Welcome to Scorched Stories! My name is Sophie Kaplan, and I am a high school junior living in Rye, NY. I currently attend a boarding school in Suffield, Connecticut. However, I have not spent my entire life on the east coast. I spent the first 10 years of my life in Los Angeles. Growing up in Culver City, I consider California my true home and happy place. Some of my favorite memories as a child were made at my grandparent’s condo in the Pacific Palisades.

Their home represented a part of my childhood. I always looked forward to driving down the Pacific Coast Highway to see Grandma and Grandpa on the weekends. As soon as my parents would leave, my Grandma would make me a chocolate milkshake using her secret recipe in their small, but cozy kitchen. When the Pacific Palisades fires displaced my grandparents, I saw them in a state I had never seen them in before: pure confusion, loss, and anxiety. It hurt me deeply to see them like this. I thought about all the memories I made in their home. I felt their discomfort aching in their skin. I cried over the state of the city I once called home.

As my grandparents got back up on their feet, I wanted to do something to make a change, even from hundreds of miles away. I want to make sure all people who have been affected by natural disasters voices and heard, listened to, and learned from. To me, Scorched Stories is more than just a blog. It is a way to provide comfort and security to people like my grandparents. It is a way for others and me to explore natural disasters' never-ending effects.