Los Angeles is a sprawling city with a range of geographic, economic, and social variables, and the wildfires that affected the Los Angeles metropolitan area in January were a demonstration of that diversity, with the area’s three main library systems—Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL), LA County Library, and Altadena Library District—impacted by the fires to very different degrees. “We’re so close, but so far apart in so many ways,” said LA County Library Director Skye Patrick.

What the three systems had in common, however, is that all stepped up to serve their communities in ways both expected and novel—despite infrastructure damage, staff’s loss of property, and, in the case of LAPL, the loss of a beloved branch. Library Journal has been investigating how libraries across the country have managed climate-driven catastrophes, and Los Angeles offers a portrait of resilience on a broad, citywide scale.

LAPL: “A HUGE SENSE OF LOSS”

LAPL's Palisades Branch Library after the fires Photo by Gary Leonard

The Palisades Fire—the most destructive in the city’s history—ignited on January 7, eventually burning more than 23,000 acres and killing 12 people before it was contained on January 31. It destroyed nearly 7,000 structures—among them, the Palisades Branch Library of LAPL.

The branch, opened in 2003, had recently been renovated in 2023. “It was just a gorgeous library, much loved by the community,” said Director John Szabo (LJ’s 2025 Librarian of the Year). The building and everything in it burned on January 8; LAPL was able to salvage only a few plaques, some pieces of sculpture, and a singed American flag, which it framed. Cleanup efforts led by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began in late January. “It is just a huge sense of loss for the whole area,” he said.

Many former Palisades staff were deployed to branches in Encino, Tarzana, Brentwood, and West L.A. There, they reported seeing many of their patrons who had been displaced by the fires and were staying in hotels or with friends. For those patrons, said Szabo, “just seeing a familiar face was really, really important.” Other employees contributed to recovery efforts, staffing a table at the Disaster Recovery Centers that brought together agencies from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to tax assessors to Animal Services. Library staff offered tech-to-go services, checking out laptops and Wi-Fi hotspots and providing printing and scanning—and, of course, issuing library cards. Members of the outreach team went to shelters, making referrals for services and giving out charging cables. Branches throughout the system distributed N95 masks left over from the height of the pandemic. And two LAPL data collection staff helped the Department of Animal Services build dashboards for city shelters to help connect residents with lost pets.

Szabo has been meeting with the mayor and city leaders about mounting temporary services for the Palisades community, “and there is a great sense of urgency to build back,” he said. He hopes to have a temporary facility in place soon as “a sign that we are committed to the Palisades, committed to that neighborhood.”

LA COUNTY LIBRARY: SECOND RESPONDERS

LA County Library staff member assembling diaper and wipe kits for distribution Photo by Michael Owen Baker

Of the three systems, LA County saw the least damage. When the Eaton Fire broke out, the system closed several libraries in impacted areas, but reopened them soon after. The library was able to jump in to help right away, using lessons from the 21018 Malibu and Topanga Canyon wildfires. “What we learned a few years ago is that libraries are a great place for FEMA and for other agencies to come in,” noted Patrick (LJ’s 2019 Librarian of the Year). Even before the large Disaster Recovery Centers opened in Los Angeles and Altadena, “we stood up FEMA emergency sites immediately, we opened early, and we stayed open late in at least two or three libraries in the immediate vicinity of Altadena,” she said. “We were able to help about 1,500 people before they went to the big locations, just by showing up.”

In addition to helping residents access and file paperwork, she added, the library served as a respite from fire conditions. People could access potable water and bathrooms, charge devices, stay warm, and breathe clean air.

The library stepped in to support the Altadena system as well, doing community giveaways and partnering with Director Nikki Winslow on the Connected Wellness campaign. “While we’re not in Altadena, we have so many branches so close by that a lot of folks that are our users are her users, and we’re both mutually impacted,” said Patrick. “We put together a very quick and dirty campaign with our respective foundations called Connected Wellness to raise funds immediately for school supplies, personal hygiene, diapers and Mi-Fi’s, so that we could give all of that away to the community.” The two foundations raised more than $60,000.

The system now considers itself a “second responder,” said Patrick, “because we are able to pivot and switch so quickly to support our communities.” They worked with the Department of Public Health to have more than 300 air purifiers installed at all locations, and are in the process of securing generators to create resiliency centers—the first is already in place at the Topanga Library, and five more are forthcoming in the next six months. The Topanga generator served the community during the fires, noted Patrick—even before staff could get to the building because of road closures, people who chose to stay in the area were able to charge devices in the parking lot. “We have cameras, so we could see people there, all night and day,” she said. “It set us down this road of thinking about resiliency, and what that looks like for community.”

ALTADENA LIBRARY DISTRICT: CONNECTIONS AND CONNECTIVITY

Altadena residents collect free books and school supplies from LA County Library’s table at an Altadena outreach event on February 8 Photo by Gasparian Photography

Neither of Altadena’s two locations sustained structural damage in the Eaton Fire, which saw more than 9,400 structures destroyed. That Wednesday afternoon, Winslow had turned on the news and watched the senior center next door to Altadena’s main library burn to the ground, and thought, “Oh my gosh, there goes the library”—but it stayed standing. Similarly, an elementary school two doors down from the Bob Lucas Memorial Branch Library and Literacy Center was destroyed, but the branch—which was in the middle of a renovation—saw only some insulation damage, and construction resumed by January 21.

The main library’s HVAC vents closed when the smoke hit, said Winslow, so fire air wasn’t circulated within the building. However, more than two miles of fiber optic cable were burned, leaving the library without power or internet connection. When the library reopened on March 4—after vents, shelves, carpets, and the building’s exterior were thoroughly cleaned and the necessary environmental tests passed—Wi-Fi services ran off three high-speed hotspots (internet service was ultimately restored in mid-April).

Altadena residents were also without connectivity. Thanks to the Connected Wellness fundraiser and T-Mobile’s donation of devices, and the two directors were able to raise enough to give out 200 hotspots with 14 months of service to those who lost homes, though Winslow noted it would take millions to connect every household in the area that had burned.

On Friday, January 10, Los Angeles County’s Director of Parks & Recreation called Winslow with the idea of creating Care Camps, to open that Monday—schools were closed, and parents would need childcare. “On Saturday, we got the plan, we scheduled, we deployed, and our staff were out working in those camps for the next three weeks,” said Winslow. “Not only was that good because it provided something for the staff to do while we didn’t have libraries to work out of, but a lot of those families were families that they knew coming into the Altadena libraries, so those kids saw familiar faces in this time of crisis.” Employees from all three systems helped staff the Care Camps.

A couple of weeks after the fire, the library joined the Eaton Fire Collaborative, a group of nonprofits and city agencies in the area working toward recovery efforts. “They were all coming together once a week in a room at the Elks Lodge to talk about strategy around being more intentional about how the donations were coming in and being distributed,” said Winslow. As people’s needs shifted, the group organized messages about what was needed—for example, not only clothes to wear, but clothes they could appear in at giving events. “You’ve gotta love library directors and staff,” she added. “They’re the biggest givers.”

LOOKING AHEAD: “THIS IS THE WORK”

Designer and consultant Margaret Sullivan helped Altadena craft its strategic plan in in 2019. “At the time, I thought that it was a really beautifully written plan around neighbors, instead of community—they intentionally use the word ‘neighbors,’” said Sullivan. That intentionality has helped drive the library’s operational plan, and, noted Winslow, helped structure the objectives it built on to serve its community in times of emergency. “We’ve been able to pivot each year, depending on what the community needed—through a pandemic, and now through a fire,” she said.

Altadena’s lack of city or county government ties give the library flexibility, she noted, but also funding constraints. “We’re 95 percent property tax funded, and half the properties in Altadena burned. The library has hired a lobbyist to advocate for state budget dollars, and will be looking to private support as well, to avoid cutting hours or positions. Recalling the recession-era layoffs and service cuts during her time at the Las Vegas–Clark County Library District, Winslow said, “That was the time when people were losing their jobs and their homes, and they needed us more than ever.”

She added, “that’s why our ability to function through all of this is really important. Not only do we have the space for people to reconvene, connect, visit, and recover together, but we’re going to have to help them through.”

The Connected Care campaign not only allowed the libraries to respond to community’s needs immediately, but offered an alternative way to look at funding. “That’s another thing I think we should be learning from these experiences, how to leverage our foundations in a way to get money in and get money moving quickly to the people who need it,” said Patrick. “Going through the county requires RFPs, all this other process, but with the foundations we can move more quickly. I think that’s an important note for context of how to support your community amidst a crisis.”

Patrick is also thinking about how LA County Library’s Malibu Library—which was not affected by the fires—could become an off-the-grid resiliency hub, with its own self-sustaining power bank. That conversation first started after the 2018 fires, and promises to be expensive, but would be a critical improvement. “We should all be thinking about how to [use] our buildings in new and different ways in terms of resiliency,” she said.

In addition to considerations of fireproofing and other physical infrastructure as libraries rebuild, making sure they have the resources necessary to preserve community materials should be a large part of forward-looking sustainability. Nine LAPL staff members lost homes, as did the Los Angeles City Archivist. “This tragedy is a reminder of the important role that public libraries play” in community archiving, oral histories, and personal record digitization, said Szabo. “The first thing we’re talking about are all of the life-impacting services that we’re providing, which are incredible. But also that role that we play as a memory keeper and a storyteller and a preservation institution within our neighborhoods—that’s not just true in big libraries like L.A., but small libraries as well, and sometimes they do a way better job than we do in big libraries—is so important.”

Sullivan is now working with LAPL on its strategic plan. While she felt some thought it was too soon after losing the Palisades Library to think long-term, said Sullivan, “This is our reality. You’re going to have the highest of highs and the lowest the lows, and they’re going to be five minutes from each other.” She added, “As librarians, y’all are right where you need to be to be, doing this work. This is the work.”