• Amara Barroeta is struggling to find a school for her daughter next year following the LA fires.
• The Eaton Fire burned down the private school she was planning to send her daughter to next year.
• The fires have also slowed business at her café, and Barroeta can no longer afford private school.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Amara Barroeta, a 41-year-old café owner who lives in Pasadena, California, with her husband and her 5-year-old daughter, Barbara. Barroeta’s business has been struggling since the LA fires broke out on January 7, and her daughter’s school burned down in the Eaton Fire.

Several massive wildfires, including the Eaton Fire and the Palisades Fire, devastated parts of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, destroying over 12,000 structures, likely causing at least 27 reported deaths, and leaving up to $275 billion in damage.

The following has been edited for length and clarity:

I came to the US from Venezuela in 2010 to attend business school at UCLA.

I’m a chemical engineer by trade, but I had to flee Venezuela with the political situation there.

When I came here to study, I was hoping to return, but things got worse. So my Plan B became my Plan A. And in 2012, I decided to open my restaurant, Amara Café, in Pasadena. And ever since, that’s what I’ve been doing.

I always loved our food and the culture of Venezuela. And my restaurant is a way to preserve our cultural heritage — it’s something that has brought more purpose to my life.

This is a place that has so many opportunities, but it can be very frustrating being a small business owner in California. I know I’m not going to be rich out of a little restaurant.

I don’t need to spend money on clothing, or shoes, or an expensive car. But one of the few things that I want to afford for my family is a good education for my 5-year-old daughter, Barbara.

So I’ve been sending her to private school at the Oak Knoll Montessori School since she was two years old. They have two campuses — a smaller one on Lake Avenue in Pasadena where they have the toddlers and the little children. And then the main Loma Alta campus near the mountain in Altadena holds children from elementary and middle school.

This year, my daughter has still been attending the Lake campus, and she was really looking forward to starting at the “big kid” school next year, which is sort of a second home to all the Lake campus kids.

And now that possibility is gone.

It was chaos as the fires began

The week the fires started, Barbara returned to school from the winter break just for one day — on Tuesday.

That day, the director of the school sent an email saying they’re not going to bring the kids to the campus on Wednesday because there’s all these winds and they don’t know how it’s going to pan out.

It was kind of chaos that Wednesday — everybody was trying to make sure their friends and family were safe. And so we were evacuating from our home in Pasadena, driving to this friend’s home in Marina Del Rey.

And this person from the school called me and she was telling me, “No, my house is gone.” And we’re talking on the phone and she’s like, “Most likely, the school is not going to be there anymore.”

And Barbara hears that, and she’s not saying anything, but when I hang up the phone, she’s like, “Is my school gone? Is my house going to be burned?”

So by Wednesday, the school was burned down due to the fires. It was a big shock.

The campus on Lake didn’t burn down, but it’s still full of ashes and it had a lot of smoke damage, so they have to do a big cleanup, and they’re still waiting for someone to come and inspect the facilities before it can reopen.

Anybody who goes through something like this, the first thing that happens through your mind is you’re paralyzed because you don’t know, like, what should I do now?

Thank goodness we didn’t lose our home, and we were able to move back into it a few days later, on Saturday.

Without school last week, my friends came to my house and our kids would keep each other entertained while we worked.

And this week, the school has provided us with this opportunity to have camp for our children from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

But right now, we still don’t know what’s going to happen for next week.

And for next year, I don’t know what the future holds for these schools. I’m still trying to see where I’m going to send my daughter.

The tuition at Oak Knoll is about $19,000 a year, which is in the lower end for any private school in the area, but that was about as much as I could afford.

My business has suffered since the LA fires

Since the fires started, my cafe has been seeing about 20% of our normal business, on top of being closed completely for three days.

I don’t think there’s any way that we can recover from those losses. It feels like COVID all over again.

I’m struggling to pay my employees and run my business. And I’ve supported my crew in difficult times for our business in the past, but this time around, I don’t have the same amount of cash in my account to pay for their regular hours.

I haven’t cut any positions completely, but I’m just trying to give them 60% of the hours or 70% of the hours that they normally have.

So with the business looking as it’s looking right now, I have to think that public school is going to be the definite choice for my daughter. I can’t really do the economic commitment that I had planned for my daughter’s education anymore, so now the plan is going to change.

I’ve been submitting all the paperwork for the Pasadena Unified School District lottery to see if I can get her into one of the dual-immersion programs, which are bilingual, for the next year. And then, of course, we also have our local school, but we don’t know how those are going to be — thinking that there are also schools in Altadena and Pasadena that were lost, that got burned and were affected by the fires.

What we’ll learn from the LA fires

I know we’re going through a tough moment, but I keep trusting that we will get out of this.

When a situation drives you to do something different than you had planned, that is not necessarily bad. It’s just different and it will make you work harder. And that’s OK — I’ve been through that. When I left my country, I knew that nothing is entitled to you because you’re born somewhere, or you’re born a certain way, or you have a certain education.

What I want my daughter to learn from this is that the only things people can’t take away from you is your soul, your values, and your education. After a fire, there’s so many things that can happen and can strip you away from your privileges, but that is what remains, and that’s what will help you build your future again.