Pasadena Unified School District announced Friday, that schools will remain closed until Jan. 17, due to the severe impact caused by the Eaton fire. Meanwhile, a member of the teachers’ union said Friday as many as 300 of its members have lost homes to the massive blaze.

“The Eaton Fire has brought unimaginable losses to our students, families, and staff. Our hearts are with everyone affected by this tragedy,” the district said in a letter to parents, teachers and staff. “The health and safety of our PUSD community remain our highest priority as we navigate the significant impact of the fire on so many of our students, families, and staff,”

Social media posts have said that many of the district’s teachers have lost their homes to the Eaton fire. However, it’s unclear at this point how many exactly have endured such losses.

Jonathan Gardner, president of United Teachers of Pasadena, which represents around 850 members — including teachers, psychologists, speech language pathologists, counselors, nurses and librarians — estimated Friday that nearly 300 staff members have lost their homes in the fire.

“Across PUSD, it sounded like 300 plus had been affected,” he said. “Of course, there’s classified and custodians… as well as administrators. I’m aware of a couple of administrators that have had their homes destroyed. So it’s really affecting us on all levels.”

PUSD Superintendent Elizabeth Blanco told SCNG Friday that the district is still working to determine the exact number of employees affected.

“The data that we do have is we went in by our ZIP codes in the evacuated and burn areas, and we were able to see how many employees live in each of the areas, how many children, so we can give an estimate of impacted staff.”

Around 1,383 of PUSD staff lived in the evacuated areas, Blanco said, which represents roughly half of the district’s workforce. However, it remains unclear how many have lost their homes.

“That is about 50% of our workforce that we have to be sensitive and make sure that they have the time to be able to regroup and rebuild and recover a little before we require them to come back and get to work in person,” Blanco said.

Although the fire brought widespread devastation, it hasn’t dampened the spirit of the PUSD community. On Friday, teachers, students, alumni and staff gathered to transform the district office into a hub of support.

In partnership with Clergy Community Coalition, volunteers—including students from Marshall Fundamental Secondary School, librarians from Octavia E. Butler Magnet, as well as PCC graduates, among others—handed out food and supplies to families impacted by the fire.

Among the volunteers was Jennifer Miyake-Trapp, a board member of Pasadena Educational Foundation, whose family lost their home in Altadena in the fire. Her husband, Jason Trapp, who works at Octavia, had arrived earlier in the day to help.

“When I pulled up and I walked over and I saw our amazing Pasadena Unified staff, community members, and especially our students from the local schools here volunteering and filling up trunks of our community members with water and goods and food,” Miyake-Trapp said, “it just shows that we are a resilient community and that if we continue to support each other, we’re going to get through this.”

Evan Alameddine, a senior at Marshall Fundamental and the treasurer of the schools’ Associated Student Body, quickly got together with around 20 classmates to volunteer after seeing a call for help on Instagram.

“I see people posting about volunteers needed, so I kind of just didn’t want to be at home just doing nothing about it,” he said. “I wanted to be out here helping my community.”

The fire is at 3% containment, PUSD said in the letter. Mandatory and warning evacuation orders are still in place, and air quality in the area remains “unhealthy.”

“These conditions, combined with damage to school facilities and safety concerns, make it impossible to reopen schools for in-person learning at this time,” the school district said. “After a thorough evaluation and consultation with local emergency management officials, the Superintendent’s Leadership Team has determined that it is not safe to resume in-person learning next week.”

In the Pasadena district, Elliot Arts Magnet School, Aveson Charter School, Loma Alta Elementary School and Noyes Elementary School were damaged in the fire, Blanco said.

She said the district plans to begin cleaning its facilities as early as Saturday, Jan. 11., once access to streets and buildings is possible.

“We’ve been doing initial assessments of the outside of the buildings and clearing debris,” she said. “As soon as we can get in and start cleaning all the ash out of the classrooms, which we’re hoping will be as early as tomorrow morning, we’re going to start doing that.”

To support students during the closure, PUSD has made self-directed educational materials and activities available online, Blanco said.

These learning options, organized by grade span for elementary students and by subject area for secondary students, are hosted on Canvas and can be accessed via Clever or directly at : http://gopusd.com/learning, the school district said.

“We realize that many of the students and teachers may have lost their Chrome books or their devices, so we’re working to gather all of our devices that we still have this weekend and get them set up for distribution,” she said. “We will have more information about that next week, of where families could come through a line similar to this and get additional replacement devices.”

For those wishing to help members of the PUSD community affected by the fire, donations can be made through the Pasadena Educational Foundation’s Response Fund at pased.org/responsefund.