While fires burned throughout California, some out-of-state current and former Oak Park residents struggled, wondering how to help when they were so far away.

Although people who are not currently in California can donate to various funds through GoFundMe or by buying t-shirts and hoodies, Oak Park High School alumni describe feeling “helpless.”

Kabeer Majhu, 2017 OPHS graduate and sophomore at the University of Colorado Boulder, was in Colorado when the fires started Nov. 8. He said that, as an Emergency Medical Technician for the Los Angeles Fire Department, he would have been on duty if he was home and wished he could have helped.Mahju said he admired the work of firefighters and Twitter user VCscanner, or Thomas Gorden

“I respected the fire department so much before these fires, and after these fires, they mean so much more to me. They literally risk their lives, they worked almost 48 hours straight,” Majhu said. “Also, shoutout to VCscanner. If it wasn’t for him, I would not know half the stuff I did. This guy is the reason I was able to sleep at night.”

OPHS alumna and freshman at The American University of Paris, Karisa Toy, said that the nine-hour time difference between California and Paris resulted in her checking Twitter for her news.Toy said her fellow students in Paris were surprised that fire could do so much damage.

“I go to a school where there are a lot of American students and there are people from other areas all over the world. And yet, the idea of a fire taking out your house was really insane for a lot of people,” Toy said. “People were like, ‘There’s a fire that could take out your whole neighborhood?’”

Yui Sato, an OPHS graduate of the class of 2018, attends the University of Wisconsin Madison and said that she heard about the California fires while studying for midterms. After contacting her professors, she was excused from attending class the next day.Sato said that she was concerned for her family, who live in Agoura Hills.Sato and Toy share a blog called “Crazy Asian Foodies.” Sato told her Woolsey fire story on their website.

“The falling of snow in Madison that night was supposed to be an exciting time for me but I felt hopeless, knowing that I couldn’t be there with my family during this difficult time,” Sato wrote on “Crazy Asian Foodies.”

Eetu Elonen, currently home in Finland, was a foreign exchange student at OPHS during the 2017-18 school year. Elonen saw news of the wildfires in California but did not know any specifics before his past host dad David Frey contacted him.

“I saw a message from my host dad saying the fires were in Oak Park and he told me they were getting evacuated,” Elonen wrote to the Talon. “I didn’t really know what to think, I just started making sure my friends were OK.”

Swiss exchange student and former Oak Parkian, Livia Felicitas Cotar, said that when she first heard about the fire, she was “crushed.”

“I didn’t know how to feel, but I was scared for all the residents (especially for my friends) and I didn’t really understand what was going on. While all this started, I was at school and couldn’t concentrate,” Cotar wrote to the Talon. “To be honest, all I could think about was that hopefully, everyone was safe.”