For two weeks, residents of Southern California endured a waking nightmare. Parents raced against time – hurrying down the driveway with hastily filled bags of precious memories: baby books, crayon drawings from refrigerator doors, and grandma’s weathered recipe cards. Their children’s tiny hands held tight, as the blaze painted the sky orange behind them. Mothers worked quickly to secure car seat buckles, while fathers coaxed anxious pets into crowded SUVs.

In those moments of chaos and fear, entire lives were reduced to what could fit into a car.

This scene is becoming all too familiar. Across America, communities face a billion-dollar weather disaster every twelve days, surging from one every 2-3 months just forty years ago. Even as our hearts linger on Los Angeles neighborhoods scarred by flames, somewhere else another community quietly rebuilds from yesterday’s disaster while another braces for tomorrow’s.

I know this cycle intimately. This year alone, my family danced with two historically destructive hurricanes. Hurricane Helene raged through Florida’s Gulf Coast with record-breaking flooding. She destroyed my brother’s home, leaving him and his two young kids displaced – precious memories stolen in her wake. As we grappled with our losses, she continued her path of destruction ravaging Western North Carolina. A mere two weeks later, Hurricane Milton arrived with 120mph winds, battering our already devastated region.

These are not unprecedented events – they’re unnatural ones, occurring with distressing regularity. And behind each billion-dollar figure are countless personal catastrophes – families like my brother’s starting over, communities like yours rebuilding, and stories of agonizing loss that simply cannot be captured in damage reports.

Here’s where we can change the story together. The Climate Insurance Recovery Act is making its way through the state legislature, with the Polluters Pay Climate Costs Recovery Act set to be reintroduced in the coming weeks. These bills would allow residents and insurance companies to recover damages from fossil fuel companies who helped incite this crisis, requiring these corporations to shoulder some financial accountability.

If you call California home, I urge you to act swiftly. Add your name to this fight!

Your local representatives need to hear from you. Demand action against this cruel reality – demand polluter accountability in California! Now more than ever, it is time to shift the cost of recovery from the survivors piecing their lives back together, to those who profited off their suffering. Because no one should have to reduce their life to what fits in the car, then face bankruptcy trying to rebuild it.