Students at John Muir High School in Pasadena were unfazed when the Eaton fire first began burning in the nearby San Gabriel mountains on January 7.
“I remember going to school that day. It was really windy, and the power went out, and we were all laughing about it, because we didn't know how serious it was going to be. We just thought it was like any other windstorm at that time of year,” says Heavyn Harmon, a senior at Muir whose family lost their Altadena home in the fire.
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It’s not surprising that kids growing up in the fire-prone state of California might feel so blasé. Wildfires, the smokey skies and blazing flames, have always been a natural part of the state’s environment. But in recent decades, climate change has created warmer, drier conditions that are increasing the frequency of wildfires and lengthening the season. Since the state began recording fire data in 1932, 18 of the 20 most destructive fires occurred in the beginning of this century.
“Since I was little, it was like, school’s closed today, there's a forest fire up in the hills, or an alarm goes off on your phone and there's a fire,” says Ryan Carpenter, a senior at Palisades Charter School, often referred to as Pali High. Carpenter’s family lived right next to the evacuation line for the coinciding Palisades fire, and they hosted around 20 people in the days after the fires. “After getting used to those smaller tragedies, which felt so big, to then have to cope and deal with a fire on the scale of the Palisades… it’s just devastating."
The Eaton and Palisades fires that burned through Los Angeles at the start of this year destroyed more than 11,500 homes—making it one of the costliest disasters in U.S. history. While the fires would have happened without climate change, research shows that rising global temperatures made the fires more intense.
The fires also devastated communities, scattering thousands of families across California and beyond. For graduating high school seniors who were attending school in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, senior year was a very different experience from what they might have once imagined.
The flames that licked through the football fields and tennis courts at Pali High devoured touchstones of an iconic campus—featured in films like Carrie and Freaky Friday. Movie fans may lament the cinematic loss. But for the students, they just miss the mundane moments of getting to connect with each other—hanging out in a favorite teacher’s classroom or meeting up with friends in the Palisades Village after school.
Read more: L.A. Fires Show the Reality of Living in a World with 1.5°C of Warming
“I really ended up missing where my friends used to eat lunch every day and walking through the hallways and going up to the village to get a snack after school, and I was really sad that I wouldn't be able to do those things again,” says Carpenter. “I know it sounds a little bit cheesy, but I didn't even realize how much that meant until I wasn't able to do it again.”
After 30% of Pali High was destroyed by the Palisades fire, students spent a few months learning remotely online. For students at Muir, school was cancelled for over three weeks, reopening at the end of January when environmental testing determined there were no air contaminants lingering from wildfire debris.
In April, Pali High reopened in an abandoned Sears department store in Santa Monica. None of the classrooms have doors, and some lack windows. But students say they didn’t mind the kinks—they were just happy to be back with their community.
“It was nice to see everyone and be in real classrooms,” says Avery Waxman-Lee, a senior at Pali. While neither of her parents lost their homes, the disruption was destabilizing all the same. “There were a good amount of people I hadn't seen since the fires.”
Thousands displaced by the Eaton and Palisades fires have now spread to 365 counties across 39 states, according to change of address records analyzed by the New York Times. Students that relocated further away either continued classes online or transferred schools.
Many seniors tried their best to stay with their graduating classes. But still, there were too many empty seats when they returned to in-person classes. “A lot of people were missing,” says Anneliese Airitam, a senior at Muir who graduated a semester early. “Many people that I know have lost their homes. So everyone was really just scattered. The mood coming back to school was very somber.” When the fire first broke out, Airitam moved in with her grandmother in Corona, a town 45 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and commuted an hour and a half to school. Airitam’s home survived the Eaton fire, but sustained smoke and fire damage, and much of their neighborhood has been destroyed. Now she’s staying in an apartment in Alhambra with her mom indefinitely.
Around 175 John Muir students and 16 staff members lost their homes in the Eaton fires, according to the L.A. Times. For Harmon, one of the bright spots was getting to plan her prom as class president—a moment where her classmates were able to come together and enjoy themselves. Their prom tickets were paid for by actor Steve Carell, and the charity Alice’s Kids, and the community came together to provide students with hair and makeup appointments. Harmon says the fires have made them more appreciative of the little moments—especially as many of her classmates are still grieving their losses.
“I still have conversations with a lot of people crying, experiencing the anger, the confusion of just like, ‘Why did this have to happen to so many of us at the same time?’ The only way we're kind of getting through it is being with each other and speaking to each other, because we all have an understanding of the pain that we're going through,” says Harmon. “We've been trying to make the most of every celebratory moment, because we know how suddenly things can change.”
Though many students planned to move away from home for college, some are now wondering what the transition might look like when they can’t return to their hometowns.
Harmon always knew she wanted to move out of state for college, but she couldn’t help but worry she might miss home. “I was planning on leaving California for college, but then in the back of my mind, when we still had our house, I was like, man I don't want to leave home,” says Harmon. “When our house got taken away, it kind of solidified [my decision] to branch out and experience something new.”
Growing up as the youngest of five, Brigitte Appelbaum-Schwartz always felt at home in the Palisades. “I feel like everyone in the community kind of knew my family, and wherever I went, everyone would be like, oh, like, you're an Appelbaum. It felt like I belonged there, and like people really knew me,” she says. Their family home burned down in the fire, and she’s now finishing off the school year from a rental in Santa Monica. “So it's a little weird to be outside of that and to be in a community now, where people don't really know me, and where I feel a little more out of place.”
Her parents plan to relocate to Maine after she graduates, a move they were already toying with before the fires made the decision for them. They don’t know yet if the move will be permanent—most of Appelbaum-Schwartz’s extended family lives in the L.A. area, but it’s hard to plan for a future return when it’s too soon to tell what rebuilding in the Palisades might look like. “I already would have been moving away [from California]… but there's a lot more uncertainty when I don't have a permanent home to come back to anymore,” Appelbaum-Schwartz says. In the fall, she’ll be moving to Boston for college.
Many people in her community don’t know what will come next. For the families who own the scorched land where their house once stood, insurance companies often won’t cover the full cost of rebuilding, and past natural disasters show that rebuilding after a fire can take years. They’re now jostling with displaced renters for limited stock in an overtaxed rental market—L.A. was already experiencing a severe housing shortage before the fires.
Harmon’s family had lived in the same house in Altadena for 57 years, down the street from her high school. After the fire, she made the decision to graduate early. Her family has been hopping from Airbnb to Airbnb, and it pained her to think about returning to school so close to her old home. “I was so close to walking home, I knew for me it was going to be hard to handle it,” she says.
When she returned to Altadena for the first time in the middle of January, it was hard to believe what she was seeing had once been her home. The frame of their porch was still intact, as was the barbecue pit, but everything else was unerecognizable. “I had never, ever imagined seeing the walls on the floor,” she says.
Harmon is moving to Texas for college, and her mom plans to move with her. Nothing will beat growing up in Altadena, but in some ways, like graduating seniors everywhere, she’s ready for a fresh start.
“I'm going to miss my community, but I know I'm carrying my community with me in my heart, wherever I go. The values I've been taught, the love I've been given. I feel blessed to have grown up in Altadena, and I’m ready to spread that to a new community,” she says. But moving on from your hometown is more bittersweet when it’s the only choice you have. “I’m excited to go to Texas. I feel like I need a new experience away from Altadena because I have nothing to go back to.”