Since January 8, Felisa Wright hasn’t been able to work. But she’s been busy.
Like many people who fled Altadena, California after fire struck their neighborhoods at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, she expected to go back. At 2:15 am, after a tense evening of waiting and watching in darkness, she saw fierce wind and smoke, and decided it was time to leave. She seized the folder she had prepared with her family’s social security cards and birth certificates. Then she, her daughters, and her grandchildren made for a hotel for the night.
It wasn’t just one night. Later that day, a neighbor called to report that the Wright house was on fire. Wright didn’t realize how bad it was until she saw photos of her charred, ruined home. She lost everything—including the learning and play equipment she’d accumulated over 15 years of running her in-home daycare. “Every dime that I made, I spent the money on beautifying my daycare,” Wright reflects.
She can’t imagine not reopening her daycare, which served 14 children at the time of the fire. But there are major hurdles to clear first. These point to the long aftereffects of disaster on care.
How Disasters Affect Childcare
In LA in January, parched conditions, combined with hurricane-force winds, made for a disturbingly early fire season. Scientists have estimated that climate change made the fire-prone conditions about 35% more likely.
A climate-linked disaster like the LA wildfires can shock a childcare system in many ways. There’s the immediate physical impact: buildings might be damaged, or lose water and power. In 2023, about half of the licensed childcare centers in Lahaina, Hawaii were destroyed by fire. This year, one week after the LA fires, LA County estimated that over 500 had been at least partially burned. Even when childcare facilities are intact following a fire, air quality can be dangerously poor for children. This leaves families to make tough decisions about whether to keep their kids home when there’s lingering wildfire smoke, for instance, or risk sending them to a childcare center that can’t afford an air purifier.
Then there are the impacts on childcare workers. “Childcare providers and support staff may also be directly affected by the disaster and need to focus on the recovery of their own family before reopening their facilities,” points out Alex Rose, a senior program manager for sheltering at the American Red Cross.
Reopening can be especially challenging when the real estate market is devastated by a disaster. This has been preoccupying Wright. On top of worrying about how long her family will be able to stay in their Airbnb, she still doesn’t have a lead on a new home. Many landlords are reluctant to rent to someone who will be operating an in-home childcare business, due to worries about liability. Rental prices have also soared. Price gouging restrictions have been extended to January 2026, but landlords are commonly flouting these rules. Wright has expanded her search area, but wants to stay in the Altadena/Pasadena area, where her clients are.
Wright has attempted to cobble together a patchwork of support. Wright has received a $770 emergency payment from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and has been approved for $186/week in unemployment. She’s grateful for a GoFundMe page set up by her aunt, but the funds aren’t with her yet.
Positively, the state of California responded relatively quickly. On February 11, three days after Wright’s home burned to the ground, the governor issued an order to reimburse childcare workers for 30 days. This type of program is relatively progressive, believes Lauren Hipp, national director of early learning at the advocacy organization MomsRising.
Still, 30 days has been far from enough. Wright’s union, Child Care Providers United (CCPU), has called for an extension of this income support, as well as payments to cover disaster-related expenses and investments in climate resilience. (The California Department of Social Services declined to comment on labor negotiations.)
What Wright is really hoping for is a business loan. The Small Business Administration (SBA) rejected her loan application, on the grounds that she didn’t earn enough money to repay it. SBA’s preferred collateral for disaster loans is real estate, which can put renters like Wright in a bind. However, an SBA spokesperson notes, “the agency won’t decline a loan solely for lack of collateral,” and a renter applying for a disaster loan could put up collateral like vehicles and business equipment.
“The standards are often more flexible than traditional lenders during disasters,” according to the SBA spokesperson. Specifically for the LA wildfires, SBA has disbursed 16 loans, amounting to $827,700, related to childcare services.
But the overall financial context is challenging. Childcare was already unaffordable, and providers were already barely scraping by, even before the latest fires. Because of the large overheads of running her business, which weren’t fully reflected in the rates she could charge, Wright hadn’t been able to accumulate savings. As rent increased year after year, her pay did not.
This financial precarity has made her less able to bounce back following the fires. One of SBA’s suggestions for small childcare providers preparing for a disaster is to set aside emergency savings. It’s sound advice, but building up a financial cushion isn’t possible for someone in Wright’s position. She says, “If we have the true cost [of childcare], then I would be able to put something away to where when this happened, I didn’t have to look for any type of help.”
For childcare facilities that are able to remain open during a disaster, existing policies can worsen financial strain. Unlike in California, “many states pay providers [of subsidized childcare] based on attendance rather than enrollment, so if a child doesn’t show up, they don’t get paid for that day,” explains MomsRising’s Hipp. This is especially problematic during a crisis. “When a disaster strikes and you have kids who are unable to attend for many reasons, that would impact their bottom line.”
Volunteer Carers Help Plug The Gap
Another person who lost her Altadena home, and everything in it, is Robin Szidak. Her former neighborhood is now ravaged. Rubble is everywhere, with burned-out shells of cars and the odd chimney or stone wall. Stoplights are down or flashing red, supplemented by temporary stop signs and road closures.
The family was lucky to have fire insurance, which has covered them financially. But the logistics have been a slog. Not every Airbnb owner would allow in the family’s two 80-pound dogs. They also had an 11-month-old foster child, making it essential to re-establish routines amidst the chaos. Plus, Szidak had to find a way to keep her online jewelry business running.
Szidak’s overwhelm is clear even now, as she reflects on the first two months post-fire. “I was so fatigued of decision making. I was underwater.” There were so many things to consider, and so little time, that she “couldn’t even perceive how to get [her child] help.”
She didn’t hear of any government-facilitated childcare. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) allows for childcare assistance as part of a miscellaneous “other needs” category. This is capped at just $200 per week, for up to eight weeks. Families with children under 13 (or under 22, if they have a disability) are eligible. (FEMA did not respond to questions from Forbes.)
Instead, Szidak’s foster care agency reached out to ask if the family needed help. When she mentioned how helpful it would be to have childcare in their Airbnb, this led to an organization called the National Emergency Child Care Network, which provides free volunteer childcare to families experiencing emergencies.
At first, Szidak was skeptical about volunteers looking after her infant. But she was reassured by her phone call with Silke Knebel, the founder and CEO of the National Emergency Child Care Network. Then Szidak was impressed with the speed with which the organization mobilized. “I had help in my house the next day,” she marvels. (Knebel explains that her organization was able to expedite the assistance after assuring the foster care agencies that there were strict guidelines for volunteers, including a two-hour training on trauma-informed care, a 10-year criminal background check, and a sex offender registry check.)
That first day, five volunteers came to Szidak’s Airbnb to do shifts, at least two at a time. And the volunteers were wonderful: “capable, thoughtful, nurturing women,” Szidak calls them. “I couldn’t have vetted them better. And that’s in a disaster.” One volunteer even flew in from another state, because she had previously lived in Altadena and was so eager to help.
The weeks of emergency childcare gave Szidak the breathing space to attend to other essential matters. She thinks of it as “a bridge that helps you get to higher ground.”
The scale of the National Emergency Child Care Network is small. It’s supported just two families in LA, where 15 volunteers have provided 141 hours of childcare. It has a bigger presence in North Carolina, where Knebel lives. The organization started in October 2024, after Hurricane Helene; 124 volunteers have provided 587 hours of care to 50 families in North Carolina. Some of this is ongoing.
Knebel, who works full-time on top of heading up the organization, started it after years of volunteering with the Red Cross. “Families are constantly thrust into these crisis moments,” she notes, and this has knock-on effects. Teachers with young children can’t teach if they don’t themselves have childcare, for instance. Some employers are inflexible about working conditions for working parents even immediately after a disaster. And as a single parent, Knebel knows all too well how an unexpected crisis can spiral.
Because of its modest scale and deliberately slow pace of growth, referrals to the National Emergency Child Care Network are by word of mouth. Costs are minimal, but onboarding time is extensive. The organization has received several grants, and is now trying to raise funds to pay for staff.
Volunteers are mostly professionals or ex-professionals, according to Knebel: pediatricians, teachers, and psychiatrists, for example. While the volunteers are carefully scrutinized, the families in need aren’t. “We really don’t say no to families,” Knebel says. There are no minimum income criteria for eligibility; nor are there any complicated application forms.
Beyond this organization, there was an outpouring of volunteer power in the immediate aftermath of the LA fires. 120 people —including students, nannies, and educators— added their names to a spreadsheet of volunteer babysitters. There was also childcare from established disaster-response organizations. Often following a disaster, Red Cross shelters and resource centers may include volunteer-provided childcare.
Wright has no issue with volunteers stepping in during emergencies to provide care. And Hipp says, “We require a village and sometimes that village is going to require that we be accepting of volunteers coming into a community and providing the very basics, because we have not done a good job investing in that infrastructure.”
Though useful as a stopgap measure, there are clear limits to free childcare services. “While Red Cross volunteers bring significant life experience and motivation to serve, they are not trained or licensed to provide childcare,” cautions Rose of the American Red Cross. “The support of partners and authorities are essential to establishing solutions for families following disasters.”
Preparing For The Next One
Szidak’s family has now secured a temporary home outside Altadena and their first-ever daycare spot. But “living through this experience is a marathon, not a race,” she reflects. Two months after the Eaton Fire, “we are still not where we need to be in terms of a normal routine, schedule, and stability.”
Wright is also seeking stability. When she finally has her new home/daycare, she intends to take out more comprehensive insurance, which ideally would cover weather events. She was shocked to realize that her daycare insurance only covered liability for children who were injured at the facility. “I was very, very upset about that,” Wright recounts. “But this kind of taught me a lesson. I know what I need to get next time.”
She dreams of one day owning a home made of fire-resistant materials. But at this point, searching for rentals in a post-crisis area, she doesn’t have the luxury of making extra demands.
Given the weak safety net for childcare providers, recovery has to be considered in increments beyond 30 days. This is a challenge in general following disasters, as attention wanes. Knebel has seen that volunteer numbers tend to tail off after the first few weeks of a disaster.
As for preparation, licensed childcare centers in California are required to have plans for disasters, including fires, floods, and earthquakes. Training would also be helpful. Before the Eaton Fire, Wright had taken a course in earthquake response, but not the other types of disasters now regularly whipping California. Generally the onus is on childcare providers to prepare, for instance to ask emergency services to review disaster plans.
Szidak believes that when planning for future emergencies, foster care and other agencies should already have a list of go-to resources like the National Emergency Child Care Network. Her family got childcare assistance in week 3, but having it in week 1 or 2 would have been transformative.
Care organizations can no longer afford to be unprepared. “Any time there’s a natural disaster, childcare will be impacted in some way,” Hipp points out. “The reality of climate change is that this is going to be on our doorstep at increasing frequency.”
Support for this reporting came from the Better Life Lab at New America.
