“The Attorney General’s office found, among other things, a facility that was overwhelmed with the rapid population increase; insufficient staffing; failures to attend to urgent medical needs, to care for individuals with chronic conditions, and to ensure specialty care referrals; and use of force concerns,” according to the brief. The brief said inspectors heard reports of “murky and dirty” water and improperly cooked food.

“Almost every person interviewed complained about the quality of the food,” according to the brief.

The lawsuit that led to the July injunction was filed six months after Bonta’s inspection on behalf of four plaintiffs representing Adelanto detainees as a class.

They asked the court to “to end the unlawful and unconstitutional conditions at Adelanto, prohibit Defendants from violating their civil, constitutional, and human rights, and require Defendants to provide lawfully adequate conditions,” the complaint reads. “In other words, they ask to be treated like human beings.”

The GEO group runs Adelanto for federal officials under a contract that runs through 2029.

(

David Wagner

/

LAist

)

Who is responsible for conditions?

In court filings, the federal government has argued it cannot be held responsible for the actions of GEO, its contractor. According to the lawsuit, ICE’s current contract with Adelanto pays GEO more than $400 million a year to run the facility. The contract was extended for five years in 2024, and is now set to expire in 2029.

While issuing the preliminary injunction, Sykes ruled that the plaintiffs demonstrated they are likely to prevail, “or at least, raise serious questions” on their claims that the facility violated their Fifth Amendment protections against inhuman conditions and will suffer “irreparable harm” if the courts don’t grant relief.

In its Thursday request to stay the injunction, the federal government reiterated its position that ICE does not “own, staff, or run” Adelanto and cannot address the conditions there on its own.

“The difficulty is not the conditions the Order describes; it is that the Order commands ICE to produce results inside a facility that The GEO Group, Inc. — a private federal contractor that is not a party in the litigation — owns, staffs, and operates every hour of every day,” the filing reads.

Bergquist said Sykes has rejected those claims.

“We argued that ICE is in charge here and those arguments are spurious. The judge agreed with that and thus moved ahead” with the preliminary injunction.

The filing states that ICE’s contract with GEO requires the facility to comply with several sets of national standards for detention and correctional health.

The government also argues several parts of the order go beyond the contractual obligations between GEO and ICE, and could be dangerous if implemented.

An independent monitor found ICE also fails to provide adequate medical care at its California City facility in Kern County.

Bergquist said lawsuits are challenging the conditions at ICE detention centers nationwide.

“I think in most of these cases that I'm aware of, including California City, the conditions are absolutely not satisfactory and injunctions are being put in place,” Bergquist said.

Details of the government's response

On July 16, a federal judge ordered the government to create a plan to improve conditions at Adelanto. The government submitted that plan on July 30.

Here’s how federal officials responded:

Medical care

The requirement: Implement “documented health intake screening” for everyone held at the facility within eight hours of arrival.

ICE response: ICE says standards at the facility already require comprehensive health screening within 12 hours. The agency says it asked GEO to comply with the standard by reducing the maximum screening time down to eight hours.

The requirement: Ensure access to “primary, secondary, and tertiary medical care” for everyone held at the facility.

ICE response: ICE says it has asked GEO to comply with this standard and are reviewing the standards set by the agency’s contract with the company.

The requirement: Ensure timely diagnostic testing and required timeframes for review and follow-up on results.

ICE response: ICE says the facility is already compliant.

The requirement: Continuous provision of ordered medications.

ICE response: ICE says the facility is already compliant.

The requirement: Make sure all patients are informed of their rights, with translations as needed.

ICE response: ICE says the facility is already compliant.

Disability Accommodations

The requirement: Implement a system to identify and track anyone with qualifying disabilities.

ICE response: ICE says the facility is already compliant, but that GEO is requesting additional staff to manage the process.

The requirement: Provide reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities.

ICE response: ICE says the facility is already compliant, but that GEO is requesting additional staff to manage the process.

The requirement: Provide materials, with translations as needed, to inform people of their rights to accommodations.

ICE response: ICE says the facility is already compliant.

Grievance system

The requirement: Ensure there is a process for people to confidentially submit complaints or comments to the independent monitors.

ICE response: ICE says it is reviewing its contract with GEO and that the company will establish a new, handwritten grievance process.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Arizona, California and Nevada would take less water from the Colorado River under a proposal announced Friday by the federal government to stave off crisis in the beleaguered waterway.

The proposal from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spares Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming from facing mandatory cuts for now. But it’s a temporary fix as the states that rely on the river still fight over a long-term management plan for the dwindling resource that powers huge swaths of the Western U.S.

Under the plan, the Lower Basin states could face collective cuts up to 3 million acre-feet (130 billion cubic feet) through 2036, “subject to hydrology,” according to a press release by the Department of the Interior. That’s about enough water to serve more than 25 million people a year.

The plan would also allow annual releases between 5 million and 12 million acre-feet from Lake Powell, the basin’s second-largest reservoir. Under the 10-year federal framework, water management decisions will be made every two years.

“This framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions,” said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in the press release.

The proposed cuts in the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada would be the biggest to date and could have huge impacts across cities and farms — higher water prices, increased groundwater reliance, more agriculture out of production and conservation mandates in places where none have existed before.

The federal plan comes after years of deadlocked negotiations and a record-dry winter that tipped Colorado River reservoirs to combined record lows. Federal officials are expected to finalize the plan in the coming days.

More than 40 million people in seven U.S. states, several tribal nations and Mexico, as well as farmers, wildlife, industries and hydropower, rely on the dwindling 1,450-mile (2,334-kilometer) Colorado River. Years of overuse combined with rising temperatures and drought have severely depleted flows in the Colorado today compared with decades past.