Staying Safe and Connected: A Newhouse LA Student Navigates the January Wildfires

The city of Los Angeles has long dealt with wildfires, but none as devastating as the ones which raged in January of this year. As a Newhouse LA student during the Spring 2025 semester, I experienced living in the city during the fires. Thankfully, all the Los Angeles program students stayed safe, as the Dick Clark Los Angeles Program Center and student apartments were not near the two major blazes the Los Angeles Fire Department battled.

I arrived in Los Angeles with my dad a few days before the fires started. On Tuesday, Jan. 7, the city experienced extremely harsh winds, knocking down trees, including one right in front of my apartment building. The next day, we received reports of wildfires growing at a tremendous rate. Receiving this news was very concerning, but I was relieved when I found out we weren’t close to the areas with evacuation orders. While North Hollywood and Burbank were not ordered to evacuate, many of our off-campus orientation events were unfortunately canceled. 

However, Newhouse LA director Robin Howard invited  all the students together, offering us food and movie screenings at the Dick Clark Center. I didn’t attend the first one because I was worried about leaving my apartment, but my friends encouraged me to go the next day. Being on campus with other students helped me feel less isolated and let me breathe for a second while dealing with the stress of the fires. 

Our classes started as scheduled on Monday, Jan. 13, but many students took their internships remotely for the first week. I did as well, as my internship at Emerald Lion Press, where I make social media content and promote their books on TikTok and Instagram, is located in Calabasas which was still under an evacuation warning.

By the second week of classes, most internships started their usual in-person schedule. However, while everything slowly went back to normal, we did not forget about those in Los Angeles severely affected by the fires, some which burned until the end of January. 

The Newhouse LA program offered students opportunities to volunteer at local organizations and give back to the community. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, several Newhouse students and I volunteered at the YMCA in Verdugo Hills. We were responsible for organizing bins of donated clothes, shoes, strollers, coats and more. While organizing donated items and helping put together pick-up orders for families, we felt an immense sense of gratitude for not having been directly affected by the fires, and happiness that we could help those who were. 

Now, more than a month after the fires started, the Newhouse LA program is definitely back to complete normalcy. The first few weeks here were stressful, especially being across the country from my friends back at Syracuse and my family in New York City. Luckily, I have cousins in the Los Angeles area that were checking in on me daily, and the Newhouse LA program has consistently checked in on us, providing fun and informational events for students. 

Canceled orientation week events, such as alumni networking, will hopefully be rescheduled, but in the meantime, we’ve had  many exciting events, including a book signing and Q&A with Falk College and Newhouse professor of practice emeritus Dennis Deninger.

With the stress of the fires starting to disappear, I am now excited to entirely focus on enjoying my time here in Los Angeles and look forward to making the most out of my classes, internship and overall experience in the Dick Clark Los Angeles Program.