The Pali community has reached the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 7 fire that forcibly relocated thousands of families and businesses, destroyed nearly 7,000 structures and killed a total of 12 people, devastating the Pacific Palisades. After a year of displacement, online school and a temporary campus, our school community made the long awaited return to the Pali High campus, sitting along the intersection of Bowdoin Street and Temescal Canyon Road on Jan. 27. 

This moment of celebration is also tempered by recognition of what has been lost: the surrounding streets are still cluttered with rubble, the Pali Village remains desolate and the lots where homes used to stand are now empty. The campus we left is not the one we now see. Yet, this return feels layered with hope. 

Many students and staff anxiously awaited Pali’s return after attending school online through Zoom for three months and then learning in the abandoned Sears department store-turned-school. After announcing a delay to return to campus on Dec. 18, 2025, many students and staff were disappointed to hear that they would have to wait even longer to step foot back onto the home of the Dolphins.

A year earlier, when the fire tore through the Palisades, it consumed Pali’s W and J buildings as well as the back U bungalow classrooms. Halls that once buzzed with learning were replaced by rubble and silence. Classrooms where students made films, learned pre-calculus and engaged in lively debates were gone.

Pali functioned out of the abandoned Santa Monica Sears building, navigating shared classrooms and borrowed furniture. While many Dolphins were grateful for in person learning, they still yearned for the familiarity and comfort of Pali High. 

“I’m happy we had Sears because I didn’t want to be online,” senior Harper Given said. “But we needed to be back. I couldn’t be in Sears anymore. I missed being outside and the lively community of Pali’s campus.”

The work to bring the community home has been a long-winded ordeal. While the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems have been inspected and temporary bungalows were set up where the baseball field used to be, the turf fields are still being relaid and leveled and the pool is currently in the process of being restored and refilled. In addition to a seemingly endless amount of necessary campus modifications, all of these remediation efforts had to be performed on the timeline of LAUSD approval, out of the hands of school administration. 

The danger of fire is obvious; what’s less visible is what remains in the air and soil long after the flames die down, the legacy of smoke and chemical residues that can affect health. 

According to an update by Pali High’s Executive Director Dr. Pamela Magee, the delay to campus was due to comprehensive testing being conducted by the LAUSD Office of Environmental Health and Safety and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. 

Much of the long delay for returning to the Temescal campus was due to environmental concerns. The fire left contaminants and fine particles, even after visible smoke cleared. In urban wildfires like the Palisades’, where homes and buildings were also part of the burn, the profile of smoke becomes more hazardous than vegetation alone. Pali’s campus needed to be designated as safe for learning before students and staff could inhabit it. 

This doesn’t mean returning is inherently reckless– but it does mean there is reason for careful, science based evaluation, proper clearing of ash and debris and continued air quality monitoring as students come back. 

In an update on Jan. 16, Magee said that school administration was cognizant of these environmental challenges in their steps toward the return to the main campus.  

“LA Unified has addressed the concerns and impacts associated with the January 2025 Palisades urban wildfire event,” she wrote. “PCHS is safe for occupancy from an environmental safety standpoint.”

Even as we ensure the air is safe and clean, the physical work continues. Temporary classrooms on the baseball field stand where grass once lay soft. The south campus, hit hardest by the fires, is now only beginning its long transformation. 

Junior Joseph Levy, a member of the varsity baseball team, said that “the loss of the baseball field has been a hard loss, but a necessary sacrifice for the reopening of the school.”

Part of the rebuild has consisted of removing all natural and paper-based products from the classrooms. Teachers were forced to rebuild learning spaces from scratch, setups that some had for over a decade. Pali staff spent the entirety of Monday, Jan. 25 restocking shelves, designing bulletin boards and filling classrooms in an attempt to create a warm, welcoming environment for students on their first day back. 

“In the days leading up to our first day back, I really wanted to create a space that our students felt safe and at home in,” Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition teacher Noah Hundley said. “But it was a struggle to recreate my own home on campus. While I didn’t have my old materials, I had my students.”

For the senior class, returning to Pali High is more than just a campus reopening–it’s regaining the backdrop of their final months together. They finally are able to use the stage for assemblies, eat lunch together under the senior tree and make lasting memories with one another on campus. 

“I think it’s nostalgic to be back here and it is sentimental that we can finish high school where we started,” Given said. “I’ve looked forward to this moment since I was a freshman and I can’t believe it is finally here.”

Driving off campus for lunch again, seeing familiar faces in the village shops, hearing the clatter of students in the cafeteria–these rhythms remind us that home is more than a place on a map; it is the network of memories we weave together. 

As Pali High returns, so does the heartbeat of the Palisades community. Graduating at Pali, at home in the Stadium by the Sea, is more than a ceremony; it is a testament to resilience. While the work on our campus is far from finished, the return is proof that even after everything, we made it back.

After a year marked by devastation, uncertainty, and most of all, hope, we are home.