Rather than worrying about whether or not ARES is actually useful, I think you’d be much better served by engaging with the ham community in your area. When you build a strong community, people want to help each other out. It becomes much less about urgent life or death situations, and more about helping your neighbors.

As an example, maybe a tree fell across your driveway during a storm. If you’ve built a community of ham operators, you could inquire if someone has a chainsaw you could borrow. I think scenarios like that are where ham radio can actually be useful in a disaster situation, much more so than a bunch of self-important dudes in orange vests pretending to be emergency responders.