As the skies of Los Angeles filled with smoke this week from multiple raging wildfires, many residents quickly recognized failures in local and state governments’ ability to protect them from hazardous air pollution. Community members from local COVID-19 advocacy and mutual aid groups stepped in to fill this gap, providing stockpiled respirators and information about the importance of indoor air purification during wildfires.
These COVID-19 mutual aid groups, like Mask Bloc LA and Clean Air LA, provide free high-quality masks and other supplies for mitigation to their communities. As many governments worldwide have largely stopped providing these resources despite the ongoing pandemic, these groups have shared tools with disabled, immunocompromised, and low-income people who need them. Their work is increasingly crucial as the climate crisis continues exacerbating air quality and public health issues.
Respirators should be widely available at evacuation centers, said Joaquín Beltrán, an organizer at Action for Care and Equity Coalition who helped distribute over a thousand N95 masks with Mask Bloc LA.
These are things that should just be ready and happening.
Inhaling wildfire smoke, even when fires are miles away, can cause serious health problems such as trouble breathing, chest pain, and asthma attacks, and even contribute to death. Wildfire smoke particles can penetrate the lungs, causing inflammation. N95 respirators, which are highly effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection, also filter out smoke particles.
However, respirator masks can’t filter the harmful gases, such as hydrocarbons, released during fires in urban environments like Los Angeles. In these cases, gas masks offer protection N95s cannot. Older homes burned in the area also contained hazardous building materials like asbestos, leading to further concerns regarding air quality.
As the smoke spread and evacuees arrived in shelters, it became clear many people did not have personal protective equipment (PPE) and little to none was available from the city. This comes less than a year after Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass cut significant Los Angeles Fire Department funding and considered enforcing mask bans at demonstrations in the city.
As air quality worsened at the Pasadena Convention Center, one of the major evacuation shelters in the area, police and Red Cross at the shelter had no respirators to provide. COVID-19 activists jumped to action.
“We knew it had to happen from us. There was no one else doing it. No one to call,” Abby Mahler, a member of Mask Bloc LA, told The Sick Times.
We deserve to breathe clean air. That is not being provided to us by the government that we pay for.
Organizers on the ground made up for the lack of PPE with their own resources and networks. “People want to be protected,” Beltrán said.
[But] our government is very unprepared…
Beltrán wanted to help distribute masks to those in the shadow of the Eaton Fire after witnessing disabled and elderly people be evacuated in wheelchairs, many without proper respirators. “People aren’t getting the proper attention, especially those who are disabled,” he said.
COVID-19 advocacy groups, which are often run by just a few disabled individuals, worked together to spread important evacuation information and safety supplies. Individuals on social media shared photos after dropping off homemade Corsi-Rosenthal air filtration boxes to evacuation centers in Santa Monica, and a Mask Bloc in Oakland sent hundreds of masks from their reserves down to Southern California.
Pasadena resident Olivia, who is disabled with Long COVID, evacuated from the Eaton Fire with the help of her caregiver. Olivia shared,
It’s hard because those who are already disabled by government negligence are also further affected by the negligence handling this air pollution.
As she fled, she feared for her neighbors:
I wouldn’t have been able to get out of there on my own. I was struggling to breathe just walking out the door.
Mask Bloc LA and other organizers kept a continual stream of information posted on their social media pages. They organized daily mask drop offs across the greater Los Angeles area and shared actionable clean air tips.
“I’m so grateful that these networks that we built up for clean air in regards to COVID are exactly the same ones that we can use right now,” said Mahler.
Our community supporting itself is powerful.
Sam Rhodehamel is a Long COVID patient advocate at the Chronic Disease Coalition. Currently based between London and the Bay Area, he was born and raised in Altadena.