Cheers can be heard from the playground at Eagle Rock Recreation Center. Groups of 30 children gather in groups based on their favorite breakfast items.
“I prefer pancakes to waffles,” said one child.
“Pancakes, pancakes!” they chanted together, beckoning others to join them.
Despite the upheaval in family life, there was a sense of normalcy among the children gathered at the recreation center. A few miles away in Altadena, thousands of homes, schools and businesses were destroyed by the Eaton Fire and left in ruins.
The Eaton and Palisades fires destroyed at least 11 public and private schools and about 30 child care facilities, torrents of damage forced the evacuation of thousands of families, and destroyed more than 12,000 structures, including many homes. It was done.
Across Los Angeles County, many families whose lives have been upended by the fires are turning to disaster pop-up camps like Project:Camp to maintain some structure and routine for their children. In partnership with LA City Recreation and Parks, the camp is providing free child care during the fire crisis. The organization has responded to disasters across the country, including Hurricane Helen in North Carolina in 2024 and the Maui wildfires in 2023.
The organization has three camps across Los Angeles County and plans to open more as needed. This week, camps in Los Angeles filled up within hours of registration opening.
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Organizations such as the Boys and Girls Club, YMCA, and Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation also offer free child care options. Additionally, other preschools, local businesses, and families are taking it upon themselves to create drop-in child care during this time of need.
“Younger children in particular rely on stability in their lives to feel like everything is okay,” said Karen Rogers, a clinical psychologist at the National School Crisis and Bereavement Center at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. said. They may have to live elsewhere and that sense of predictability may be lost. ”
Here are the facilities where you can use free child care.
Francis, 6, and Harriet, 9, rushed to hug their mother, Anne Thornburgh, as they waited to pick them up from the Eagle Rock Recreation Center. The two girls had spent the past few days playing games and sharing snippets of their experiences with other children as part of Project:Camp’s trauma-informed approach to care. St. Mark’s School in Altadena, which the two attended, was destroyed by the Eaton Fire.
“It’s hard to be at home with a 9-year-old and a 6-year-old and feel like everything is uncertain,” Thornburgh said, adding that many of her daughter’s friends have lost their homes.
Anne Thornburgh and her daughter Frances, 6, attend Project Camp, which provides free child care to families affected by the fires, at the Eagle Rock Recreation Center on January 15th. I go to pick up Harriet (9 years old) on the left. Frances and Harriet’s school, St. Paul’s Marks, was gutted in the Eaton fire.
(Gina Ferrazzi/Los Angeles Times)
So did Michael Dodge, whose two children attended Altadena Arts Magnet, which was damaged by fire and is one of the last schools in Pasadena Unified to receive help to reopen. He said he found out it would be one of the schools. He maintains a sense of security by having his children, ages 7 and 9, around other children and seeing them on a daily basis as he and his wife work, volunteer, and support friends. I would like to do so. Many of them are homeless.
“We try to stick to a routine,” Dodge said. Despite the hiatus, he continues to pick up his kids from camp and then take them to dance and basketball activities as usual.
He also advised local school systems affected by the fires that establishing structure through camps and other activities can help children feel more comfortable when everything around them is changing. said Mr. Rogers. Knowing what happens next throughout the day can make a big difference, she added.
Child care centers like Santa Monica’s Big and Tiny 10th Street Preschool are also trying to contribute to family stability by providing free child care to those displaced by the fires. Owner Kelce Bilbao let the first students start on Wednesday, accompanied by their mothers to ease fears. This month she heard from 15 families interested in enrolling their children.
Meanwhile, her own two daughters, whose charter school campus remains closed because it is in an evacuation zone, are attending school online rather than attending school in Santa Monica, run by a local gymnastics center and taekwondo school. You are choosing to attend a free camp. The City of Bilbao said they were desperate for a sense of normalcy and described how anxious they were to return to their Brentwood homes after the evacuation, despite the lack of electricity. She hoped the camp would bring that plus stability.
“At the moment we don’t want them to do anything directly,” Bilbao said. “If I find out next week that this is going to take a long time, I might have to put them on Zoom, but I’m not crazy about that.”
Nikki Hemat said she and other parents struggled with child care and ways to keep their children busy after her son’s private school, Village School in Pacific Palisades, burned down.
Hemat, who lives in Brentwood but is not in the evacuation zone, finally decided this week to organize a daily “camp” for her son and children from other damaged or closed elementary schools in and around the Palisades. It became.
On Tuesday, more than a dozen children gathered on the playground and field at the Barrington Recreation Center to play basketball. A sports coach, who offered to supervise the children at a heavily discounted rate, led them through training, while Hemat and a few other parents swapped stories of fire recovery by a picnic table.
“Normalism is good for these children,” says Hemat. “For several days there, they were glued to their iPads. We wanted to get them outside and move them around so their parents could fill out the necessary paperwork and applications, like FEMA. You will be able to find time to do so.”
This article is part of The Times’ Early Childhood Education Initiative, which focuses on the learning and development of California’s children from birth to age 5. To learn more about this initiative and its philanthropic funders, visit latimes.com/earlyed.
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