Delivering Life-Saving Aid When California Burns

For nearly 80 years, Direct Relief has stood ready to meet the cascading challenges of global disasters, delivering life-saving medicines, supplies, and funding to people in dire need in more than 100 countries. From its modest 1948 beginnings in a Montecito home, the nonprofit has become one of the world’s largest humanitarian aid organizations, navigating the toughest environments worldwide. From rushing cystic fibrosis medicines into war-torn Ukraine to routing cholera kits through shuttered ports in Haiti, Direct Relief has also never lost sight of its local roots, continuing to respond to emergencies here at home.

Its history of response to California wildfires stretches back decades, from the 1964 Coyote Canyon Fire to the 1990 Painted Cave Fire, when the organization coordinated around the clock with hospitals and clinics to deliver burn creams, sterile dressings, and critical medicines within hours. Today, California’s wildfire seasons are longer, hotter, and more destructive than ever, testing the communities in their path and entire regions with smoke, power grid failures, and surges in respiratory illnesses. In response, Direct Relief has scaled its support to meet this reality across the state. 

After the 2017 Thomas Fire, the organization distributed thousands of N95 masks, emergency medicines, and financial aid to impacted clinics. During the 2018 Camp Fire, California’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire, it shipped urgently requested medicines and provided targeted grant funding to clinics across Northern California. And in the first six months following the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, Direct Relief has delivered $12.7 million in medical and financial assistance, including 140,000+ N95 respirators, trauma counseling for students returning to school, rental support for displaced families, and funding to keep safety-net clinics operating under extreme strain. 

“Every wildfire creates its own public health emergency,” says Dean Axelrod, Direct Relief’s vice president of partnerships and philanthropy. “People lose their homes, but they also lose access to medicines, safe air, power, and medical care. Direct Relief’s goal is to close those gaps fast so clinics can stay open, patients can access necessary medicines, and families have what they need to recover.”

Direct Relief’s wildfire response goes beyond reacting. The organization now pre-positions critical medicines and medical supplies across California so healthcare providers can continue caring for their patients and communities when wildfires strike, clinics are equipped with solar-and-battery microgrids to safeguard refrigerated medicines, and facilities are kept open. 

Direct Relief remains headquartered in Santa Barbara, just miles from the Montecito pantry where it began. But its work in California carries lessons and innovations that serve communities worldwide, shaping its ability to respond to complex emergencies with speed, precision, and trust.