As the Inland Empire braced for an extreme heat warning in late August, a community group has been helping residents in the hottest parts of the desert manage scorching weather.

The nonprofit Comité Civico Del Valle has distributed air purifiers, air conditioning devices, and water purifiers to families living around the Salton Sea through a weather resilience program that GoFundMe.org launched.

This program is about fairness, safety, and dignity for our residents.

It's about making sure that vulnerable residents, especially seniors, people with health conditions, and the low-income families are not left behind when extreme heat strikes.

Triple-digit temperatures are the norm in summer for desert communities in eastern Riverside and Imperial County, and aging homes aren't equipped to protect against those conditions.

Neighboring Riverside County, which includes parts of the Salton Sea, recorded 1,627 emergency room visits and 65 deaths due to heat-related illness in 2024, and 550 heat-related emergency room visits and 2 deaths this year.

GoFundMe.org introduced a pilot program to reduce those risks.

It provided $500,000 to Comité Civico Del Valle to provide devices to people who lacked air filtration or cooling systems, or couldn't afford to use them.

The goal was to provide 100 families with updated cooling systems.

So far, the program has installed 72 air conditioners, 389 air purifiers, and 4 reverse osmosis water filters, said Amanda Brown Lierman, Executive Director of GoFundMe.org.

While these interventions do not replace the need for systemic change, they do provide families with tools to protect their health and manage the everyday challenges a little bit more safely and a little bit more affordably.

For CalMatters, I'm Deborah Brennan.