In the midst of smoke and flame, a rising beam of hope shows a promising path, one that will need our focus in the months to come: the desire good people have to help.

That desire is striking in the experience of Rob and Glo Carroll, whose own desire to help led them to set up a GoFundMe page to which donations have been coming in steadily for a week.

Their effort supplies normally self-sufficient firefighting organizations with items they need but find hard to get amid the massive, thinly-stretched firefighting efforts across the West. They are featured on the front page.

Theirs is one way to go, but there’s plenty of need to go around, and it’s not going to stop for quite some time.

The destruction of last year’s record-breaking Carlton Complex fires pale in comparison to the more than 600,000 acres burned and 200 homes destroyed in our countryside in the last two weeks. That doesn’t even take into account the losses the region will feel from the loss of timber and the livelihoods affected directly and indirectly.

The region will need an infusion of good will and money. If you have friends and relatives in untouched places, give them a way to give. In addition to the Baking Warriors on the front page, here are a few more good places that will put money in local/regional hands with just a few clicks:

• Okanogan County Community Action Council. Visit the website, http://www.occac.com.

• Community Foundation of North Central Washington. Visit the website, http://www.cfncw.org.

• Chelan Valley Hope’s “Give #104” at http://givenaked.org/

• a fund for the firefighters who were killed or injured in the Methow Valley: http://www.gofundme.com/methowfirefighters.

Or, if you are a hearty individual with a red card, and you can volunteer on the fire lines, the state’s Dept. of Natural Resources is signing up volunteers: http://www.dnr.wa.gov/wildfirevolunteer.

Scott Hunter

editor and publisher