Around , Albek received a call from a friend. “Alicia, there’s a fire behind your house,” Albek recalled hearing before looking out her window to see that the hill behind her home was on fire.

Within minutes, Albek started contacting the children’s parents. Due to road closures, two families could not get to Albek’s home to pick up their children, both 18 months old.

“I said I would drop them off on our way to evacuate,” said Albek. “It took me half an hour to drop off one baby a block away. It took me two hours to drop off the other less than two miles away.”

“We were stuck on Sunset [Boulevard]. There was a car in the middle of the road … and it had caught fire. I couldn’t help but think: We’re going to blow,” said Albek.

“My daughter was in a car in front of us. I had someone else’s baby in my backseat. All I could think is, I have to get them away from this fire.”

Albek succeeded in dropping off the two toddlers before evacuating with her daughter and husband to her son’s home in the San Fernando Valley. They stayed for three weeks before finding a rental home to live in temporarily. 

Albek’s house was burned, along with her backyard. She’s still waiting for her home to be cleared of the ash and lead that entered through the vents and crevices so she can begin to rebuild. Since she evacuated, she hasn’t been able to provide child care for the 20 families she served.

Albek’s program was one of child care facilities destroyed in the , according to The Child Care Alliance of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times reported in late January that at least of them were home-based. Families who relied on these programs had to look for alternative arrangements, but , let alone, child care has become increasingly challenging.

Home-based child care providers faced overwhelming dilemmas. Many grieved as they lost their home and business in one fell swoop. And, they carried the weight of navigating loss. Months later, these challenges persist as providers continue to feel the consequences of the fires. 

Below are the stories of eight providers who live in communities hit hard by the wildfires. (With support from Home Grown, a funders collaborative focused on home-based child care, the providers were given a small stipend for their time.) Five lost their homes and businesses, and three have been unable to reopen. Two have had to find a new location to reopen their child care facility, while figuring out a temporary housing solution for their own family. While each provider has their own story, all of them echoed a similar message: a commitment to their community and the children they serve.

Alana Lewis’ neighbor’s backyard in Altadena, California days after the Eaton Fire. (Alana Lewis)

These vignettes offer a small window into the experiences of home-based providers who lived through the fires — the emotional toll of the losses they faced, the responsibility they feel to get back to providing care, and the aid they need as they navigate the recovery process. 

The vignettes below draw quotes from interviews, which have been lightly edited for length and clarity. Two interviews were conducted in Spanish and translated into English. 

Alicia Albek

Neighborhood: Pacific Palisades, California

Number of children served: 20  

Number of years providing child care: 30

Impacted by: Palisades Fire

Still providing child care? No

Alicia Albek immigrated from Argentina to the United States in 1976, and moved to Los Angeles in 1983. She settled down in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood with her husband and was inspired by her own children to open a home-based child care program. In 1995, she opened Alicia’s Place. This year would have been the 30th anniversary of her program. 

When the fires broke out, Albek was serving around 20 children from 6 months to 4 years old, accommodating a variety of family schedules and preferences for the days and hours of care.  

“[The Palisades] is a place [where] you know the clerks in your local markets, the post office people, the mail lady,” Albek reminisced. “It’s very horrible what is going on. Hopefully, we can rebuild.”

Albek’s family lost their home in the Palisades fire. She also lost her child care program. She has been living in a rental home while waiting for the debris to be cleared from her home, and for the necessary approvals to begin reconstruction. She isn’t sure if she’ll reopen Alicia’s Place. That depends on how the home repairs go, she said. 

The families Albek cared for moved out of the neighborhood, she said, but she saw some of them recently at a gathering she hosted at her rental. 

“A few of the families showed up. People were crying. They were all displaced. Some were still looking for child care,” she explained. Others have found care, but she said: “I have people telling me that they’re finding new places, but nothing like ours — like home away from home. I had it set up so beautifully. The kids were so comfortable there, and the parents were comfortable to have a safe, clean, loving place for their kids.” 

Marcia Colasanti

Neighborhood: Santa Monica, California

Number of children served: 6

Number of years providing child care: 18

Impacted by: Palisades Fire

Still providing child care? Yes

Marcia Colasanti immigrated to Los Angeles from Brazil to study at a local university. After navigating the child care system for her own children, and volunteering at her son’s day care, she decided to open her own program. “I saw the great impact I could have in my community,” said Colasanti. “I looked into it, and decided to open my own business.”

Colasanti has been running her program since 2007. Her home wasn’t damaged by the fires, but her community was impacted and she said she’s been trying to support them as best she can.

When the fires began, Colasanti closed her doors for three days. Her only employee, who had an infant son, had evacuated and she couldn’t open alone. “She did not feel good about us closing,” said Colasanti. “I told her not to worry, it’s a natural disaster.” After evacuating to a relative’s home, her employee came back, Colasanti said. “She commuted from the [San Fernando] Valley.” 

Shortly after she reopened, Colasanti learned that one of the families she provided care for had lost their home. “The family was traumatized. I offered them child care after hours, whatever I could do to help,” she said.

Colasanti’s costs increased during the fires. She installed air purifiers in every room and her electric bill “skyrocketed,” she said. Meanwhile, two of the six families she provided care for could not pay because their jobs were located in an evacuation zone. Colasanti provided free care for two weeks. With the increased electric bill and interruption of payments, she . 

Colasanti hopes that in the future, providers are given the resources they need to survive a disaster. “I was very fortunate I did not have to close my doors for good. I know many child care providers who did, who are struggling to reopen,” she said. 

Aurys Hernandez Carillo

Neighborhood: Altadena, California

Number of children served: 12

Number of years providing child care: 19

Impacted by: Eaton Fire

Still providing child care? No

Aurys Hernandez Carillo immigrated from El Salvador to Los Angeles when she was a teenager. While attending college, she worked part-time at a local child care center. She fell in love with the work, and shared her dream of owning her own child care center with her mother. The two decided to open a home-based child care program of their own. Her mother retired in 2021, making Hernandez Carillo the sole owner of the business.

In the early hours of Jan. 8, Hernandez Carillo evacuated her home with her husband, their children (then 5 and 8 years old) and her parents who lived with her. They only had time to grab two changes of clothes and their documents.

Their home was gone by the morning. 

“In the morning, the families [of the children I cared for] started to call me. They did not want to tell me what happened to my home, only that it was bad in our zone,” said Hernandez Carillo through tears. “I felt terrible. How could I tell my kids we had nothing?”

Hernandez Carillo and her family moved between short-term Airbnb rentals and friends’ couches for months. She eventually received a check from her home insurance to cover temporary housing, but it could not be used on short-term lodging like hotels or Airbnb. Hernandez Carillo searched for weeks for an affordable space that she could use the housing support from her insurer on, but the search proved difficult with the in the area. 

The outside area of Hernandez Carillo’s home after the Eaton Fire. (Aurys Hernandez Carillo)

While she wanted to rent a home that was suitable for reopening her business, property managers gave her a cold shoulder, she said. “When I tell them that I would like to have a day care there, they tell me they are not renting for that,” said Hernandez Carillo. “There are some realtors who have said they’ll discuss with the owner, but they later declined because they do not want to go through inspections.” Ultimately, the families of the children she cared for had to find other options. 

Her family is now living in a rental apartment. She is studying to earn her teaching license in order to work at a center-based child care facility. She intended to pursue the additional licensure before the fires, but losing her business fast-tracked that plan. Without her business, her husband’s salary is the sole source of income for the family.  

Alana Lewis

Neighborhood: Altadena, California

Number of children served: 13

Number of years providing child care: 11

Impacted by: Eaton Fire

Still providing child care? No

Alana Lewis was born and raised in Altadena, California. She started her career in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) as a special education educator and worked in the district for 12 years before becoming a home-based child care provider in 2014.

“I’ve always had compassion for people. When I was at LAUSD, I was able to help children one-on-one,” said Lewis. “That’s why I opened up my own child care [center].”

Like Hernandez Carillo, Lewis evacuated her home in the early morning hours of Jan. 8. Later that day, she received news that her home was significantly damaged, with the backyard destroyed and inside filled with ash and debris. “One of my parents called and said, ‘Your house is gone. Don’t come up here, it’s devastating.’”

Lewis moved between hotels, short-term rentals, and family and friends’ couches until June. She had no source of income as she waited for her home to be cleared of debris, and relied on a patchwork of grants and community resources to sustain herself. Lewis looked for a temporary location in her community for her child care center. But, with many locations also partially or completely destroyed by the fires, she had no luck.

The families she served also endured loss. “I have two parents whose homes completely burned down. Some parents have had to find other child care, because they had to return to work. But I still keep in touch,” said Lewis. 

Lewis was able to return home in June. She reopened her program later that month, and is currently providing care for seven children.

As she reflected on her experiences since the fires, she said she hopes policymakers and advocates recognize the important role child care providers play in the lives of children and families, especially during challenging times.

“Please remember us,” said Lewis. “Consider what we bring to the community, how we are effective in children’s lives.”

Elizabeth Reilly and Shea Morris

Neighborhood: Pacific Palisades, California

Number of children served: 8

Number of years providing child care: 4 (30 years in education)

Impacted by: Palisades Fire

Are they still providing care? Yes

Elizabeth Reilly moved to Los Angeles from Houston, Texas, and currently lives in Woodland Hills. She co-owns the Eclipse School, a home-based learning center, with Shea Morris. Both were classroom teachers for decades before opening their child care business. The center was located in Morris’ home, which was lost in the Palisades Fire

“I felt the stress of losing the business, relocating, [knowing] that we have families counting on us. I had to put it all together, and support everybody who lost more than I had,” said Reilly. “Shea had to help her family and find a new home. In the beginning, I felt the weight of the loss of income, and the responsibility of leading Eclipse to its new home.”

While Morris focused on supporting herself and her family through the devastation of losing their home, Reilly took the lead in reopening their business. They were connected to someone who had extra space in her home. 

“The home and school burned Wednesday morning. We knew we were not going to be able to go back,” said Reilly. “We saw the [new] space that Friday.” By March, she said, they reopened the Eclipse School in Santa Monica, leveraging to expedite the opening. 

“The hardest part was not only losing my home, but the loss that was so much more than a place to live. It brought the loss of a community that I lived in for close to 20 years,” said Morris.

“I can have this sense of loss and I can be super grateful for all the people who reached out to help,” said Morris. “I have to give Beth credit. I was so focused on helping my family, and she was able to jump into action to help Eclipse.”

On Sept. 2, The Eclipse School started a new year at full capacity, with 12 children enrolled. 

Anonymous provider

Neighborhood: South Los Angeles, California

Number of children served: 2

Number of years providing child care: 17

Impacted by: L.A. County Wildfires

Still providing child care? Yes

One provider, who asked not to be identified by name due to concerns about in her community, moved to Los Angeles from Mexico in the early 2000s and she’s been caring for young children for nearly two decades. 

“My passion has always been caring for others. I studied nursing in Mexico,” she said. “Then, I started taking care of my son and providing child care for my two nephews. I realized I liked it, and that I wanted to dedicate myself to it.”

Over the years, she continued working in child care — she is a , meaning that she is a provider caring for the children of her family members, friends or neighbors in her community. 

She quickly learned she could not financially support herself on the income she earned from child care, so she picked up a second job. In the morning, she takes care of her niece and a neighbor’s daughter. In the afternoons, she works from home as a fabric trimmer for a clothing company.

Her home wasn’t in an evacuation zone, but she was impacted by the fires, and so were the families she supports. Her niece’s mother and her neighbor worked in the evacuation zone and experienced job interruptions, causing them to lose some of their income for weeks, so she watched the children while their parents went to seek work. 

During and after the fires, the provider incurred extra costs. She said she had to buy an air purifier because her neighbor’s daughter had asthma. “Even though we were inside the apartment, it smelled burnt. The ash, the smoke, travelled inside… There were days I helped her use her inhaler.” She also bought more toys to entertain the children in her care while they were stuck indoors due to smoke. 

She has continued to care for her niece and her neighbor’s daughter. Reflecting back on the fires, she said, “I wish there had been more immediate supports, like air purifiers or helping bring groceries to those who could not leave their homes. The smoke was toxic — we were not going outside at all.”

Felisa Wright

Neighborhood: Altadena, California

Number of children served: 14

Years of child care provider experience: 16

Impacted by: Eaton Fire

Still providing child care? Yes

Felisa Wright was born and raised in Los Angeles. She said she’s always felt called to caregiving, and worked in a children’s hospital before opening her home-based child care center in 2009. At the start of this year, the center served 14 children, including six of Wright’s grandchildren.

Wright lived in her home with her five daughters and her grandchildren. The family evacuated in the early morning hours of Jan. 8 and haven’t been able to return to their home since.

Like Hernandez Carillo, Wright has struggled to find a new place to live because of her business, for providers running a child care program out of their home. “Owners do not want to rent to me [when] I say I have an in-home day care. They say it’s too much responsibility, too much of a liability,” said Wright.

In August, Wright moved into a rental home with two of her daughters and three grandchildren, but her other three daughters and their kids have had to find lodging elsewhere. While she continues to provide child care for her six grandchildren, she has been unable to officially reopen her program to the public and enroll children from the community. She has gone without an income for months and, with no savings, she’s had to rely on credit cards for her expenses, small grants from organizations and a GoFundMe. 

Wright is hoping to reopen her child care program at her local church, using similar that Morris and Reilly used to streamline the Eclipse School’s opening. Her child care license was approved and she has set up the space, but she has been unable to obtain insurance and cannot operate the child care facility without it. But Wright said she’s committed.

“I love children. This is my purpose in life. This is what I’m supposed to be doing,” said Wright. “So I’m not going to stop.”

Home-based care providers deliver critical care during emergencies and periods of crisis, even when they are living through the experiences themselves and are personally by their impact. 

The L.A. County fires inspired around disaster response and recovery. Yet, there are still gaps where institutional support is not reaching those who need it, and around the progress that has been made. In recent months, there has been more investigation into understanding the consequences of the fires, including the and . 

“Consider what we bring to the community, how we are effective in children’s lives. We do it out of love and compassion for children,” Lewis said. “Child care providers became first responders during the pandemic. We did our part in a time of disaster. We stepped up. … Remember us.” she added.

Albek, Hernandez Carillo, Lewis and Wright provided care during stay at home orders of the pandemic. But when the fires came to their communities and they needed aid, the system failed them. 

Several weeks after students returned to Canyon Charter Elementary School following the Los Angeles fires in January, a second grade student at the school cried as his teacher packed up an absent friend’s belongings.

“What are you doing with this stuff?” the student asked, his grief ongoing, and mounting.

Katje Davis said it was difficult to explain that his friend was displaced by the Palisades fire and had to move to another school.

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“This loss was hard,” Davis said. “But … we’re good teachers here. And we’ve figured out how to put the kids first.”

The second grader was one of hundreds who left the Los Angeles Unified School District, which lost two elementary schools to the fires, and the Pasadena Unified School District, which encompasses Altadena, and was the hardest hit.

And as the academic year comes to an end, teachers, administrators and experts have stressed that schools in areas affected by fires have remained a key source of stability, despite campuswide adjustments to a new normal and the ongoing grief expressed by students, many of whom lost their homes, pets and communities. Five months after the fires, students were back on track, making progress academically and emotionally.

“Schools provide a sense of continuity and safety for children,” said Pedro Noguera, the Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean of USC’s Rossier School of Education. “And, that’s why it’s so important to be in school.”

‘Nothing like Covid’: Returning to normalcy

Despite losing some schools to the fire, Los Angeles Unified and Pasadena Unified were relatively quick to bring students back and resume classes at their new locations. Many students returned by the end of January.

The schools that burned down were relocated to new campuses, so students could stay with the same campus community, classroom, classmates and teachers.

Parents at Canyon Charter Elementary were concerned about environmental risks, according to Davis, and many kept their kids home until the district completed a Soil and Indoor Air Dust Report in late March.

In the months following the Eaton and Palisades fires, students who lived in impacted communities dealt with different circumstances and missed varying amounts of instruction. Some initially seemed happy to be back with their teacher and classmates; others struggled emotionally.

“This is nothing like Covid — because at Covid times, everybody was in the same boat,” Davis said. Her school was in a unique position — they were the closest to the burn zone but did not perish. They also didn’t have running water until mid-March.

Wendy Connor, a veteran first grade teacher at Marquez Charter Elementary School, which did burn down in Palisades, said the initial days and weeks after they resumed in January at Nora Sterry Elementary were geared toward students’ emotional well-being.

Teachers started marking tardies in mid-February, she said, and she tried to cover only the essential parts of each lesson.

“We’re reading a story. We’re writing. We’re practicing spelling and writing sentences and things like that,” Connor said in an interview with EdSource in February. “But, we’re just not doing it for as long as we normally would. If there’s five questions for them to answer, maybe I’ll just have them do three.”

As the weeks rolled on and students started to settle into their new environments, Connor said she felt she had been able to steer her first graders back into a more normal school day.

By May, most of the kids at Marquez Charter Elementary had settled down and were happy at their new location, Connor told EdSource.

“There’s been some stories of a few different students from different classrooms whose parents wanted them to go to a different school … and the kids just refused to go. They wanted to stay at Marquez.”

The efforts at Pasadena Unified have yielded some surprising results, according to Julianne Reynoso, Pasadena Unified’s assistant superintendent of student wellness and support services.

Although 10,000 of the district’s 14,000 students were evacuated from the Eaton fire, the district’s diagnostic assessments show that the number of students performing at or above grade level in math and reading across elementary and middle school has increased between the August/September and March/April assessment periods.

Specifically, the number of elementary students who performed at mid- or above-grade level rose 15 percentage points in math and 14 percentage points in reading.

Among middle schoolers, math scores rose by 11 percentage points and 6 percentage points in reading.

An LAUSD spokesperson said in an email to EdSource that they do not have any data measuring the impacts of the Palisades fire on students at Palisades Charter Elementary and Marquez Charter Elementary.

A changing landscape

In the final weeks of the spring semester, the school day looked similar to what it was before the fires, with one notable exception. Connor’s class is a lot smaller. Only 12 of her 20 students came back, and she made the most of the smaller class size.

“When you have 20, you have to run around to like six different kids that need your help. When it’s only 12, it’s like two kids,” Connor said. “And then we end up with extra time in the afternoon, and we’re starting to do some more coding activities … [and] other enrichment-type activities.”

At least 89 students left Los Angeles Unified due to the fires, according to a district spokesperson, while Pasadena Unified lost roughly 420 students.

“We did have families that left us,” Reynoso said. Other families maintained long-distance commutes to keep their kids in the same district school. “But what’s interesting about it is that they said, ‘We’ll be back. This is just temporary for us,’ I hope that’s true.”

But the fires, coupled with fears around immigration enforcement, also led to an uptick in the district’s rate of chronic absenteeism.

At the same time, Reynoso said Los Angeles Unified unexpectedly gained 263 students. She speculates that this could be the result of a California executive order allowing students who were affected by the fires to attend schools in other districts.

But every fire is different.

According to Noguera from USC, many communities in Santa Rosa and Paradise that suffered losses after fires returned and rebuilt. However, he cautioned that a large-scale return of families might be less likely in Los Angeles.

“Not everybody who was there will come back or can afford to come back,” he said. “It’s a process that’s going to take time, and we will only know, with time, how it all comes together.”

His neighbors said his house was burning down in the wildfires – along with his entire Altadena neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Aveson School of Leaders, which McFeat runs and where his kids attended school just three blocks from his house, was also burning.

Unable to sleep, Mcfeat drove away from his in-law’s house that he’d been evacuated to and made the drive back to Altadena.

He drove through the fire lines and into his neighborhood to see if he could salvage anything, save anyone, or put out the fires that had raged on the east side for more than 48 hours straight, and decimated the Palisades in the west. 

He was greeted with a scene out of a horror movie. Fueled by a violent windstorm and piles of brush left from a particularly wet winter last year, the firestorm was like a tornado shooting flames, blasting through his neighborhood.

“It was like driving through a bomb scene,” said Mcfeat. “There were homes exploding. I probably shouldn’t have been there.” 

Despite the devastating losses, Mcfeat can’t imagine not rebuilding his home and school right where they were in Altadena. But the road to recovery will be a long and painful one.

“No doubt about it. We are going to rebuild,” said Mcfeat. Aveson . At this point, a new site for the school has not been identified. The district hasn’t been able to help them yet.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Mcfeat.

The wildfires that burned Los Angeles this month are , displacing more than 150,000 residents and killing at least 25 people. Two massive blazes fed by windstorms, the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire, simultaneously scorched the city from the sea to the mountains, filling the air with vast plumes of ash and smoke.

As the wind and flames began to retreat last week, and firefighters gained control of the fires, schools began to reopen. And the kids began to return to class.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which is by far the largest district of about 80 in Los Angeles County,  after being totally closed since last Thursday. Seven schools remain shut because they’re located in evacuation zones. Another three won’t reopen because their buildings were badly burned or destroyed in the fires.  

Dozens of much smaller districts in Los Angeles County also reopened this week, with the exceptions of two districts, , which encompasses Altadena, and , which neighbors Altadena to the west. 

The Eaton fire has destroyed at least five schools but was mostly contained by Friday. 

Kids from two of the LAUSD schools that burned in the Palisades, Marquez Charter Elementary School and Palisades Charter Elementary School, were placed, with intact school rosters, in close-ish LAUSD school buildings that already had other schools in them.

The students who attended the burned schools were given their own entrances, classrooms and courtyards for kids to play. When parents dropped them off at class this week, there were a lot of tearful reunions.

Families from Palisades Charter were somber, but excited to return to normalcy with their new space located inside of Brentwood Science Magnet School.  

Joseph Koshki, a parent from the Palisades whose son attends third grade at Palisades Charter, walked holding hands with his son to their new classroom at Brentwood Science, which had been stacked with balloons.

“When he saw his school burned on the news he was crying for days,” Koshki said of his child. “But when he heard that he was going to his new school with his old friends, he was so happy”.

Nina Belden, a parent of a Palisades Charter student who had made an emergency evacuation from her house in the Palisades with her family, said it was important for the students at her daughter’s school to stay together and receive in-person instruction.

“We were worried they were going to do something like remote learning,” said Beldon.

, which also burned in the Palisades fire, has a long history in the community, having opened in 1955 when the Palisades still had a frontier feel, before the neighborhood became a favorite of Hollywood stars and media execs.

For Victoria Flores, who works as a paraeducator at Marquez, the school is part of her family. Flores went to Marquez when she was in elementary school, and her mother works in the cafeteria.

“It was my home away from home. We are devastated by what happened,” Flores said.

But Flores said she and the rest of the staff were glad to be relocated together at a LAUSD school called Nora Sterry, about ten miles from the burned Marquez campus.

“We are a really close family,” said Flores. “That’s helped us a lot.”

Upstairs at Nora Sterry, Clare Gardner’s class had about eight of twenty students show up on the first day of relocation.

Her third-grade class was playing with clay and Mrs. Gardner, who is a twenty-seven-year veteran of Marquez, held back her tears as she helped students arrive into class.

“We always call it the Marquez family,” Gardner said as the children greeted each other.

One boy in Mrs. Gardner’s class said he was happy to be around his friends and teacher but sad about his classroom fish and books, which were lost in the fire.

Later in the morning, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho went to visit parents at Nora Sterry.

After nearly a week off school, Carvalho says attendance is still below normal.

“I think where that attendance is lacking is in schools that were directly affected” by the fires, Carvalho said.

Also hurting attendance, Carvalho said, is the fact that many families are enduring temporary relocations, while others lack stable housing entirely.

LAUSD staff attendance is back to normal, he said, while student attendance is about 88% — down , representing about 10,000 fewer students than normal.

 “As conditions of the families begin to normalize and stabilize, those [attendance] numbers will rise,” said Carvalho.

For other schools in other areas of Los Angeles, recovery may be longer in the making. 

Bonnie Brinecomb, principal of  in Altadena, which burned to the ground in the Eaton Fire, estimates that the homes of 40% of the students enrolled in the school also burned.

Families and school staffers are scrambling to ensure displaced families have food, shelter and clothing, Brinecomb said. Some students are turning up for daycare at a nearby Boys and Girls Club that offered to take them in.  

Brinecomb said Odyssey has partnered with McFeat’s school Aveson to search for new facilities. But the double loss of students’ homes and the schools’ campuses is a gutpunch.  

“It’s just heartbreak. Pure shock,” she said. “You don’t even process how bad of a situation just happened.”

Like Aveson, Odyssey has  and Brinecomb says the school will rebuild. How long that will take, though, remains an open question.  

From the perspective of displaced children and families, the faster things return to normal, the better, said Dr. Frank Manis, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Southern California. 

The experience of trauma can intensify if routines are disrupted for longer periods, and the intensity of the disruption matters as well, said Manis. Kids who lost their homes to fires may have a harder time bouncing back than those who only lost their schools, he said.    

“It’s sort of on that spectrum of wartime PTSD, but not as bad,” said Manis. “So what it could lead to is nightmares, difficulty sleeping, and emotional or behavior problems that can last for quite a while.”

Children fighting post-traumatic stress from the fires may become withdrawn, or act out in class, said Manis. But mostly, he said, the  shows that even children badly impacted by the fires may begin to feel normal within a few months. 

“Kids are pretty resilient,” said Manis. “But trauma can disappear for a while, and then it can resurface later. When everyone’s forgotten how bad it was, it can resurface.” 

Carlos Garcia Saldaña drove past block after block of homes, businesses, and churches “wiped off the face of the earth.” The Eaton fire that had consumed large parts of Altadena was still burning in the San Gabriel Mountains. The charter network leader needed to see what remained of his schools.

As Garcia Saldaña approached Odyssey Charter School South, the facade and main entrance appeared intact. But as he looked left and up the hill, he saw a heap of twisted metal and charred rubble where, two days earlier, there had been classrooms, offices, lunch tables, play structures, and an after-school clubhouse. The tree stumps where students used to sit and eat and dream were still smoldering.

“It’s just jarring and heartbreaking,” Garcia Saldaña said.

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Over the past week, wind-whipped wildfires reshaped wide swaths of Los Angeles, and destroying more than 12,000 structures. A dozen or more . The danger is not yet past, with fires only partially contained and high winds forecast through Wednesday.

Hundreds of thousands of students were out of school last week as more than announced temporary closures due to poor air quality, shifting evacuation orders, and the many , , and who had lost their homes.

On Tuesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued suspending many state rules governing schools to make it easier for schools to operate in temporary buildings and for students to enroll across district lines, as well as waiving requirements about instructional days.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest, a handful of schools in areas still under evacuation orders, including three that were neighborhood, remained closed early this week. The district announced that students from two ravaged Palisades elementary schools Wednesday from other district buildings on the city’s west side.

Santa Monica-Malibu Unified opened its Santa Monica campuses on Tuesday but kept schools in Malibu closed through Wednesday due to road closures and power and gas outages. Many local families have had to evacuate because of the proximity to the , and the district for affected families. Santa Monica-Malibu Unified also said it was monitoring air quality and that its facilities had air filtration systems in place.

In Pasadena Unified, the Eaton Fire, which started on Jan. 7, badly damaged five of its Altadena campuses, which housed a district middle school (whose student-led ), a defunct elementary school, and three charters, including Odyssey South, known as OCS South. Pasadena Unified said its schools will remain closed through this week but that it will offer self-directed online learning and grab-and-go meal service.

Close-knit community faces widespread losses

Now Garcia Saldaña’s days are consumed with checking on the many families and staff who lost their homes and looking for a space where students could return to school as soon as possible.

Odyssey operates two Altadena charter schools, OCS South and Odyssey Charter, the network’s original school, which sustained minimal damage — some downed trees and smoke residue. The charter network, founded in 1999, now serves a total of 830 students in transitional kindergarten through 8th grade.

OCS South opened its doors in 2018 and relocated to its current location, on the grounds of the former Edison Elementary School, three years ago. Since then, the Odyssey community has set out to make the campus its own — painting murals, planting gardens, and replacing old play structures.

Over the weekend, Garcia Saldaña sent a video message to families describing the damage to buildings at the two campuses. Odyssey Charter will require a major clean-up; the OCS South location was a near-total loss. But Odyssey isn’t about buildings, he said in the video, but about “the community that makes us such a special and unique place that we all love so much.”

Emmanuel Barragan, a father of three OCS South students, echoed that point as he dropped off his daughter and two sons at the Boys & Girls Club of Pasadena on Monday. School leaders know the name of every single child and what they need, he said, noting, “Sometimes, it almost feels like the school is a co-parent.”

Odyssey partnered with the Boys & Girls Club to offer free child care this week. The club also alerted other local schools that its doors would be open this week to any school-age child in need of a safe place to be. The clubhouse was providing all-day programming, including arts and crafts, sports, and educational games, and waiving its drop-in fee.

More than 200 students had arrived by mid-morning on Monday. Garcia Saldaña, better known to students as Dr. Carlos, was at the door to greet Odyssey families. He offered hugs as students made their way inside, and he checked in with caregivers about their housing status.

A survey of Odyssey’s roughly 650 families had yielded more than 300 responses, with 83 student households reporting “full loss of home & belongings.” Others said they didn’t yet know the condition of their home. Four Odyssey employees, including the Odyssey Charter principal, also lost homes in the fire, Garcia Saldaña said.

Altadena native Marcellus Nunley evacuated with his family around 3:45 a.m. on Jan. 8. Within hours, their home was gone. “Everything melted” was how his 5-year-old son, an Odyssey Charter kindergartener, put it. Nunley dropped off his son at the Boys & Girls Club so he could spend the day managing the logistics of a family displaced by fire: calling the mortgage company, reaching out to the county tax assessor, and procuring all of the little life necessities he hadn’t given much thought to until they went up in flames.

The losses are exacerbated by Altadena residents’ love for their neighborhood, with its charming bungalows and craftsman homes, picturesque hiking trails, and beloved local businesses. “Altadena is a diverse community, which is wonderful. It’s a walking community, it’s a dog walking community, it’s town and country,” Nunley said. “It’s a great melting pot of society.”

Before the Eaton Fire, about 42,000 people resided in Altadena. Many Black families who faced housing discrimination in other Los Angeles neighborhoods in the 1960s. Today, Black residents make up about 18% of the population. Roughly a third of Altadena residents are Hispanic, about 40% are white, and there are many Asian American and biracial families.

The Odyssey student body reflects the community’s racial diversity. It’s also economically diverse, with about 30% qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, according to Garcia Saldaña.

Caitlin Reilly’s two sons, 10-year-old Townes and 8-year-old Ellar, are students at OCS South. When the Eaton Fire forced another Odyssey family to evacuate early on Jan. 8, they drove to the house Reilly shares with her partner and kids, located in a section of Pasadena outside of an evacuation zone.

For the next four days, the four adults and four children huddled together in the two-bedroom, one-bathroom home. The kids had an epic sleepover, and the parents stared at their devices, searching for the latest news about the fires engulfing Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, Odyssey families connected on social media and text chains, offering up what they could and asking for what they needed, Reilly said. They arranged indoor playdates so kids could be together without breathing the smoke-filled air. They replaced baseball bats and gloves for Little League players who had lost theirs to fire, and they organized backpack and supply drives. The school launched a to support recovery efforts.

Fire’s devastation leaves uncertainty about next steps

The evacuated family’s Altadena house is still standing, but their badly damaged neighborhood remained under evacuation orders this week. They secured a temporary rental, but Reilly fears that many local families who lost homes will have a hard time finding a place to stay.

“The fear is that it will be like Katrina,” she said. The 2005 hurricane devastated New Orleans, damaged or destroyed , and . “We’re worried that we’ll lose so many families that are part of the community because there is nowhere to house them.”

That would hit Odyssey hard, given the closeness of its community and the fact that its funding is tied to its enrollment numbers.

“There’s been cheerleading about cleaning up and rebuilding, but as far as logistically what comes next, I don’t think anyone knows yet,” said Reilly, who serves on the Odyssey Charter Schools board.

Mary Scott, whose 10-year-old son, Charlie, attends OCS South, also fears dwindling enrollment at Odyssey. “The reality is, these aren’t all well-off families, and now they have to find a place to rent and rebuild while also having to pay their mortgages,” she said. “I do worry about the families that have to relocate. It would be a tremendous loss.”

Odyssey leadership acknowledges how much remains unknown: when schools will reopen in person, where classes will be held, how many families will stay local and how many will resettle elsewhere, and the extent to which the network will need to rely on remote learning.

Scott, for one, said she’s hoping to avoid remote learning because it was so difficult during COVID school closures when her son was in kindergarten and first grade. But if she had to choose between online schooling and leaving OCS South, she said would likely stay put because “I don’t want to abandon our community.”

Garcia Saldaña said the COVID years taught him a lot about what works for online learning (shorter lessons, movement breaks) and what doesn’t (asking kids to sit still for two to three hours at a time). But he’s mostly focused on finding a temporary physical location so students can return in person as soon as possible.

At the same time, he’s still figuring out the availability of Odyssey’s 115 employees, many of whom remain displaced, and asking teachers to reach out to each of their students.

“It’s about having a familiar voice on the other end of the line saying, ‘What do you need? How is your family?’” he said. “We are all human, first and foremost.”

This was originally published by . Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. .