California Community Foundation CEO Miguel Santana on status of LA fire recovery

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When Los Angeles-area fires broke out on Jan. 7, 2025, Miguel Santana, chief executive of the California Community Foundation, said he understood quickly the scale of the catastrophe facing his hometown. Santana, who previously worked as a longtime civil servant for the city and county before moving into philanthropy, said he flew over the blazes twice—once while traveling for a meeting in Sacramento and again as another fire began nearby.

Santana said the California Community Foundation’s first response was to activate a wildfire recovery fund immediately. He said the foundation donated $30 million in the first month to nonprofits helping survivors with urgent needs.

A year later, Santana said the fund had raised more than $100 million from nearly 50,000 donors worldwide. He described that fundraising as both a singular chance to help survivors and a difficult decision-making challenge over a years-long recovery, as the needs of survivors persist after the initial emergency phase.

Santana said the Palisades and Eaton fires killed 31 people and destroyed 17,000 structures, affecting tens of thousands of Angelenos who lost homes, schools, places of worship and jobs. He also said many survivors remained displaced, and he described worsening mental health among people trying to rebuild stability.

In detailing how the foundation tried to decide where to focus during those first weeks, Santana said the effort aimed at supporting communities and survivors most likely to fall through gaps in relief. He named senior citizens, children, renters, and people who had lost employment or were living paycheck to paycheck as groups the foundation said it wanted to reach early.

Santana said the foundation also moved to identify “systemic issues” that would surface as the recovery unfolded. He described consulting survivor accounts by convening survivors from around the country after the fires were taken out and forming the nonprofit Department of Angels, which he said tracks the survivor experience and tries to center those findings in the recovery process.

Santana said the Department of Angels runs quarterly surveys of more than 2,000 survivors. He said those surveys have been used to identify challenges survivors face, with insurance emerging as a primary issue: Santana said “the carrier” a survivor has can determine how well recovery goes.

He said survivors can feel stuck when money from insurance proceeds runs out while households still have ongoing obligations such as mortgages, insurance and property taxes—at the same time they may be renting elsewhere. Santana said people’s ability to access capital is limited by their current financial situation, even as the need can remain much greater than what that situation allows.

Santana said the foundation is working with financial institutions including Bank of America to develop a new product intended to create a way for survivors to access capital. He described the concept as a “silent second” type of financing in which philanthropy would serve as a guarantor, enabling traditional lending that families might otherwise not be able to secure.

Looking at the broader federal role, Santana said California is waiting for billions more dollars it requested from the federal government and he questioned whether philanthropy can fill all gaps. He said “Philanthropy raised $1 billion,” but added that $1 billion was not enough and that philanthropy’s role is to fill gaps, act quickly and identify systemic issues rather than provide the scale required for ongoing support.

Santana said he believes federal government support is expected when there is a crisis in the country’s backyard. He said that expectation is a consensus among Americans, and he said the foundation had not given up on the idea that federal support should meet survivors’ needs.

In the second year of recovery, Santana said the priorities include advocating for a quick and equitable recovery and also “taking care of one another.” He told The Associated Press that reaching out to impacted people—checking in, inviting them to shared moments and looking after children—can help survivors who still feel alone as they deal with their recovery day by day.