Photo courtesy Creative Commons
The California wildfires left the forests devastated.
Following 14 destructive wildfires, Southern California is facing a difficult task: rebuilding both residential and commercial areas. Locals are no strangers to evacuations related to the wildfires, with smoke affecting air quality in cities as far as San Francisco and Reno, Nevada. However, the scale of the fires in January surpass that of any previous fires.
Lauren Logan, Middle School math teacher and community service coordinator, who was born and raised in San Diego, remembers the devastating effects of fires on neighborhoods.
“In fifth grade, there was a huge one,” Logan said. “We actually had to evacuate, and a lot of my elementary school friends lost their homes. I was fortunate that my home was still standing afterwards.”
Logan has family that was forced to evacuate by the January fires, such as her sister, who now lives in Los Angeles.
“She was fortunate to be able to drive down and evacuate to the house that I grew up in in San Diego,” Logan said. “She was fine, but she did say it brought back a lot of memories from when we grew up.”
To her, the experience was comparable to what happened when a tornado hit Dallas in October 2019, leaving many without homes. The Santa Ana winds create unpredictability in the spread of the fires, changing their direction drastically in as little as two hours. In her sophomore year of high school, Logan’s school closed for a week, which students dubbed “fire week.”
“The fires were so bad that the air quality was horrible. We couldn’t go outside, so it wasn’t even that fun to not have school for a week,” Logan said. “You couldn’t go and do anything. You were basically on house arrest for a week because of the air quality.”
According to Logan, California is rebuilding from the January fires in the same way that it rebuilt from the fires of her childhood. Families that evacuate generally stay at hotels or move in with another family until insurance comes in, but with the recent fires affecting more than houses, including structures such as malls, complete recuperation will take even longer.
“People completely have no home. They have no school. They have no grocery store. Everything was burned down, so they’ll have to start over,” Logan said. “That’s going to take a very long time.”