Reflecting on the Flames

By Tanisha Gunby ’21
When Yvette Copeland ’21 woke up in the morning of Dec. 6, she received an alert to evacuate her house because of the nearby fires.
“We got the alert through a text on our phones at around 5:00 AM, and immediately left the house. We spent the night at our cousins house, until we were told it was safe to come back,” Copeland said.
The fires in Southern California affected many in the community, and as a result, the school was closed for two days for safety reasons on Dec. 6 and Dec. 7. In an online survey taken by 243 middle school students, 68 percent of the respondents said that their residences were not affected. 74 percent of students knew between 1-10 students that were significantly affected by the fires.
About 15 percent of respondents were evacuated and said that they were surprised at how close their houses were to the fire.
“When I had to evacuate early in the morning, I wasn’t able to watch the news until I was at a friend’s house later that day. I could see the flames from my house, but I didn’t really know how bad it was until I saw a news channel filming firefighters putting out flames several houses away from mine. It was shocking to see,” Gisele Stigi ’22 said in the survey.
Students said they were surprised by the fires and how it affected many people, including their peers.
“When I first heard about the fire, I was surprised and a little bit in shock, because I had never witnessed a natural disaster that affected people and was so close to me. I felt terrible for those whose houses and lives were affected, and I thank the extremely brave firefighters who saved the day,” Alex Hyman ’23 said in the survey.
Survey respondents said they felt that the school’s closure had a positive effect on our community.
“I’m glad, that not only I got a break, but those affected did not have to worry about school on top of their current situation,” Ryan Prybil ’21 said in the survey.
X periods, homework and testing schedules were altered due to the sudden closure. During the two days off, about 83% of the survey’s respondents said they received extra work from their classes. Most homework given was from math and world language classes.