The Brief

“I feel hopeless.”

“I feel helpless.”

“How do I cope with constant sadness, grief, anger, anxiety, or fear when I’m just trying to get through a normal day?”

“How do I plan for retirement?”

“How do I plan for my thirties?”

“What kind of world will my children grow up in?” “Should I even have children?”

“Am I doing enough? Am I enough?”

These are the types of worries that came up at a recent "Climate Cafe LA,” a free, virtual support group that aims to provide an informal, confidential space for people to connect with each other about the painful emotions that come with living in the climate emergency.

A dozen or so people popped into the Zoom “Climate Cafe” being held on this Sunday morning. About half of them left their cameras off (that’s totally OK, though cameras on is preferred). After setting ground rules — only “I” statements, no advice or judging allowed — the conversation began. People shared about their favorite landscapes, their worries for their own futures or their children’s, the sense of sadness, anxiety, anger and cognitive dissonance they feel all too often, even in the most mundane moments like watching a neighbor mow a lush lawn or idle their car for too long.

With ceaseless headlines of climate disasters around the world and the escalating impacts to our own backyards here in the Southland, there’s a growing movement to address the intertwined crises of mental health and the climate emergency. The efforts range from community-based support groups such as Climate Cafes, to the practice of “ecotherapy,” to boosting training for therapists, psychologists and other public health professionals to better recognize the physical symptoms of climate-related psychological distress.

“The most widespread public health impacts of climate change are actually mental impacts,” said Wael Al-Delaimy, a public health professor at UC San Diego.

Holding space for climate emotions … and finding community

Maksim Batuyev first started experiencing depression when he was about 13 years old, growing up in Michigan.

“This was before climate change was even on my radar,” said Batuyev, who is now 25.

His depression improved with therapy and mindfulness practices, but once he got to college and started pursuing environmental studies, Batuyev said that progress was reversed.

“I went on to spend four years learning about all the different ways that humans were irreparably damaging the planet and poisoning communities,” Batuyev said.

Maksim Batuyev, 25, is the director of the Climate Cafe LA Initiative and a Gen Z advisor for global nonprofit Climate Mental Health Network.

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By his senior year, his depression and anxiety were once again overwhelming.

“I realized I'd never been told how to navigate the grief that was coming with this,” Batuyev said. “The climate crisis was just this, like, intense backdrop to what was supposed to be a normal college experience in young adult life … and the normal hardships of growing up.”

After graduating, he moved to Los Angeles to work for a sustainable fashion startup. Now, he’s a Gen Z advisor for the global nonprofit Climate Mental Health Network and the director of Climate Cafe LA.

There’s no brick and mortar cafe, it’s simply people getting together in person or online for free, informal, 90-minute conversations about coping with climate-related emotions.

Batuyev initially piloted the conversations with student groups at UCLA and is now offering Zoom Climate Cafes he co-hosts with other Gen Z facilitators. Such gatherings are a growing trend worldwide.

“It's really about creating a container for us to bring these difficult emotions to the surface,” said Batuyev. “Because all too often we have to stuff them down just to get through our day-to-day lives. We're trying to put food on the table, we're trying to get to work on time. We're stuck processing those emotions in isolation.”

Younger people are particularly impacted — they wonder how much of the Earth will be habitable by the time they’re in their 40s and 50s. In the largest study of its kind, a 2021 survey of 10,000 young people across the world found the vast majority experience emotional distress over the climate crisis on a daily basis, while more than half feel humanity is doomed.

Climate Cafes are mostly geared towards Gen Z, but they've proven to be needed spaces for people of all ages and walks of life.

At the recent virtual Climate Cafe LA, folks from all over the world joined — from Canada to India to the U.K. to New Jersey to right here in Los Angeles. The attendees encompassed a range of ages and professions: activists, therapists, a veteran, scientists and a faith worker. Though a small sample, the group exemplified the diversity of who is struggling with climate-related emotional distress.

Feeling our feelings … without the need to act 

Batuyev said one of the most important — and perhaps surprising — parts of the Climate Cafe is that it explicitly pushes back against the action-oriented narrative that’s common in most climate spaces.

“I think a lot of times when people think about climate, they imagine saving the polar bears, they imagine protesters, they imagine people yelling at each other or demanding that others sign petitions, and it's kind of easy to understand why not everyone's comfortable starting to engage in that way,” Batuyev said.

But providing a space simply to feel emotions, and not act on them, can allow people to build community and find ways to engage with the climate crisis in their own way, Batuyev said. 

“When we're able to help people connect with these intense emotions of grief or despair or anxiety around these issues, what we're really doing is also helping them connect with a place of love,” Batuyev said. “These emotions themselves are very often transformative and what drive us to act and get involved, but I think our problem is that we lack a community around us that enables us to express ourselves and experience these emotions in a safe and comfortable way.”

An accessible support model

Though Climate Cafes are not meant to replace professional help, therapy itself can be out of reach for many people, so these groups can provide support for those who otherwise may not be able to access it, said Isaias Hernandez, 27, who grew up in Sylmar and is the creator of environmental education platform Queer Brown Vegan.

Isaias Hernandez, 27, is the founder of education platform Queer Brown Vegan. He created a Climate Emotions Scale to help people name the feelings they're experiencing around climate change.

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Additionally, he said this kind of grassroots peer-to-peer model can be replicated to fit the needs of many different communities.

“Mental health services are expensive. It's a privilege to afford it,” Hernandez said. “Creating grassroots models that center a need for community and a safe space is important.”

Hernandez created a climate emotion scale to help people find the language to describe their climate-related emotions. 

“When someone else validates another person about what they're feeling,” Hernandez said, “I think that allows them to say 'It's not just in my head, it's not a disorder, it's a natural response to what I'm experiencing.'”

How to cope with climate emotions

Recognizing and acknowledging the emotions that are driving our internal narratives around climate change is an important first step to coping and building mental resilience, said Long Beach-based therapist Carol Bartels, who specializes in “ecotherapy,” where clients process their emotions outside in a natural setting.

Coping with those feelings comes down to a lot of well-researched strategies in trauma recovery, she said.

“That is finding a sense of safety, finding the resources inside of our own bodies to relax and to feel a sense of some control and ability to regulate our own emotions,” Bartels said.

Carol Bartels is an ecotherapist based in Long Beach. Here she is at DeForest Wetlands in Long Beach, one of her favorite places to take clients.

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Using breathing exercises or other forms of “grounding” to return to the present moment can help us alleviate panic and find safety and calm within our own bodies, said Bartels. To help her clients get there, Bartels often takes them outside — what’s called “ecotherapy.”

“Getting grounded in one's own body, feeling what's really going on inside of us — nature has a way of helping us tune into that and bringing us right into the present moment,” Bartels said. “Nature does half of the healing.”

Taking action … when you’re ready

Bartels said once you can recognize and hold space for your own climate-related emotions — whether it be grief, anxiety, anger, fear, despair or all of them at once — taking action can play an important role in further building mental resilience.

“It doesn't have to be some grand action of changing the world, but maybe getting involved at a more local level of sustainable projects, or even just within one's own home,” Bartels said. “We can channel these emotions into something that we do have control over, because the feeling of lack of control is such a big problem with this issue.”

To cope with her own overwhelming climate emotions, Bartels grew a permaculture food forest in her backyard. She emphasized that choosing actions rooted in one’s own personal passions and interests — not “shoulds” — is essential to building true emotional resilience.

“As we move forward, we're going to need educators and healers and artists and musicians,” Bartels said.

The next global mental health crisis?

The UC San Diego public health professor, Wael Al-Delaimy, has firsthand experience of the impacts of war and displacement on mental health. Originally from Iraq, Al-Delaimy spent most of his career as an epidemiologist working with refugees in the Middle East and here in Southern California.

Today, he sees the mental health impacts of the climate crisis on people all over the world as the next major public health challenge. He's currently researching how climate disasters are affecting the mental health of people in the Middle East.

Wael Al-Delaimy is a public health professor at UCSD who's researching how the climate crisis is impacting the mental health of people in the Middle East.

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Courtesy of Wael Al-Delaimy

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“The physical impacts are limited to people who are injured, who may die from extreme weather events,” Al-Delaimy said. “And this is small compared to the much more widespread mental illnesses, psychological impacts, which can become chronic. People become traumatized.”

For example, he said, people who have survived a wildfire or serious flooding may be triggered every time they smell fire, or every time it rains. He pointed to how research has found that violence and suicides increase during extreme heat events. There’s also the concept of solastalgia, the emotions that come with watching beloved landscapes change and disappear, upending livelihoods and cultural traditions — something Indigenous communities around the world have coped with for generations.

“The health care system is not prepared for either the acute nor for the chronic [mental health] conditions from climate change,” Al-Delaimy said.

He said physicians and mental health professionals alike need to be trained in talking to their patients about climate-related mental health concerns. And that training needs to be culturally aware, particularly in longtime landing spots for refugees and immigrants such as southern California.

“The mental health crisis is there without climate change,” Al-Delaimy said. “Climate change is just going to make it worse.”

But Al-Delaimy said he sees a lot of promise in the peer-to-peer support model, such as Climate Cafes. For example, his research on community health workers doing outreach with Somali, Iraqi and Syrian refugees in San Diego during COVID found communities were far more likely to trust and engage with workers from their own communities.

“Mental illnesses are hidden. There's denial about them. There's a stigma about it,” Al-Delaimy said. “But they're like any other chronic disease …They need attention. Without that, our society will continue to suffer.”

Resources for people seeking help with climate emotions

Resources for health professionals 

The online education platform Canvas went offline after a data breach on Thursday, temporarily leaving students and faculty at thousands of U.S. colleges — and K-12 schools — without access to course materials and communications during finals period.

"I'm sure somewhere in the country when the outage happened, there probably were people actually taking final exams on the platform when it crashed," says Damon Linker, a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Thirty million users — including at half of the higher education institutions in North America — rely on Canvas to manage courses, submit assignments, view grades and facilitate communication, according to its parent company, Instructure.

But when Linker and many other users tried to do so on Thursday afternoon, they met a black screen and a warning message.

"ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again)," it read. "Instead of contacting us to resolve it they ignored us and did some 'security patches.'"

ShinyHunters is the same entity that took credit for a massive Ticketmaster data breach in 2024. Like many such groups, it's a cluster of young people working remotely together, "kind of like a ransomware gang," says Rachel Tobac, the CEO of SocialProof Security, which trains people and companies to defend themselves against hackers.

ShinyHunters wrote on a threat intelligence website earlier this week that the initial breach on Saturday involved data — including private messages — from 275 million students, teachers and staff at nearly 9,000 schools worldwide. The group said Thursday that affected schools can prevent the release of their data by consulting with cyber advisory firms and negotiating settlements through the encrypted chat platform Tox.

"You have till the end of the day by 12 May 2026 before everything is leaked," the hackers wrote.

Instructure has confirmed a series of cybersecurity breaches this week and provided status updates on its website. It said the breach only appeared to involve identifying information like names, email addresses, student ID numbers and user messages — no passwords, birth dates, government identifiers or financial information.

Instructure confirmed on an FAQ page that it started an investigation after it first detected unauthorized activity in Canvas on April 29, and took Canvas offline on Thursday after that same unauthorized actor "made changes that appeared when some students and teachers were logged in." They said the actor exploited an issue with its Free-for-Teacher accounts, which it has temporarily shut down.

"This gives us the confidence to restore access to Canvas, which is now fully back online and available for use," it said in a statement to NPR. "We regret the inconvenience and concern this may have caused."

It's not clear whether Instructure paid a ransom or what the return of Canvas access could mean for the hackers' May 12 deadline.

Tobac says Canvas could be back online because of a successful negotiation, or because the hackers "didn't get super far in their attack." Either way, she says users should stay vigilant, especially for phishing messages — whether it's someone posing as Canvas prompting a password change, or pretending to be a professor sending course materials.

"I would operate under the assumption that there's going to be some knock-on effects here," she says.

Not everyone got back online immediately 

Just before midnight on Thursday, Instructure posted online that "Canvas is now available for most users," though two separate services, Canvas Beta and Canvas Test, remained in maintenance mode.

Students and faculty at at least some schools were still unable to access Canvas on Friday — either because service had not yet been restored or because administrators warned them to stay away.

Penn State University, for example, said Friday morning that while the school's Canvas access had been partially restored, it was "not yet ready for use."

"Technical teams at Penn State are actively working to prepare the system for our community," it added. "As access is restored, Canvas integrations and related services will be brought back online in phases."

Several schools have taken similar approaches, either temporarily disabling Canvas access or outright asking users to steer clear. The University of California said across its schools, "Canvas access will not be restored until we are confident the system is secure."

And it's not just higher education: The Montgomery County Public School system in Maryland alerted families on Friday morning that even as service returned, it is "continuing to test and review systems before restoring access."

Tobac says this could mean that schools think the attackers might still be within their systems, potentially stealing information like passwords and messages.

"The attackers probably got some sensitive information and … [schools] don't want this information out online," she says.

Many schools are urging users to be on high alert for any unsolicited emails or messages that appear to come from Canvas, especially those requesting login credentials, as Georgetown University warned. The University of Amsterdam — which says it's one of 44 Dutch educational institutions affected — also recommends people change their passwords on any other sites where they use the same one.

Tobac also recommends using a password manager — to generate long, random passwords for each login — and turning on multi-factor authentication for all online accounts, not just Canvas. She says any student or professor who gets a suspicious call, text or email should "use another method of communication to verify what is authentic."

"Even if there was no breach yesterday, I would say these are the things that I recommend you do," she adds, urging people to "be politely paranoid."

The breach disrupts finals, highlights vulnerabilities

Several schools affected by the breach have already postponed or outright scrapped some final exams, with others warning students and professors that they might need to do so.

The University of Illinois is postponing all final exams and assignments scheduled through Sunday. Penn State canceled certain exams scheduled for Thursday night and Friday, saying it was working with faculty to "determine next steps for final grading" and urging students to check their emails (not Canvas) regularly in the meantime. And Baylor University delayed Friday exams and asked all faculty to send students "whatever study materials they have on their local computers to students as soon as possible."

The breach has underscored how much of academia relies on a single, centralized platform.

Linker, of UPenn, told NPR that he received an influx of panicked messages from students on Thursday afternoon when they suddenly couldn't access PowerPoints, readings and previous exams as they tried to study for Monday's final.

"The problem with using a platform like Canvas is that most [students] are not going to have the readings available printed out or on their laptops," he explains. "It all lives on the online platform, and if that platform goes down, they have no way to access them."

He told students on Thursday that he would upload the course materials to another platform (like Dropbox or Google Docs) if Canvas access wasn't restored by Friday morning. Fortunately, he says, it came back online shortly before 9 a.m. ET.

But Linker says he has concerns about relying fully on Canvas in the future.

"Given what this has exposed, the vulnerability involved and also the concern with the data breaches, I'm starting to rethink whether this is really a wise way to proceed," he says.

One example of that is grading. Linker says Canvas makes it so easy to calculate and weigh students' scores — on individual assessments and overall — that it's come to function as a digital grade book. Going forward, he says he may start keeping an analog record of students' grades just in case.

While Canvas does have competitors like Blackboard, Linker says he doesn't think any would be less vulnerable to a future breach. And Tobac agrees.

"The problem is not that this one website had this cyber event, right? Because nothing in this world is unhackable," she says. "The thing that we have to think about is disaster recovery: How do we continue doing business when there is a cyber event, and how do we do our very best to keep the bad actors out?"

Tobac says this week has shown that many institutions did not have a clear plan for how students and professors can be in touch and access course materials without Canvas. She said those plans should vary based on schools' different circumstances and schedules — which might explain why some are proceeding with finals as usual while others are scrapping exams altogether. But she'd like them to approach the immediate aftermath with one common goal.

"We have to treat people with dignity and respect," Tobac says. "And I hope that that is something that the institutions do, within their timelines and constraints."

Copyright 2026 NPR

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he has requested a yearlong extension of FEMA funding for L.A. fire survivors. Without the extension, the money will run out July 9.

Now the decision on FEMA support lies with the federal government.

The funds have allowed many survivors to afford temporary housing and other daily needs. Most have yet to return home — 2 in 3 survivors who were living in Altadena or Pacific Palisades at the time of the fires are still displaced, according to the latest survey of more than 2,100 survivors by the nonprofit Department of Angels. Nearly 40% of respondents reported they will either soon run out of temporary housing insurance coverage or have already.

The situation is particularly dire for low-income households: Nearly 80% of respondents making $50,000 or less said they didn’t think they could afford housing for three months once coverage ended.

“The data is clear: This recovery is not over,” said Angela Giacchetti of the Department of Angels at a news conference organized by the Eaton Fire Collaborative in Altadena on Thursday. “If you are a survivor, you know this in your bones. For many families, it has barely begun. People have just begun to stabilize. We need federal support that reflects the scale of this disaster and systems that survivors can actually navigate and access over time.”

FEMA assistance isn’t reaching most survivors

The FEMA Individuals and Households Program can provide funding for survivors of disasters to pay for temporary housing, repair their homes, and respond to other challenges that insurance may not cover. It can also help cover costs if a survivor has no insurance.

Gil Barel has been relying on FEMA funds to pay rent on a small back house for herself and her son for the last year. She said they still haven’t been able to return to their rent-controlled Pasadena apartment because of smoke damage, though she still has to pay the rent for it.

Gil Barel is paying rent on a smoke-damaged apartment in Pasadena while FEMA funds have helped her cut the cost of temporary housing.

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Barel doesn’t know what they’ll do if the FEMA funding runs out.

“ I'm really stressed out,” she said. “I think I'm just kind of trying to put that thought aside and hope for the best.”

But in the 15 months since the fires, most survivors have not accessed FEMA funding. About 60% have received no FEMA assistance beyond the initial $770 payments dispersed in the immediate aftermath of the fires, according to the Department of Angels survey.

Many have faced denials, according to disaster case manager workers with Catholic Charities of L.A. and lawyers with Legal Aid Foundation of L.A.

That’s the situation for Gayle Nicholls-Ali and her husband, Rasheed, who lost their Altadena home of 15 years in the Eaton Fire. They’ve relied on their insurance to pay for a rental in Montrose, but that’s rapidly running out. And because they have that insurance, FEMA has denied further support.

Gayle Nicholls-Ali and her husband, Rasheed, lost their home in the Eaton Fire. They plan to rebuild, but the cost is a major hurdle.

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“A lot of our ALE [Additional Living Expenses insurance] is going to run out before we even are able to get into a house,” Nicholls-Ali said.

Without FEMA or insurance support, they’ll have to find a way to pay rent on top of a mortgage. They also face a big gap in the cost of their rebuild versus how much their insurance covers. Nicholls-Ali said without the help of FEMA and other sources of funding, recovering feels further out of reach.

Funds for long-term recovery still in limbo

FEMA funding extensions have been routine in past disasters, including the 2023 wildfires in Hawaii and after devastating flooding in North Carolina in 2024.

But the agency has faced significant cuts during the second Trump administration, and there are indications that disaster aid is becoming increasingly political. For example, President Donald Trump has approved aid for just 23% of requests from states with a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators, compared to 89% for states that with Republican governors and senators, according to an analysis by Politico.

The state has also not received more than $33 billion for long-term recovery, which can help pay for infrastructure upgrades and repairs, as well as help rebuild schools, parks and homes. That money was requested by state and local leaders shortly after the January 2025 fires and hasn’t been appropriated by Congress.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Rabbi Amy Bernstein says the wind-whipped fire in January 2025 that scorched much of the Pacific Palisades, destroying her home and damaging her synagogue, “blew everything open” for the community’s faith leaders.

“If our hearts must break, let them break open,” said the rabbi, who leads Kehillat Israel where 300 families out of 900 lost their homes. “This tragedy has really pushed us closer to one another. We’re working to change the things we need changed.”

Faith leaders both in the Pacific Palisades and in Altadena and Pasadena — devastated by the pair of fires that tore across Southern California — have relied on interfaith and community partnerships to rally congregants who are picking up the pieces 16 months later.

They’ve had to learn on the fly about insurance coverage and local land use regulations while still trying to keep their scattered flock together and raising money for basic needs. Pastors in Altadena have had to fight to protect the rights of Black people who decades ago found pathways to home ownership in that community despite redlining — but now risk losing their land to outside developers who sense an investment opportunity.

And throughout this span, faith leaders have had to cater to the emotional and spiritual needs of their communities and think about how they want to rebuild their sanctuaries that were lost or damaged in the fire. More than a dozen houses of worship burned to the ground or were damaged.

Interfaith relationships have become stronger after the fires

This would have been difficult for faith leaders to handle but for the interfaith relationships that became closer and stronger after the fires, said the Rev. Grace Park, associate pastor at Pacific Palisades Presbyterian Church, which burned down.

Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Jews and yogis have not just found common ground in human suffering and loss, but have learned how to lean on one another in a time of dire need, she said.

“It’s a sense of mutual affection and respect, learning from each other and leaning on one another,” Park said. “We’re sharing the joys and the deep valleys of what it means to lead through a time of tragedy.”

Brother Satyananda, a senior monk at the Self Realization Fellowship, lost his living quarters and belongings in the fire. Much of the campus, started by Paramahamsa Yogananda who brought ancient spiritual practices from India to the West, fortunately survived the fire.

Satyananda recalls one day when Bernstein picked up on his sadness and offered him “motherly compassion.”

“We share the same profession where we’re tuned to people in need,” he said. “Now, our relationship has changed because we’re tuning into each other. There’s a greater level of trust.”

Pastor BJ King, who leads LoveLand LifeCenter, worked with the late Rev. Cecil B. Murray to heal communities and build interfaith coalitions after the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

“Back then, there was a choice whether or not to get involved,” he said. “But with these fires, there is no choice. It has affected everybody.”

Pastors have had to acquire new skills

King’s congregation has switched to online services after their leased church building in Altadena suffered smoke damage. Twelve families lost their homes. In addition to helping meet people’s basic needs, King has created a program organizing gatherings to connect therapists with those in need of mental health.

“Many people didn’t even know they needed that,” he said.

One of the most powerful roles faith leaders have played after the fire is to “continue to talk with power, people in charge,” said Pastor Jonathan DeCuir, who leads Victory Bible Church in Pasadena. He and others in the region have continued to meet with local officials and even conferred with Gov. Gavin Newsom to keep things moving for their communities.

DeCuir chairs the board of a nonprofit called Legacy Land Project, which provides financial aid, legal support and guidance on building contractors, as well as medical care to those affected by the fires.

The disaster has brought a level of camaraderie that DeCuir says he has never seen among the region’s clergy.

“Denominational lines have been crossed,” he said. “Even if we have different theological stances or approaches to ministry, we are all now looking at how to care for our people and community. If we don’t come together, Altadena will never ever be the same. The people won’t be there anymore. That, to me, is terrifying.”

While a church is more than a building, physical churches do appear as “beacons of hope” in traumatized communities, said Pastor Mayra Macedo-Nolan, executive director of Clergy Community Coalition in Pasadena. Her group has lobbied for houses of worship to be prioritized on the same footing as businesses in the rebuilding plan.

“When people start seeing churches rebuilding in Altadena, they’re going to feel like it’s going to be OK because the churches are coming back,” she said.

Reimagining a purposeful future

Pastor Jonathan Lewis, fourth from right, holds a groundbreaking service at the site of the burned Fountain of Life Nazarene Church to mark the beginning of its rebuilding in Altadena, Calif., April 26, 2026.

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Members of the congregation join in prayer during the groundbreaking ceremony at the site of the burned Fountain of Life Nazarene Church, marking the beginning of its rebuilding, April 26, 2026, in Altadena, Calif.

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Pastor Jonathan Lewis poses for a photo with his congregation during a groundbreaking service at the site of the burned Fountain of Life Nazarene Church, marking the beginning of its rebuilding, April 26, 2026, in Altadena, Calif.

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On April 26, the Altadena Fountain of Life Church broke ground to build a new sanctuary after their house of worship, which had stood for over three decades, was destroyed in the fire. Pastor Jonathan Lewis, who ministers to about 75, hopes the church will be ready in time for Easter next year.

“It’ll be a Resurrection Sunday for our church, too,” he said.

Alexis Duncan, who grew up in Altadena attending that church, came to the groundbreaking with her 6-year-old daughter. She lost both her home and her church building.

“It means everything to me that they’re rebuilding because I want the church to be there for my daughter as she grows up,” she said. “This new beginning gives me and my family hope and the encouragement to come back.”

Some churches like Altadena Community Church, a United Church of Christ congregation, are pausing to rethink their future purpose. The Rev. Michael Lewis, who took over in February after the previous pastor retired, said the congregation is looking into several possibilities for the one-acre lot, including affordable housing.

“We know that a church is not intended to be a landlord and the pastor is no property manager,” he said. “But, we’re also thinking about who is able to return to Altadena? How will this rich, economically diverse community that was scattered by the fire come back?”

The church has been around since the 1940s. A haven for actors, poets and musicians, the former sanctuary also served as a vibrant performance space. Lewis said they hope to incorporate a performance stage into the new facility.

“It’ll look different from what we had before,” he said. “Once we figure out how to build community, we can decide what physical structures will help us support that community.”

As for Kehillat Israel, on May 15, members will carry their Torah scrolls back to their sanctuary, marking one of the first returns by a house of worship to the Palisades since the disaster.

Judaism has had “a long history of starting over,” Bernstein said.

“It’s encoded in our cultural approach to the world, that there are things that can always be taken away from you,” she said. “But what you become can never get taken away.”

The sky above Los Angeles State Historic Park in Chinatown will be dotted with color Saturday with the annual Kite Festival.

The festival had its beginnings as a joyful protest in 2021, back when a proposal for a Dodger Stadium gondola included cutting through the airspace above the park. Organizers say last year’s Kite Festival drew a crowd of about 7,000.

“The Kite Festival, [for] some people, it’s their favorite day in Los Angeles,” said Sue Bell Yank, executive director of Clockshop, the nonprofit arts org that runs the festival. “It’s the time when they really feel connected to their city. More so than any other time.”

This year’s programming includes a kite-making station where you can build your own flying art for a donation of $5, along with art workshops and the unveiling of a large floating, inflatable sculpture by Guatemalan kite artist Francisco Ramos.