This post was updated April 15 11:01 p.m.

A new report from the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute found that January wildfires across Los Angeles put at least 35,000 jobs held by Latinos at risk of temporary or permanent displacement.

The LPPI put out several reports, including “Wildfires and Latino Communities: Analysis of Residents, Workers, and Jobs in LA County Fire Evacuation Zones,” within roughly a week of the fires beginning. The report said the fires had severe effects across LA, with a particularly notable impact on the Latino workforce.

“In a city as interconnected as ours, examining how these fires affect residents, businesses, and workers is essential,” the report said. “The data show Latinos constitute a large share of the workforce.”

Latino workers face economic instability because many of them are employed in vulnerable occupations – such as housekeepers and home health aides – and have limited opportunities for remote work, the report said.

Silvia González, the director of research at LPPI and an expert on the report, said because the reports were created early on during the fires, they do not fully encompass the fires’ devastation. She added that she found the disparity between the number of residents and jobs held by Latinos in Pacific Palisades, one of the locations of the fires, particularly stark.

“Seven percent of residents in Pacific Palisades are Latino, but when you look at the number of workers, it’s 34% of the jobs, not the workers, but the jobs that are held there are held by Latinos. So that’s a huge disparity,” she said. “If you look at the distribution for other races and ethnicities, you don’t see that.”

González also said the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that many disadvantaged communities, including the Latino community, struggle with accessing resources during times of emergency or disaster. She added that protections were created for these marginalized communities during the pandemic but that many have since expired.

“That was the motivation of looking at the impact and then also thinking ahead – what are the groups that are going to need the most support during a recovery?” González said. “That’s going to be some of your workers that, for example, may be undocumented, or it’s going to be workers who are in the informal job sector.”

She said she hopes these findings can be used to guide the actions of elected officials in providing targeted support for the Latino community and workers.

Albert Kochaphum, a researcher and “maptivist” at LPPI who worked on a related report, said the Jan. 15 report highlights several weaknesses in emergency communications. He added that there is a lack of language accessibility in emergency alerts and gaps in communication between those who employ Latino workers and the workers themselves.

Kochaphum also said he hopes the research can serve as a model for future disaster responses.

“Our research that we did here can help set the stage for more equitable research in these types of disasters and especially throughout Los Angeles County,” he said.

Kochaphum said the information used in the LPPI reports was difficult to come by, as information such as boundaries and evacuation zones were not publicly available. He added that the first Trump administration made it difficult to access certain data and that Trump’s second administration may create further difficulties in accessing information needed for LPPI reports.

“As you saw in 2016 with the Trump administration, they closed down websites related to environmental justice, data related to equity and health and climate change,” Kochaphum said.

LPPI was founded in 2017 to help create a better understanding of the Latino community both within LA and nationally, said LPPI’s communications manager Cris Rivera. He added that LPPI utilizes its research to help accomplish this goal.

“Our mission really centers around uplifting Latinos and underserved communities,” he said.

González said she believes the LPPI reports on the wildfires are important to UCLA because they emphasize the needs of the Latino community.

“The reports are important because it highlights the experiences of our community,” said González. “It might also highlight opportunities for our administration at UCLA to also consider how is it that they’re serving these students and their families, because at the end of the day, a lot of our students come from working class backgrounds.”