Eaton Fire Updates March 2025
The first priority of HRNS as we have planned for and returned to school following the Eaton Fire has been the health and safety of our community. In the days after the fire, our staff and Board of Directors worked tirelessly to discern how to get the school back up and running safely, as soon as reasonably possible.
In the days and weeks following the fire, the following steps were taken:
HRNS's Director, Emmy Quintero ("Ms. Emmy") first returned to campus on Monday, January 13, with a few other staff members. At that time, she opened the door to every classroom and observed limited ash immediately inside the doorways. Otherwise, there did not appear to be any other debris, damage, or smoke staining in any of the classrooms.
Our regular contracted professional cleaning service came for their usual weekly cleaning later that night (January 13). Of note, the service always uses vacuums that are equipped with HEPA filters.
Ms. Emmy returned to school the next day and entered and inspected all of the classrooms. Following the cleaning the night before, the classrooms appeared normal to visual observation.
Throughout the week of January 10, Ms. Emmy closely followed advice and recommendations issued by the LA County Health Department, Pasadena Health Department, and other experts. For buildings like HRNS that were not directly damaged by fire or immediately adjacent to buildings damaged by fire, but were otherwise exposed to smoke and ash, that advice was: (1) thoroughly wipe down all hard surfaces with a soap solution; and (2) vacuum all soft surfaces with a vacuum equipped with a HEPA filter. With regard to potential environmental testing, the health departments stated essentially that it could be considered on a "case by case basis" based on the level of exposure and contamination observed.
At this point, the Board decided to have additional "deep cleaning" done by our professional cleaning service, which occurred the weekend of January 15.
A significant number of staff, children, and parents, including all members of the Executive Board, were present on campus the mornings of January 13 and 14 for "hang outs" with the staff. The interior areas of the school appeared as normal. There was no smoky odor inside. To the knowledge of the Executive Board and Miss Emmy, no one reported any issues after being present.
The exterior concrete areas of the school and the playground equipment were power washed, concluding January 20.
On Thursday, January 13, Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) announced its phased return-to-classroom plan, which includes thoroughly cleaning all schools and conducting environmental testing prior to the return of students. Ms. Emmy and the Executive Board reviewed PUSD's plan over the course of the next 48 hours, and decided that in an abundance of caution and to provide confidence to all members of our community, HRNS would follow PUSD's lead and keep school closed until we could have environmental testing performed. In the meantime, we made the hard announcement to keep the school closed in the interim.
We retained Quantum Environmental Testing to perform environmental testing, and this occurred on January 26, 2025. Samples taken were predominantly from windowsills. The results of those tests did show elevated levels of ash, char, and soot. This was not altogether surprising, as the area had experienced high winds on January 24 and 25 that could have been expected to blow additional debris into the building.
Miss Emmy and our Board President Katherine Luu met with a ServPro technician on campus on January 31. After assessing the campus, the technician stated that, based on his assessments of the properties that have been impacted from the Eaton Fire, our campus' impact from the wildfires was very low, owing to the fact that our structure had no fire damage and our windows face east and west while the winds during the wildfires were from the north. He also recommended our campus would only need a basic level of cleaning.
Therefore, the Board of Directors determined that we would have an additional deep cleaning of the campus performed by our cleaning crew, and this was completed the weekend of February 1.
Our sand playgrounds did have an observable layer of ash over them immediately following the fire. The initial guidance from local health authorities was to have the sand hosed down and turned over three times. The Board decided to go above-and-beyond that recommendation by having the top two inches of sand removed and replaced, in addition to having it hosed down and turned over as recommended by the health authorities. Removal of the top two inches of sand occurred February 3-5. New sand was delivered on February 8, and all sand was hosed down and turned over at that time.
School reopened on February 6. Students were kept off the playground pending completion of the work on the sand.
Students were given full access to the playgrounds beginning Monday, February 10.
Of note, the Board did make the decision to continue paying staff and to offer prorated tuition to families for the time the school was closed. The Board has also explored how we can offer assistance to the numerous families in our community who were impacted by the Eaton Fire by total loss or long-term displacement from their homes.
Obviously, the financial impact of all of these efforts and decisions has been enormous, albeit necessary to ensure that we are keeping our community safe and doing right by our staff and families. The Board is pursuing every possible source of funding, including insurance coverage, federal and state disaster assistance, private grants, etc. in order to recoup these losses, but we need your help! Please consider making a donation to the school using our online donation page.
In closing, this has been a period of intense and extraordinary stress on our whole community. We remain mindful above all else that many members of our community have lost everything. The challenges from the Eaton Fire will remain with HRNS for years to come. As we move forward, we encourage you to continue to care well for yourselves and each other.
Sincerely,
Miss Emmy and the HRNS Board of Directors 2024-2025