As Gash saw the fires destroy her homeland, she knew she needed to do something. “There is definitely a transition from being aware of a tragedy but being geographically removed from it, and then seeing it play out in your day-to-day life,” Gash says. “At the beginning, there was no smoke where I was, and I was just watching it on the news… But then it started to take over the entire country. At first, I was able to turn it off. But when it’s on every single channel, it’s on the radio, it’s everywhere 24/7, when you see the smoke, and then when you see the fire yourself in person, that’s when it gets to a new level.”