Over 200 NASA JPL, Caltech employees lose homes from Los Angeles wildfires
The rapidly spreading fires near Pasadena, California have displaced more than 1,000 employees at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and left more than 200 at JPL/Caltech homeless. The Eaton Fire sent families scrambling gathering their children and pets, fleeing flames and possibly delaying space research.
Firefighting efforts near NASA's JPL/Caltech in California
A helicopter picks up water to fight Los Angeles area fires in January 2025 near the "JPL Mesa," the JPL emergency helicopter landing facility.
PASADENA, Calif. – Los Angeles wildfires are devastating all industries in Southern California, including NASA and Caltech faculty and staff - the hard-working minds behind key space exploration research and technology.
Marcy Harbut is a senior technical writer for NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech and one of hundreds of people who work in California’s bustling space exploration community impacted by the Los Angeles fires.
Harbut has seen the destruction of California wildfires firsthand. One destroyed her stepmother’s home in the 1980s, and her stepbrother lost his in Northern California in 2017. Tragically, she is leaning on their expertise to navigate losing a home to a wildfire after the Eaton Fire consumed her family’s Altadena home this past week.
On the night of Jan. 7, Harbut and her husband were focused on keeping their 12-year-old daughter calm as the winds picked up, but they weren't under evacuation orders yet.
"We didn't want to make it seem like it was this really terrifying thing," she said.
Around the same time, Jessie Christiansen, the chief scientist of NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute, was at her home with her family in Sierra Madre, watching local Facebook groups, the Watch Duty App and forecast information to decide when they should leave.
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The Eaton Fire started around 6 p.m. By 8 p.m., Christiansen's neighborhood was under an evacuation order, but they didn't wait that long to leave. The canyon where they live has one way out, and they knew it could get congested.
"You could see the fire from my house," she said.
The Eaton Fire seen from Jessie Christiansen's car as her family evacuated in January 2025. (Jessie Christiansen)
The family left a note inside their door stating they had evacuated, and they headed southeast to Chino Hills. Christiansen's 9-year-old daughter also left a note with her name and age in her room, saying, "I'm scared. I love this house."
"In less than half an hour, we had the car packed; we had the dog and the two cats, the two kids, and the suitcases and the boxes of stuff," she said.
The evacuation order came out as they made their way down the canyon.
Meanwhile, a few hours later in Altadena, Harbut said the power cut out on Tuesday night was when her family decided to leave.
"We were like really trying to calculate. Is it worth the trouble? And then the more friends I talked to, everybody, even the ones that I thought would be holdouts, they were evacuating," Harbut said.
Harbut and her family—including their cats Sophie and Mimi and Oreo, the guinea pig—packed into the car and headed to her stepmother's house to wait out the fires.
On Wednesday afternoon, a text message from a neighbor came in: "I'm sorry, it's gone." Harbut said she continued to receive messages from neighbors that their beloved home and haven was gone.
After breaking the news to their daughter, the family decided to see what was left of the home.
"It was like driving through a video game," she said of the drive back toward home. "Turn down the street. Got to turn around. And then all these people in that house, watch out for those flames. And these people are packing up their van. Be careful. Don't run over people. It was just chaos."
As her stepmother warned her, only the chimney was still standing.
Wildfires temporarily close NASA JPL
The recent wildfires, fueled by hurricane-force Santa Ana winds, put NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by the California Institute of Technology, on the front lines. Firefighters used Mesa Road above the Laboratory to position engines and refill helicopters with water to battle the flames.
HAUNTING ALTADENA BEFORE-AND-AFTER PHOTOS DETAIL WILDFIRE DESTRUCTION
JPL, located in Pasadena, which neighbors Altadena, is where NASA’s Mars rovers and planetary spacecraft are built and tested. It’s also home to the greatest minds in exoplanet planet research - the worlds outside our solar system, which total more than 5,800 discoveries.
NASA JPL confirmed that while its facilities did not suffer damage from the Eaton Fire, nearly 280 JPL/Caltech employees, faculty and students lost their homes. At least 1,000 others were evacuated during the fires.
Firefighting staging behind NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California during the January 2025 Los Angeles fires.
The roaring fires caused JPL to temporarily move its Deep Space Network (DSN) operations to a backup control room near Barstow, California. The DSN is a series of dishes that NASA uses to communicate with its space missions, including the interstellar Voyager spacecraft.
Christiansen's house did survive the Eaton Fire. However, the cleanup from ash, smoke, and wind damage continues. She and her husband wore gloves, masks, long sleeves and pants to clean the ash from doors and windows. They hosed down the house and attempted to locate an air purifier, which are sold out in California for obvious reasons.
"We all know dozens of people who are homeless now and who are in hotels and who are trying to find somewhere to live. And a lot of them have families," Christiansen said.
Both Harbut and Christiansen said the fires put their out-of-this-world work into perspective.
"It's important for us to also remember that a lot of our science is important and wonderful and inspiring, but it's also not life or death," Christiansen said.
Firefighting staging behind NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California during the January 2025 Los Angeles fires.
The NASA Exoplanet Archive typically releases newly discovered exoplanets on Thursdays. Christiansen said her team worried about not getting the release in time.
"The world will move on if we don't release new planets this week. It's really okay," she told her team.
Harbut's family has been surrounded by support from friends, family, Caltech, and kindness from strangers. Her close friends have run errands and created spreadsheets for items they need because it's hard to start buying replacements even though they have lost everything.
"Shopping is super painful right now. Because every time I look at something, I'm thinking about how I had something just like that," she said.
Harbut's brother started a GoFundMe for her family to help with immediate needs. Caltech has raised over $2 million through a new emergency fund for the institute and JPL staff, faculty and students impacted by the fire.