• My family lives in Northeast LA, just outside of the evacuation zones for the raging LA fires.
• Our neighborhood is filled with smoke and everything is covered with ash. Schools are closed.
• Parents don't get to stop parenting during a disaster, but we're doing what we can to survive.

It was raining ash when I went to pick my daughter up from school on Wednesday.

We awoke that morning to the smell of smoke seeping in through the cracks under the door and the roar of the Santa Anas as they rattled the trees outside. My family lives in Northeast Los Angeles, in the direct smoke path of the Eaton Fire, burning through the Pasadena/Altadena area.

My husband and I are both native Californians; we know what to do in these situations. I got out our pack of kid-sized KN95s, while my husband pulled our air purifier out of the laundry room. We briefly discussed the safety of our kids' schools. My five-year-old daughter's school, with its new air filtration system installed during the pandemic, seemed safe, my two-year-old son's home daycare located closer to the fire less so.

Yet as I pulled up to my daughter's school, the air choked us and soot was swirling, I was unsure whether I was making the right decision. I ultimately dropped her off to spend the day at school with her friends.

Back at home, I watched the air quality index tick up — 151, 274, 337, 438 — and I grew nervous. I was putting my shoes back on when I got the alert that her school was closing, just an hour after the school day had begun.

As I stood in the line of anxious parents waiting to sign out their kids, ash was floating through the air landing on our heads, shoulders, and the tops of our cars. It looked like the snow in the Christmas snow globes we've just packed away. Helicopters panted in the grey sky. Behind the thick layer of smoke, an orange ball of sun blazed, casting everything in an eerie hue.

So far, we've been lucky

Perched on a steep hillside below Mount Washington, our home wasn't in immediate danger on Wednesday. Yet the brush that surrounds us is as dry as a tinderbox. Usually in January, the hillside is a verdant green, but it hasn't rained any significant amount since May. The grasses are parched and brown. Skinny coyotes now prowl the fence around our property, sniffing and desperate. As the Santa Anas rage and new blazes pop up throughout the day, I know it would only take a single ember to ignite it all.

Life goes on, no matter what is happening outside

I packed an emergency bag with diapers, birth certificates, Cheerios, and a hand-painted baby book my mother made, and placed it by the door. Then I fixed the kids a snack. Life goes on.

Parenting through disaster or tragedy includes a mundanity that serves as both a respite and an unbearable tedium: there are still meals to be cooked, bedtime stories to be read, toys to be squabbled over.

I am supposed to be working from home. But as morning turns to afternoon, the kids become as restless as the winds outside. We try an art project, then my son scribbles on the coffee table.

My daughter whines for TV and I relent, Ms. Rachel and Elmo getting me through yet another challenging parenting moment. I tell myself it's good that my kids are whining; it means they're not scared.

It's been hard to focus

My mother-in-law came to watch the kids and I retreated to a back room, where I tried to work. But the Watch Duty App keept pinging with new evacuation orders, new burns.

I picked up my phone and descend into doomscrolling, flipping through a succession of heartbreaking posts: "We've lost everything," "Our house is gone," "We are in shock."

GoFundMe links appear and multiply. The Eaton Fire has consumed most of nearby Altadena, an affordable mountain town with a historic black community, where many working and middle-class families purchase their first homes. Due to recent policy changes in the state, many were unable to purchase fire insurance. It's hard to not feel helpless and overwhelmed by the scale of it all. I click to donate.

We muddled through the afternoon, reading books and building forts. I count the hours until bedtime.

That night, the Watch Duty app continues to ping, vegetation fires that quickly get named: Sunset, Kenneth, Creek. Friends and relatives text, asking if we're okay. Totally safe, I reassure them all. I am aware that I am also reassuring myself.

My local mom group fills with requests for items people fled without: a breastfeeding pillow, a sound machine, children's clothing in all sizes. People coordinate pick-ups and drop-offs, and offer guest rooms to displaced families. "Look for the helpers," Mister Rogers famously said. "You will always find people who are helping." I resolve to tell my kids about this tomorrow.

I went to sleep nervous, leaving my ringer on for evacuation alerts. Then I woke up every hour or so to check my phone, but no fires drew near.

We don't know what's next

Schools are closed again. The winds have died down and you can almost see some blue sky behind the haze of smoke. But the blazes are still burning, an there's still an encroaching ring of fire around the city. With little to none of the fires contained, it will be days before the air quality is breathable, longer until the ash and soot are cleaned from the playgrounds. Friend after friend reports leaving town.

On our block's text thread, our neighbors with children are all debating the same thing: do we leave now for better air, or hunker down and shelter in place? We consider the expense, my husband's PTO, and the hassle of having the kids away from their comforts and cramped in a hotel room. There is no right answer.

My kids are just grasping the scope of the situation

When morning comes my son tries to put on his boots, then flops himself on the floor and screams when I tell him he can't go outside. "It's not safe," I tell him. Our play structure is covered in black soot and grey pieces of ash, the sun is still orange.

I tell my kids that even though it's a bummer that we're stuck inside, we're incredibly lucky. "Some people have lost their houses, and everything inside."

My daughter's eyes widen. "Even their toys?" she asks. I nod. "Even their toys."

We look at some pictures of the wreckage online together. I don't know if I should be shielding them or being honest. I remember to tell them about all the people helping each other, the firefighters and animal rescuers, and the moms gathering clothes and toys for those who need them.

"We're very lucky," I tell them. "And totally safe. As long as we stay inside."

Privately, I pray it will stay that way.

• Mom Lisa Ward lives in Topanga, between Palisades and Malibu, where the LA wildfires are raging.
• Her family was horrified when they saw TV images of their local high school burning to the ground.
• While her 17-year-old won't get the graduation he hoped for, his priority is to help homeless friends.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lisa Ward, 59, a stay at home mom from Topanga, California. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Our family is sheltering in Topanga, a canyon region between Palisades and Malibu that is being ravaged by California wildfires.

The generator turns on and off at random, but we're glued to the local TV news whenever we can be. On Tuesday — when the fires struck our area — my oldest son, Luc, 19, jumped up from the couch.

"That's the high school," he shouted, pointing to the footage of the flames and billowing smoke consuming the campus. "There's the locker building, the baseball field, and the football stadium — they're all burning."

We were in shock. We'd been in the stadium for Luc's graduation from Palisades Charter High School in 2023 and were proudly looking forward to sitting in the bleachers for his 17-year-old brother Cole's graduation in June.

Our youngest, Theo, 15, began as a freshman there last September.

It was terrible to see the campus ablaze, though we knew it wasn't as horrific as watching someone's home burn down. A few minutes earlier, Luc's girlfriend, Nikola, 19, had spotted her condo building on fire around a mile away from the school.

She sobbed in my arms. We later found out she'd lost everything except the bag of clothes she'd grabbed before evacuating. The branches of the trees were in flames as she ran to the car.

My son asked about his graduation and prom

Cole, our senior, was on a snowboarding trip with some classmates in Mammoth Mountain, a five-hour drive from Topanga. They found out about what happened to the high school on social media.

"I won't get my graduation ceremony at Pali High, will I?" Cole asked me. "Or prom?"

"No," I replied as gently as I could. I don't think you will." He had gone to his brother's graduation, and it had been an enormous thing. Cole is a linebacker on the school football team, which plays a huge role in the celebration.

Some people in his cohort have already had their pictures taken for the senior graduating yearbook in their formal dresses and suits. But this year's book can't be finished. The photo lab where they do it has gone.

I could tell Cole was upset, but he's a kid who puts things into perspective. It's best not to have a school than a home. Of the six kids who went to Mammoth Mountain, only two of them — including Cole — still had homes. We've told them that there'll always be a bed for them here as long as we're not evacuated.

Everyone is on edge as we worry about our houses. We haven't really had a chance to think about what classes will look like this year.

But Cole and Theo have been told they will start online schooling before the high school figures out how to relocate about 3,000 kids to other places.

The kids can't really process the events

Remote learning during the pandemic was a nightmare for everyone, particularly Theo, who suffered a traumatic brain injury when he was younger. We didn't get through a single day without tears. The social isolation also affected the kids.

As for the here and now, they can't absorb what's going on. When you watch the fires on the news, the images are so shocking that they don't seem real. I can see it in their faces. "My darlings," I told them. "I don't think the human brain can process this because so much has gone in such a short space of time."

I'm a big communicator, even when the boys don't like it. Sometimes, I'll talk and hear nothing back, but I don't stop. I'm constantly checking in on them to tell them that I love them.