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When Lydia Abraham-Traylor left the kindergarten class she teaches in downtown Los Angeles last Tuesday, her eyes were on the Palisades fire, which had started that morning.
Abraham-Traylor, who lived with her eight-year-old daughter in Altadena, figured that fire was all the way across the city. The worst she’d have to handle was a power outage.
That night, she and her daughter ordered pizzas, charged their devices and planned for a cozy night in. Finally, at the urging of Abraham-Traylor’s mother, they packed a small bag and left for the night.
Less than 24 hours later, their Altadena house would be gone – one of the over 7,000 damaged or destroyed by the Eaton fire, according to estimates from CalFire. Pasadena Rosebud Academy, where her daughter was enrolled in 3rd grade, is gone, too – one of the dozens of schools damaged or destroyed across Los Angeles.
Abraham-Traylor is one of hundreds of Los Angeles educators who lost a home in fires that have swept the city in the past week. The destruction has altered reality for the county’s students and teachers.
“I think that it’s impacting different people in very different ways,” Sarah Musich, director of counseling services for the collegiate division at Windward school, a private school in the Mar Vista neighborhood in the west of the city. “Some people lost homes, some are displaced, some are living through supporting friends and watching it happen.”
While the Pacific Palisades is a neighborhood often characterized by its opulent homes, views of the Pacific Ocean and celebrity homeowners, Altadena is a middle-class enclave where people of color make up more than half the population. Now, residents are voicing concerns that less affluent Altadena homeowners, facing the threat of gentrification and investors looking to profit off of razed houses, will not have the same opportunities to rebuild.
Abraham-Traylor lost yearbooks, her wedding dress – which she’d planned on giving her daughter – and a box of cards from students she had collected since she began teaching in 2011. She still hasn’t been allowed to return to her home.
“ Life as we knew it is, I mean, it’s done,” she said.
Abraham-Traylor’s taking the week off of work. But she’s still thinking of her 21 kindergartners at Union Avenue elementary school, part of the Los Angeles Unified school district (LAUSD).
“ I don’t want to be emotional, and my emotions have been all over the place,” she said. Meanwhile, her students “are probably wondering: where’s my teacher?”
And even as she worries about her students, she’s tasked with finding a new school for her daughter amid the devastation.
“Not just her school, but all the nearby schools have burned down. We’re just trying to figure it out day by day right now,” she said.
Jarred Phillips, who teaches high school biology at New Roads school, a private high school in Santa Monica, was in the middle of teaching his ninth graders the structure of cell membranes when school shut down. Many of the students, he said, had lost homes in the nearby Palisades fire. This week, school resumed with an assembly.
“A student got up and said, for someone to lose their home, we need to have empathy no matter how much wealth you have, and that’s the spirit of the school. I think a lot of people feel that way. This is devastating for everybody,” he said.
This week, the Pasadena school district remained closed. As school ramped back up for most of LAUSD on Monday, some educators were critical of administrators, saying one more day of closures would have been helpful.
Denisha Jordan, an LAUSD teacher, said her colleagues were asked to come in over the weekend to move classrooms.
“I know as an educator, honestly if I had been asked, I would’ve done it too because I want what’s best for my students,” she said. But “they shouldn’t have been put in that position”.
In a statement, the United Teachers Los Angeles’s statement criticized the district’s approach.
“Last week’s chaos – characterized by unsafe school openings, last-minute closures, and miscommunication from the district – jeopardized the safety of students and educators. It forced them into hazardous conditions with poor air quality and left working families scrambling to arrange childcare,” the UTLA said.
A Los Angeles Unified spokesperson said the district continues to prioritize the safety and well-being of students and staff, including following established health and safety procedures and maintaining air quality across schools.
With parents facing limited options, other organizations have stepped in to help, including the YMCA, which opened several branches for its emergency childcare program. YMCA dance instructors, swim teachers and day camp workers all became childcare workers.
There were several different reasons kids were there, said Christopher Jefferson, chief program officer at the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles, including lost schools or lost homes. The idea, he said, was to make sure all LA kids have access to care, regardless of which side of the county they lived in.
“For us, it’s really important that this is equitable access for kids,” Jefferson said. “Our Black and brown communities need just as much support and love as any of our communities here in Los Angeles.”
At the Pasadena-Sierra Madre YMCA on Tuesday morning, a dozen kids between five and 11 years old played games, colored and chatted with new friends. Some debated the meaning of new words such as “insurance” and “displacement”.
Pierre, 11, who’s in sixth grade at Altadena Arts Magnet, said his house, in Pasadena, had survived, but his grandparents’ Altadena house had burned down.
“In my 11 years I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “My whole school is messed up, so people are going to new schools now.”
Frida, eight, said she was excited for new students.
“It’s cool because you get to meet new people and make more friends,” she said.
In Nikki Isaac’s fifth-grade classroom at Canfield elementary school, part of LAUSD, the disaster offered an opportunity to learn more about fires. Students shared what they’d grabbed when they evacuated: stuffed animals, a chocolate chip cookie recipe and pets.
The students said they hoped other fifth graders across the country knew about the fires.
“I really hope they learn how it’s really hard for some people,” said Edie, a fifth grader. “And I also hope they learn that even if they’re not impacted by this, a lot of people are.”
