On January 7th, 2025, the Palisades fires started. A day after the fires started, Santa Ana winds had begun, which allowed the fire to grow more, burning down 23,000 acres and killing around eight people. There were a total five fires that were in the Los Angeles area.
The fires have been so strong that every house and school nearby is in ashes. In fact, Palisades High School has been a victim of these fires. They are trying to get empty warehouses in an attempt to make classrooms out of them and make sure that students can still learn in this difficult time. Although the fires are growing fast, they still haven’t hit a lot of places in Los Angeles, like the Getty museum or the UCLA campus. Even then, some Segerstrom alumni were in fear.
“Honestly, it was scary because the school didn’t tell us to evacuate until the fires were somewhat close to our campus. I am more worried about the students that aren’t from California because they didn’t know what to do,” said Segerstrom alumni/UCLA student Andrew Fuentes.
There aren’t just fires in Los Angeles but also in San Diego. Several fires broke out early on January 21, 2025. These fires were triggered by evacuation orders and school closures. It’s not only these two countys that have been targeted and there have been little fires here and there in different areas of SoCal. As a result, SoCal has been put on red flag warning.
“I have family in both San Diego and Los Angeles and my family and I would love to help them out by giving them shelter, but sadly we wouldn’t be able to have so many people fit in our house,” said senior Mayra Gonzalez.
With the Santa Ana winds and the red flag warnings many people have been worried. Our firefighters have been working hard to control these fires but they are being spread thin. Even Mexico and Canada have sent firefighters to help control these fires. Especially with how fast they are growing, our students are worried about how the fires may come towards Orange County with the help of the winds. Since OC has never experienced something like this, it has people thinking the worst.
“We literally saw smoke in the air when we were practicing discus after school and that could be a sign of fires coming this way,” said junior Matthew Orellana.
Our Segerstrom jaguars have begun to participate in fire relief efforts. In particular, Red Cross has partnered with Open Lid Collective and their OCSLA initiative and are working towards getting donations to aid the people that are in Los Angeles who have been affected and need help.