Months after firestorms devastated neighborhoods across Los Angeles County, my daily life has almost returned to the frantic, multitasking normalcy of before. Occasional local news reports of extensions for county-sponsored debri removal from fire damaged homes and a long overdue item on my to-do list – “schedule free blood lead testing” – linger as last reminders of the disaster that has forever marked 2025 as a pivotal year in the collective memory of Angelenos like me.
I’m an immigrant who grew up in wealthy San Gabriel Valley suburbs for the better part of my adolescence. After rounds of schooling far, far away, I returned to LA to build an enduring home within driving distance of my parents. During the fires, I stayed with my mom in her Pasadena condo to make sure she was safe and cared for. We were never ordered to evacuate, though I did get my first hands-on experience in packing a go-bag.
While my life has all but moved back on track, so many of my extended neighbors are still reeling from the aftermath, and for some, life will never be the same again. Over 11,000 homes were lost in the Eaton and Palisades fires combined, forcing a mass exodus from the Altadena and Pacific Palisades neighborhoods. As people who lost their homes either find refuge in evacuation shelters, hotels, and temporary spaces offered by friends and family – or not at all, landlords and property owners are raising rents on the spot and by the hour, forcing evacuees to pay on average 315% over the Fair Market Rent and inflating the housing market as a whole for a region already strangled by unaffordable housing and a crisis of homelessness.
The fires destroyed cultural landmarks and beloved neighborhood mainstays, including the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Reel Inn and Cholada Thai in Pacific Palisades, and the Little Red Hen Coffee Shop in Altadena. Seven public schools sustained major damage or were completely razed, necessitating that students move their education back online or press pause altogether for the second time in five years. The longlasting socioeconomic impacts that inevitably follow such disruptions will be felt for years, if not decades, to come.
Economic losses of the fires cannot be measured by quantifying the destruction of lives and property alone. Brick and mortar businesses in impacted areas, even if not physically damaged, are seeing precipitous decreases in foot traffic and customer visits, leading some to contend with the possibility of closure or bankruptcy. Employees at these businesses face, at best, temporary job losses and, at worse, permanent unemployment. Overnight, a whole network of workers who provide landscaping, cleaning, childcare, and construction services to homes in fire-impacted neighborhoods found themselves out of the jobs that supplied their main or sole source of income and allowed them to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. Workers in these sectors often do not live in fire-impacted neighborhoods and commute into them to do their jobs, and a significant proportion are undocumented and have little access to economic protections like unemployment benefits.
Another swath of workers, including firefighters, farmworkers, and goods and food delivery drivers, face a different set of challenges as they continue working amidst the disaster. Personal protective equipment is never guaranteed, even under existing regulations that require them. For some workers, especially those who are undocumented, the crisis is compounded by a lack of access to adequate healthcare and other safety nets that protect them from exploitation.
More than 1,000 of firefighters on the frontlines of the blazes are incarcerated Californians participating in a program that trains them to be first responders to provide services during emergencies. Although training and deployment into active fire zones are voluntary, and participants in the program can get their prison sentences reduced, they are making a maximum of about $10 per day, or up to $30 for a 24-hour shift, which is far below the California minimum wage ($16.50/hour) in 2025.
Beyond these already innumerable impacts, the fires have touched the present day heart of the Tongva people, the ancestral stewards of lands we now know as Los Angeles. The first parcel of land returned to Tongva care since their total dispossession in the 1830s sits in the foothills of Altadena as a collective gathering site where ceremonies and community events for the tribe are held. While tribal caretakers were not able to fully reinstate Indigenous fire management practices on the property due to permitting requirements that prohibit prescribed burning, they were able to minimize fire damage to the property through smaller scale interventions like removing invasive eucalyptus trees, making room for native, more fire-resistant oaks to thrive.
More than six months after the fires subsided, Los Angeles is still enumerating its losses and moving through grief. As a region, the truths about these fires are coming clearer and clearer into view. In the next two essays in this three-part series, we will dissect the interwoven crises surrounding the fires and explore how we might rebuild and transform.
