On 13 April, Tess McGinley was working in her Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) cubicle in Los Angeles, calling people who had lost their homes in the January wildfires, when her team was told to stop what they were doing and leave the office immediately.
McGinley, a 23-year-old team leader for AmeriCorps, the US agency for national service and volunteerism, was helping Fema by reviewing wildfire survivors’ cases to ensure they received housing assistance. Over the past six weeks, she and her seven teammates had reviewed more than 4,000 cases and made hundreds of calls to survivors. Now, even as the team drove home after their jobs were cut, their government phones kept ringing. “Survivors just kept calling us … And we weren’t able to help,” McGinley said.
