(Photo courtesy of LAfire.help) “Donnelly’s website has gained the attention of over 300,000 visitors.”
Maxwell Valin
Connector Editor
In January 2025, a sudden surge of devastating wildfires ravaged coastal communities surrounding Los Angeles, California. Dozens of residents were killed, entire neighborhoods were wiped from existence, and historical landmarks were erased from where they once stood. While the fires are contained for now, the people of the City of Angels are still reeling from the swift carnage that nobody could have prepared for.
In the wake of this destruction, many good-hearted citizens from all across the country came together to help California in any way they could. Alex Donnelly, a UMass Lowell sophomore from Newton, Massachusetts studying Finance and Management Information Systems, is one such example. Recently, he created the website FireLA.help, a nonprofit initiative to provide access to relief and aid for those in LA who need it.
“I have no connection to the LA fires, but I saw the pictures, and I could not believe it,” Alex said when asked by The Connector about what inspired him to take up this task. “I grew up around fortunate people, and I don’t take my opportunities for granted. When I see something like these fires, that I couldn’t imagine having to deal with, I knew I had to do something.”
Since its inception, Alex’s website has gained the attention of hundreds of thousands of people who have visited and viewed what he put together. The site includes links to shelters around LA, food banks, as well as information regarding the status of the fires for those who are in need of resources. On the homepage are also links leading to Airbnb, the American Red Cross, FEMA, and the Disaster Distress Helpline.
When asked about the challenges that he faced with the project, the answer had nothing to do with the creation of the website itself, but rather, with getting the word out.
“The outreach was the most difficult part. The volume of it… I spend probably thirty or forty hours messaging people to try and help, otherwise [the website]’s just sitting idle,” he said. “A lot of people didn’t show interest at first, which is understandable. There are so many links out there for scams that I see which are supposedly for the fires, so I get it.”
While Alex has engaged in charitable services in the past, this is the first project of his on this scale that involved creating a website to assist with such a large-scale disaster. And, as he says, he has no intention of stopping.
“Now that I have built it out, I think it’s a good [template] that I could flip and use for other events…if I swap out where I pull the data from, and change some minor details, everything’s already built. I could change it up to tailor it to events and other natural disasters that people need resources for in a matter of hours.” He continued to detail that “if something happened in, say, Mississippi today, with a flood, I could have a site up for that tomorrow to help people.”
Though there are no immediate plans to expand his project to include a team of people, he certainly was not opposed to the idea. “If another event were to happen, I 100% would [expand]. Since the platform is built, if I could expand to three or four people, that’s totally something I would do to get the word out more.”
If there’s one takeaway Alex wants people to have from his website, it’s that “there’s a lot you can do. I cooked this up with programming, which is a niche thing, but it’s not a universal skill. There’s ten-fold more that you can do than you think… and it feels good, it’s fulfilling. You can do something good and positive even if you don’t have a million dollars. There are things you can actually help with from afar.”
UMass Lowell students interested in following and supporting Alex’s project can find more information at www.FireLA.help, as well as @LAfiresupport on Instagram.
