Los Angeles, CA – Fires in Los Angeles caught many neighborhoods completely off guard, despite forecasts predicting life threatening winds reaching up to 100 mph in the mountain and valley areas. Late at night on Tuesday, January 7, residents watched flames engulf the Pacific Palisades and Eaton Canyon. Many residents within the city lost power and internet service, and power lines and traffic lights collapsed as wind gusts grew intense.

In the morning of January 8, residents in all of LA awoke to ash covering vehicles, homes, streets and buildings. The intense stench of smoke filled the air and turned the sunrise sky a deep orange. Still, no alert went out to Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) students about school closures. So, the bus drivers picked the students up and took them to school.

“The district was slow to act!” said Luis Sifuentes, an LAUSD school bus driver, “My eyes stung in the morning as I checked out my bus. Students arrived at school in the morning only for them to be in the auditorium until parents came and picked them up. It was a chaotic situation; they should’ve shut down the schools when the fires started.”

It wasn’t until about 10 a.m. that schoolteachers were notified that parents should pick up their students immediately from school. Panic set in and parents rushed to pick up their children.

“I actually didn’t send them to school at all,” says Jazmine Moreno, single mother of two LAUSD students. “I knew since this morning that it was going to end up happening this way. LAUSD is notorious for trying to push for a regular school day and then deciding halfway through the day that they want to dismiss the kids. They have no consideration for the health or wellbeing of the students or single, working parents who would have to leave work to pick kids up at the drop of a dime.”

LAUSD has notified parents that schools will remain closed for all of January 9 and to continue checking the school alerts for when classes will resume.

The fires have caused over 27,000 acres of devastation, over 70,000 to vacate and abandon their homes, and five known casualties. Fire departments from all over California and other states have trekked to southern California, in an attempt to help contain the wildfires. Unfortunately, 0% have been contained.

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