UCLA and the History of Fire: A Community Responds to Crisis
The history of UCLA and the surrounding Los Angeles area is intertwined with the ever-present threat of wildfires. From a destructive blaze on the Vermont Avenue campus in 1929 to the devastating wildfires of recent years, the Bruin community has consistently faced challenges and demonstrated resilience in the face of these disasters. The January wildfires across Los Angeles County marked a particularly destructive period in California history, leaving behind significant damage and displacement.
The 2025 Wildfires: A City Shaken
The Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods were particularly devastated, with the entire city feeling the impact either through personal loss or the sheer scale of destruction affecting friends, family, and coworkers. After nearly a month of intense firefighting efforts, all the fires were 100% contained, but the damage was staggering. The Palisades Fire burned 23,707 acres, destroying 6,833 structures, while the Eaton Fire burned 14,021 acres, destroying 9,418 structures. In all, 29 lives were lost, and estimates show that 150,000 people were displaced. Thousands of families lost their homes or could not return until their neighborhoods were safe again. Artists lost their studios, small business owners lost their shops, and many others lost their places of employment.
UCLA's Response: Leadership and Community Support
As wildfires broke out across the city on January 7, UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk quickly shifted his focus to leading UCLA’s response. While the UCLA campus was never in immediate danger, the University closely monitored the situation. Students, faculty, and staff who lived nearby had to evacuate, and many learned their homes had been lost in the fire. The Bruin community immediately began organizing ways to help. As the winds shifted and the fire began to move towards campus, the Academic Senate made a decision to move classes online for a week out of an abundance of caution. Chancellor Frenk announced a series of virtual Town Halls for staff, students, alumni, and parents to answer questions from the community and provide updates on resources. Across campus, student groups, campus departments, and other units jumped into action to support the community’s most pressing needs.
The UCLA College Corps partnered with the UCLA Volunteer Center to mobilize the purchase of comfort and care items from an Amazon wish list, which were combined with donations from businesses. Bruins are finding ways to support each other and give back. Within the UCLA community, it is estimated that the fires affected more than 22,000 alumni. Alumni Affairs is working with various alumni networks to assess the needs of impacted Bruins, sharing resources and making plans to help in their long-term recovery. Julie Sina, associate vice chancellor of Alumni Affairs, emphasized the support of the 670,000-strong alumni community.
Chancellor Frenk announced that the University would open space at its UCLA Research Park property for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to use as a Disaster Recovery Center. FEMA partnered with the City of Los Angeles and other federal, state, and local government agencies and nonprofits to provide much-needed services. The Center has served nearly 17,000 people with applying for disaster relief loans and replacing lost or destroyed documents. The UCLA Foundation and Alumni teams organized a table staffed by UCLA and alumni volunteers every day since the opening of the center. Nearly 2,500 Bruins have signed up to lend a helping hand, connecting alumni with resources, answering questions, and sharing information about University job openings. UCLA graduates and graduates of any UC can request a replacement diploma free of charge. The UCLA Alumni Association is collecting new or gently used Bruin apparel to share with Bruins who have lost theirs in the fires.
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Bruins Helping Bruins: Stories of Resilience
Alan Barasorda, director of finance and human resources for the Pasadena Senior Center and president of the Rose Bowl Bruins, has brought UCLA to the Senior Center, hosting Rose Bowl Bruin events and volunteer opportunities. He encourages others to volunteer at the Center or find other ways to get involved.
Among the heroes of the community were the firefighters and first responders. Nearly two dozen Los Angeles Fire Department battalion chiefs are UCLA Extension alums. Battalion chiefs coordinate resources and people, a job that requires excellent project management skills. Many Bruins need help coping with the aftermath of the fires, and UCLA has responded by mobilizing campus organizations and centers. The UCLA Homeless Healthcare Collaborative provided medical care to people displaced by the fires, and dentistry students and others have mobilized to supply fire-impacted residents with essential relief items. The UCLA Community Programs Office worked with partners to hold regular food distribution events for students, faculty, staff, and alumni. UCLA also provided counseling for students, with Counseling and Psychological Services staff available to support mental health needs through a 24-hour hotline.
Gregory Pierce, an expert from the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, consulted with community members and politicians on increasing safety and trust in drinking water systems impacted by wildfires. Rachel Connolly, an air quality and environmental equity researcher at UCLA, recommended N95 masks and air purifiers to protect from contaminated air. The Campus Air Quality Dashboard allows anyone to access information from five air quality sensors across campus.
UCLA established the Bruin Wildfire Relief Funds to assist students, faculty, staff, and researchers impacted by this tragedy. Rebuilding and recovery will take years and will require a large-scale mobilization.
Each home and business lost to the fires tells the story of a family. Jane Szutu Permaul, a UCLA alumna and retired assistant vice chancellor for UCLA Student Affairs, lost her Palisades home of more than 50 years. Despite the loss, she focuses on positive thinking and problem-solving, finding strength in her Palisades neighbors. Allegra Mancuso, a quadruple Bruin with a doctorate in education, also lost her home in the Pacific Palisades. She emphasizes the importance of hope and community support in overcoming the initial shock and disbelief.
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Wescom, with its headquarters in Pasadena, launched a member and community giving campaign that raised over $273,000 in grants and financial assistance for those affected by the wildfires. They also distributed emergency loans and loan deferments. Wescom opened up their parking lot to assist with the volunteers and donations arriving at the Pasadena Convention Center FEMA disaster recovery site.
UCLA Research: Understanding and Mitigating Wildfire Impact
At the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, faculty and students are supporting community recovery initiatives that emphasize the need for long-term wildfire resilience strategies and technological innovation. Sanjay Mohanty is working with Community Action Project-Los Angeles to test soil and water samples free of charge.
A report from UCLA Anderson economists suggests that the total losses from the 2025 wildfires may be between $95 and $164 billion. UCLA researchers are also monitoring plant and wildlife recovery in the Eaton Fire burn area, with Stephanie Landregan leading a team to record trees that weren’t destroyed by fire.
UCLA-led research has explored the historical context of wildfires, linking them to climate patterns. A study examined tree rings to understand weather patterns centuries ago, revealing periods of arid conditions and wide climate variations. The difference today is that climate change is turning up the heat, affecting processes like ocean temperatures, evaporation, and snowmelt in the mountains.
The project focuses on how people responded during and after the rapidly moving wildfire events in Los Angeles - how they evacuated, where they found short-term temporary shelter, and how the experience affects households in the short and long term. The research team will administer household-based surveys to people who previously lived in the most affected areas of Pacific Palisades and Altadena and generate critical knowledge about how people traveled and where they took shelter in one of the most destructive wildfires that affected an urban area in recent history. More broadly, this project will provide data necessary to understand better how households will react to fires, other natural disasters, and acts of terrorism. The overall increase in wildfire disasters has highlighted the need to better understand human behavioral responses to these events to prepare households, emergency responders, and management agencies in the future.
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This project will study the amount and types of housing that can, should, and likely will be rebuilt after the Eaton and Palisades fires. Zoning and land use decisions by state and local governments are essential factors shaping how Los Angeles rebuilds from its recent wildfires. Concentrating new growth and development away from the wildlife-urban interface (WUI) will help reduce the risks and impacts of future wildfire-induced disasters. In response to this challenge, this project investigates what can and should be done in the existing WUI communities to prevent future tragedies from happening. The UCLA research team will work with community partners in the Solano Canyon neighborhood and the City of Los Angeles’ Urban Design Studio to develop innovative urban planning and design interventions that could be undertaken at the neighborhood-scale to make existing hillside communities more resilient to wildfires.
This project reviews previous research on how earlier California wildfires impacted housing prices and migration and analyzes the long-term rent and home price effects of the 2018 Camp Fire. This report provides easy-to-reference demographic and housing data about the neighborhoods affected by the L.A. fires to help understand the similarities and differences between previous wildfires in California and the 2025 Los Angeles fires. In conclusion, this effort offers a set of potential policies to inform work ahead.
Historical Fires and Lessons Learned
The Getty Fire in 2019, which burned 745 acres in Brentwood, serves as a reminder of the constant threat of wildfires in the region. More than 1,000 firefighters along with Aerial firefighting fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters battled the blaze in steep and challenging terrain. The Camp Fire in 2018, the deadliest and most destructive in California history, underscores the increasing severity of wildfires. California’s wildfire season is starting earlier and ending later, with climate change as an important factor.
Studying the health impacts of exposure to wildfire smoke is challenging given that the smoke levels are constantly shifting, which makes it difficult to determine where and at what levels residents are being exposed. Jerrett is part of a research group that has developed a machine-learning model incorporating satellite imagery, atmospheric chemistry models, ground-based information on pollution levels, and other factors known to influence pollution, such as traffic and land use, to predict with high levels of confidence the location of the smoke plume on a given day. Beyond the immediate health effects, Jerrett points to the need to better measure the ongoing chronic health impacts of wildfires that are occurring on a regular basis in or near major population areas. Jerrett is also working to develop counterfactual models that would help to guide policies and strategic decisions during the fires.
The distress that occurs in the wake of a wildfire often endures long after the flames have been extinguished. There can be significant long-term mental health effects from wildfires, even for people who experience no noticeable physical effects or property damage. The level of cohesiveness within a community is a key factor in the post-disaster healing process. Public health efforts should emphasize planning to assist people in making informed judgments during and after a disaster, and to ensure that neighborhoods build the social infrastructure that will facilitate a successful recovery process.
The Palisades Fire and its Impact on UCLA
Though the sky over Westwood was powder blue and the brown pall of wildfire smoke from the Palisades Fire consigned to the western edge of the sky, the campus of UCLA was quiet on Sunday afternoon. The campus, which abuts Palisades Fire evacuation warning zones in Bel Air, will host classes online until Friday after shutting down in-person lectures last week. The Palisades Fire ignited Tuesday amid strong Santa Ana winds. As of Sunday night, the fire had scorched more than 23,700 acres and destroyed thousands of homes in its path. Few students remained in UCLA’s residential village on Sunday afternoon. Some Bruins made pit stops at the campus for belongings; others towed rolling suitcases through vacant quads.
For some Bruins, fire has started to become a normal part of life. Wildfire is a part of life in California, but the last decade has seen many of the state’s largest, most destructive and deadliest fires in recorded history. This isn’t the first fire for either of the two, who had to evacuate their homes during the 2018 Woolsey Fire that ripped through nearly 97,000 acres - in a swath just west of the Palisades Fire - and destroyed and damaged just over 2,000 structures.
