Week 9

      The station fire in 2009 in Los Angeles occurred in the Angeles National Forest being one of the largest in Los Angeles' history. With the growing size of the city, there are more housing being built closer to the dense forestry of the National Forest, putting more people in a threatening range of high fire potential ("Los Angeles' Biggest Fire Ever"). As you can see in the map, the map is extremely close to the dense city putting many lives in danger, but the fire was contained to stay away from these heavily populated areas, burning over 140,000 acres ("Breaking California News").  

      As you can see, the fire grew increasingly closer to a high volume of schools in the city. With this close proximity, two school districts had to delay the beginning of their school year. The La Canada Unified School district including four schools, and the Glendale Unified School District including thirty one schools (La Canada Unified, Glendale Unified). The 2009 Station fires affects the schools in close proximity by causing them to shut down, which builds the budget on this already disastrous fire.

      Each day that a kid misses school, it cost the government money, so with the closing of two whole school districts is just another add on to the budget. Along with that, there is the repairing of any damage done to schools nearby, which from the map it shows that there are many in close proximity of the fire. Every day that a kid misses school it costs the school about twenty nine dollars a day per kid (Crowe). So with the average number of kids in primary, middle, and high schools in California being 2,442 per school, and there being thirty five schools being shut down, that is 85,470 kids on average that school was delayed for (Overview of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools). So at twenty nine dollars per student, the station fire costed the schools about 2,478,630 dollars for every day that the students had to miss school. This is just a cost of an effect of the fire among the many other repairs that needed to be made such as roads, and infrastructure. 

AFP. "Los Angeles' biggest-ever fire ruled arson: officials." WAToday.com.au. 4 September 2009. Web. 9 December 2011.

"Breaking California News." California Fire News. 1 September 2009. Web. 9 December 2011.

Crowe, Kevin. "Chronically Absent Students Cost County Schools Millions." KPBS.org. 27 June 2011. Web. 9 December 2011.

"General Information." Glendale Unified School District. 2011. Web. 9 December 2011.

"Overview of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools and Districts: Years 1999-200." National Center for Education Statistics. September 2001. Web. 9 December 2011.

"Welcome to LCUSD." La Canada Unified School District. Web. 9 December 2011.