I signed up for disaster training in LA. I had no idea I’d need it so soon

Four months ago, I took an emergency response course. Then the wildfires came, and I realised, in an era of disasters, how vital trained neighbors are

Kelley McIntosh is the kind of person who gives her friends fire extinguishers as housewarming gifts. In other words, my kind of person: as a climate journalist who's spent eight years reporting on adaptations critical to life in our burning, storming, fevered world, I've been known to gift-wrap prepper items, too. Loved ones have sighed and nodded as they opened solar lanterns, flashlights and emergency radios none of us quite understand how to crank".

Shockingly for two hypervigilants, neither Kelley nor I had ever actually pulled the pin and shot a fire extinguisher until the day we met last September in Los Angeles.