Volunteer

Disaster Relief

Southern California heads into this winter with burn scars still on the ground from the January 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires, and burned slopes can give way in short, intense rain. Organizations like the ones below are who show up first when storms turn into evacuations and property damage. If you want to help, sign up through one of them or your county's emergency volunteer program first, so you're trained and sent where help is actually needed. Showing up uninvited at a flooded street or an active emergency can get in the way of crews and put you at risk.

Marine Wildlife Rescue

El Niño winters don't just bring stronger storms, they warm coastal waters in ways that ripple through the marine food web. Warmer water can fuel blooms of a toxic algae, Pseudo-nitzschia, which produces a neurotoxin called domoic acid; past blooms tied to marine heatwaves have sickened and killed sea lions, dolphins, sea birds, and other marine wildlife along the Southern California coast. Warmer water also pushes the small fish sea lions rely on, sardines and anchovies, farther offshore, forcing nursing mothers to travel farther for food and leaving pups underfed. During the last major marine heatwave (2013–2016), thousands of malnourished sea lion pups washed up on California beaches. Rescue organizations like the ones below are usually the first responders when this happens, which is part of why their need for volunteers and donations tends to spike during El Niño winters.

Coastal Cleanup

LA County's storm drains were built in the 1930s and 40s to do one job: move rainwater off streets and into the ocean before it could flood neighborhoods. Nobody engineered them to filter anything, so a single inch of rain sends roughly 10 billion gallons of runoff, plus whatever trash and oil it picked up off the pavement, straight to the coast largely untreated. A winter defined by frequent, powerful storms means more of those flushes, more often, which is exactly why groups like Heal the Bay run rapid-response teams that mobilize within hours of a rain event, before the tide carries the trash back out.

Climate & City Planning

Much of the region's flood infrastructure was built for a gentler climate than the one it's about to face. In San Diego County alone, the average dam is about 100 years old, only 17% of stormwater channels and 1 of 15 pump stations are rated for a 100-year storm, and officials say another $3.3 billion in upgrades is needed on top of the $800 million already spent. A historic El Niño winter doesn't create these gaps, it just tests all of them at once. Organizations like the ones below work on the resilience planning and stormwater capture that closes that gap before the next storm finds it.

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