About the project

Welcome to Disability in Disaster; a project that catalogs the often forgotten stories of people with disabilities in the climate crisis.

As the one year anniversary of the Los Angeles fires approaches, it's crucial to look back, observe, and learn about how people with disabilities were left behind in disaster preparation and response. On this site you will find specific stories, data insights, photos, and more.

As climate change increases the frequency and severity of disasters like the 2025 Los Angeles fires, it's crucial that no one gets left behind.

This project began with an article I wrote as an intern for NBC News in early 2025, and was expanded for my Senior Capstone project at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts. This site, which I coded from scratch myself, is a compilation of reporting I have done, ranging from data insights to on-the-ground interviews in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades.

It’s easy to feel detached from the news that we read. While they were burning, the apocalyptic scenes of the Los Angeles fires were all over the news, and lingered briefly in the immediate aftermath. But, as it does, the news cycle moved on.

I visited Los Angeles in October 2025, and even nine months later, the damage I saw in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades was unimaginable. Some corners of these neighborhoods look perfectly fine, until you turn down another street and find entire blocks that used to be homes, and are now just empty lots. Some lots haven’t been cleaned and are still overflowing with the charred remains of civilization.

Almost everyone I spoke to compared these decimated areas to warzones, and most felt bashful about making that comparison because some people live in “actual” warzones. I understand that instinct. Most Americans have so far been privileged enough to believe that climate disaster is still a hypothetical. But to me, the burned areas of the Palisades and Altadena don’t just feel like warzones, they are warzones. Humanity’s unchecked pollution of the Earth has brought us to this point. Climate change is going to come for all of us. The Earth has already begun waging that war against us.

When I spoke to Reda Rountree, a disabled woman who had lived in Los Angeles for over 20 years before the fires and whose perspective is found in many places on this website, she said something that stuck with me.

"When something like this happens, it happens to disabled people first.”

It’s time to stop worrying about the climate crisis as an imagined future. It’s here, and I’ve seen firsthand the damage that it has left in its wake. I’ve talked to people from across L.A. who felt abandoned by the very systems that are meant to protect them in disasters such as these. People with disabilities need to have a seat at the table when it comes to disaster planning and response. As much as society might treat some people like they are, no one is expendable.

Feel free to reach out to me with any questions or comments. If you or someone you know are a disabled survivor of the Los Angeles fires and have a story you want to share, don’t hesitate!