Animo Jefferson Charter Middle School closed down before lunch on January 8 because Los Angeles wildfires were spreading and causing the air to become hazardous.
Wildfires are caused due to mixes of dry vegetation, hot conditions, and sometimes ignitions. These types of wildfires are measured in acres (43,560 ft. per acre) and can be very destructive to animals, homes, and even people. The main big fires that are happened were the Eaton and Palisades fires. The Eaton fire burned 14, 000+ acres and the Palisades fire burned over 23,000 acres.
“In the morning I had seen the air and it was very ashy and I was coughing a lot to the point where I had to use a face mask,” security guard Mr. Miles said.
Him wearing a mask shows how bad the air quality was outside that morning.
“Every once in a while we were constantly checking the air quality just in case of evacuation,” security guard Mr. Alex said.
The security team was making sure they were prepared in case the air quality went really bad.
When the decision was made to close school, parents had to pick up their students, which made traffic bad near the school.
“A difficult thing we went through was traffic and parents arguing,” Miles said.
Traffic that day was really long and took several minutes just to find parking to pick up students, which caused big lines in the gym where parents came to pick up students.
“A difficult thing we dealt with evacuating the students was parents not being able to change their emergency contacts,” Alex said.
Students could only be released to a family member on their emergency contact list.
The staff dealt with families and parents not being able to change emergency contacts because there were too many people arguing about trying to change their contacts.
“In our school safety is our number one priority,” School Counselor Ms. Gutierrez said.
