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I was forced to evacuate my home. Do I still need to pay my mortgage, rent, utility bills?

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I was forced to evacuate my home. Do I still need to pay my mortgage, rent, utility bills?

During a disaster, getting to safety is the top priority. But for many Angelenos displaced by the devastating wildfires raging across Los Angeles County, questions loom about what comes next.

The fires have destroyed thousands of structures and forced roughly 92,000 residents to evacuate. With some homes sitting empty and others reduced to rubble, here are answers you might need.

My home burned down. Do I still have to pay my mortgage?

Homeowners affected by a disaster are often eligible to reduce or suspend their mortgage payments for up to 12 months, according to Fannie Mae, the Federal National Mortgage Assn.

If your home was destroyed in a wildfire, contact your mortgage servicer as soon as possible to discuss your options. You may be qualified for a forbearance plan that will temporarily lower or eliminate your monthly payment and prevent late fees and foreclosure.

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You will eventually have to pay what you owe once your forbearance plan expires. Fannie Mae offers resources to avoid paying a lump sum in these circumstances, including disaster payment deferral.

What about my property taxes?

If your home or business was affected by the windstorms or fires, you may be eligible for temporary property tax relief through the Los Angeles County assessor’s office. You should file a misfortune or calamity claim to request reassessment of your property.

You will qualify for tax relief only if the damage to your property exceeds $10,000 and you file your claim within 12 months of the incident. If approved, your reduced tax rate will remain in effect until your property is restored or rebuilt.

My rented home or business was damaged or destroyed. Do I still need to pay rent?

Under California law, your rental agreement will become void if the rental unit is completely destroyed in a disaster. You will no longer be required to pay rent and your landlord must return your security deposit.

If your rental unit is partially destroyed and can’t be lived in, you can choose to end your rental agreement or wait for your landlord to make the necessary repairs. You will not have to pay rent while waiting for repairs, unless you move back into the unit.

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If you’re a landlord, you’re responsible for repairs after a disaster and have an obligation to make the unit livable as soon as possible.

I live in an area not directly affected by the fires. Will my rent go up?

California’s anti-price-gouging law is now in effect, which limits rent increases to no more than 10% above pre-emergency levels after an emergency is declared. The limit applies to both existing tenants and new leases.

Price-gouging protections apply anywhere in the state where displacement increases demand for housing, according to the California Apartment Assn.

The cap on rent increases triggered by the wildfires will expire Feb. 6, unless extended through executive orders or local declarations.

If you believe you have evidence of rent gouging, you can submit a complaint with the attorney general’s office at this webpage. The Coalition for Economic Survival, a tenants rights organization, is also holding Saturday workshops to inform people of their rights.

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Do I need to pay my utility bills?

Whether you have to continue paying your gas, water and power bills depends on your providers, where you live and the condition of your home.

Southern California Edison, which provides power to the Altadena area, suspended billing for all customers who live in mandatory evacuation zones, said company spokesperson Gabriela Ornelas. The suspensions went into effect Jan. 8. The company is also working with Los Angeles County to get the addresses of homes that have been completely destroyed, which will be permanently removed from the billing list.

Southern California Gas customers who lost their home or business do not need to contact the company to end service, said company spokesperson Erica Berardi. The natural gas provider will forgive the current bill and the most recent bill for customers whose properties have been destroyed.

Customers who have had their natural gas service turned off by SoCalGas for safety reasons will not be billed during the outage.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power paused billing notices in areas directly affected by the fires, said spokesperson Michelle Figueroa. It also encouraged customers facing financial hardship to contact the utility about managing their bill.

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“We are here to support you and make sure that your utility bill is not a burden at this time,” LADWP told customers.

Where can I get help finding temporary housing?

A rush to snatch up vacant units is on, and some landlords are raising rents far beyond what the anti-price-gouging law allows. This is going make it difficult for many people to find an affordable place to live.

If you can’t find housing with friends or family, there are a few options for free or discounted housing.

Airbnb.org, a nonprofit that works with Airbnb hosts, is providing free, temporary housing for those displaced by the fires, and you can sign up here.

Some hotels are offering discounted rates. The Balaciano Group, a landlord with several apartment complexes in the San Fernando Valley, is also offering discounts to fire victims.

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Is government aid available?

You can receive $770 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency under its serious needs assistance program, which can help you pay for things such as water, baby formula and food. To apply, call 1-800-621-3362 or visit https://www.disasterassistance.gov/.

FEMA also offers temporary housing assistance, however, California must request that assistance for it to kick in.

Amy Palmer, a spokesperson with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, said Monday evening that the state should formally make the request “within hours” and that it has been working with FEMA since last week to ensure the “fastest possible assistance.”

What can renters insurance do?

If you have renter’s insurance, file a claim as soon as you can.

Rick Dinger, president of Crescenta Valley Insurance, said renters policies often offer at least $25,000 to replace damaged personal property and help you find and pay for a new place to live.

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If you are one of the many people who do not have renters insurance, you can apply for a low-interest loan from the federal government to replace things such as clothes, furniture and cars. The loans are available through the Small Business Administration. You don’t need to own a business to qualify, and renters can borrow up to $100,000.

More information is available here.

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The Restaurant That Started Panda Express

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The Restaurant That Started Panda Express

This orange chicken has not been waiting for you on the steam table. It has not been bouncing and sweating in the darkness of a clamshell container while you wheel your luggage to the gate.

At Panda Inn, the Pasadena restaurant that started Panda Express, the orange chicken is made to order, strewed with whole dried chiles, scallions and a few threads of orange zest. It arrives craggy and glistening on a blue stoneware plate.

Is it good? Trick question! It is sticky, and it is familiar. It is relentlessly crunchy, with a flatly precise and habit-forming ratio of sweetness to acidity to heat. It is better, though not dramatically different from the one that waits on the steam table — always there, always waiting — but sometimes presentation can be everything.

Orange chicken, all dressed up, reminds me of when my parents set out cloth napkins and silverware while unpacking boxes of takeout, transferring everything to serving plates (yes, even pizza). I used to find this absolutely unhinged, but now I see it as a tender gesture that underscored the luxury of their taking the night off from cooking — they did it so rarely.

When the Cherng family opened Panda Inn in 1973, it was a popular Chinese restaurant that catered to the neighborhood. Early menus from the 1970s and ’80s included a bone-in tangerine-peel chicken, sizzling beef hot plates and a “Chinese Pasta” section of noodle dishes.

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It was a nice, sit-down restaurant that also did a bit of takeout and catering. It appealed to local families, but also local developers, who asked the owners to come up with a restaurant concept for the expansion of the Glendale Galleria mall. That restaurant was Panda Express.

Panda Express developed its orange chicken in 1987 and, depending on whom you ask, the dish was either the natural evolution of tangerine-peel chicken or a lightning invention of Andy Kao, a chef for the chain. Either way, it helped to embed a sweet, crowd-pleasing idea of American Chinese cuisine into the global culinary consciousness, now deployed through 2,500 or so fast-food counters.

It also propelled the family’s small business into a privately held empire: Along with Panda Express, the group owns Uncle Tetsu, Hibachi-San and more, and the Cherng family has a net worth of more than $3 billion.

At the end of last year, the company completed a major renovation to the Panda Inn in Pasadena, with a red carpet that leads into a sprawling, glamorous, wood-paneled dining room. The ceilings are high and vaulted. There are lush pots of violet orchids at the host stand and bar.

The vibe would seem clubby if Panda Inn weren’t warm and welcoming, always peppered with shouty families celebrating birthdays and special occasions. On my most recent visit, an impeccably well-dressed man in his 70s enjoyed a multicourse meal on his own, while the two men next to me chatted in Armenian over beers, kung pao chicken and sushi.

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Why is sushi on the menu? Because people love sushi, and because honey walnut shrimp was begging to be converted into a sloppy but delightful roll, but also because the restaurant’s founder and first chef, Ming-Tsai Cherng, lived and worked for some years in Yokohama’s Chinatown.

Why Taiwanese popcorn chicken and stone bowls of Taiwanese braised beef on rice? Because in the 1950s, Mr. Cherng worked as a chef at the Grand Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan.

You’re not thinking about all this as you sit down for a big meal at one of the round tables for 12, spinning the lazy susan with glee until the dish you want most is finally in front of you. But Panda Inn in Pasadena isn’t just a place for Panda Express superfans to come and pay their respects; it’s a devoted corporate flagship — a grand, Disneyfied spin through the family’s story that reframes this restaurant as proof of the American dream.

On the newly designed menu, there’s a photo of Ming-Tsai Cherng, born in Yangzhou, wearing a cook’s shirt and tossing food in a wok. Below, in a story about the immigrant family’s journey, Panda Inn describes itself as “a restaurant that embodies the pursuit of a better life for all.”

Such a frictionless story of the American dream seems fanciful if you so much as glance at the news, but it also doesn’t have much to do with why the dining room is consistently packed.

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Even though Panda Express was never my go-to, the orange chicken will occasionally stand in for the fried and glazed thing that I genuinely long for, but can never have again: the sweet-and-sour pork at a restaurant called Peking Inn that once existed in suburban London.

For my ninth birthday, I asked my parents to make me that sweet-and-sour pork, along with the sweet corn and chicken egg-drop soup. We had just moved 300 miles away, to France, and I was still angry and depressed about it, but I didn’t know how to say all that.

Instead, I dared them to try and make me happy. I dared them to recreate a dish from my favorite Chinese restaurant (impossible!), one whose vast pleasures and disappointments are still hard-wired into my brain.

Those particulars are different for everyone, but they fill out the story behind Panda Inn’s greatest hits, embedded like core memories. On any given night, there’s an order of orange chicken on nearly every table — a dish that isn’t just tangled up in its own corporate mythologies, but tangled up in our own.

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Their grandfather came to America and opened a nursery. A century later, it's closing

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Their grandfather came to America and opened a nursery.  A century later, it's closing

For the better part of a century, generations of the Nakai family have kept the shelves at Hawthorne Nursery stocked with seeds and fertilizers, the lot outside full of fruit trees, potted plants and succulents.

The job, for the past many years, has fallen to Kei Nakai, 70, and his brother, David. But they will be the last. When the brothers retire at the end of the month, the 97-year-old nursery and, with it almost a century of family and local history, will go too.

“It’s time,” Nakai said.

Kei Nakai is shown in the garden center at Hawthorne Nursery.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

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The nursery dates to 1927, when it was started by Kei and David’s grandfather, Minegusu Nakai, who had emigrated from Japan to Vancouver, Canada, in 1898 and moved to Hawthorne after marrying. Today, it is one of the few remaining plant nurseries in the Los Angeles area that were opened by Japanese Americans before the U.S. entered World War II at the end of 1941. Shortly after, 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in the U.S., many of them citizens, were forced into incarceration camps under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. Taking what they could carry, they sold or left behind their homes, possessions and businesses.

To avoid being imprisoned in a camp, the Nakai family fled to work on a sugar beet farm in Colorado, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy. Another nursery owner in Gardena leased the property while they were gone and when they returned at the end of the war they purchased more land to expand the nursery into what it is today.

Kei Nakai says he’ll miss the most his parents’ home — a skinny, green two-story building that adjoins the nursery on Grevillea Avenue.

He pointed out his childhood bedroom window and said he wants to take a pane of glass and part of the old molding to make a commemorative frame before it’s bulldozed when they sell. He said he hopes the land is turned into something nice.

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A scale is seen inside a plant nursery

A scale from 1927 is among the items at Hawthorne Nursery in Hawthorne. There is so much “old stuff” everywhere, owner Kei Nakai says.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

There is so much “old stuff” everywhere, he said, it’s hard to decide what to keep and what to toss. Antique items are part of what’s left on display across the nursery’s walls: A scale that’s been there since the nursery opened. The ‘50s retro blue sign outside. A letter board above the register that reads, “Beautifying Hawthorne for 97 years. Enjoy the outdoors. Go gardening.”

A weathered train car used for storage — older than the nursery itself, he thinks — might go too, Nakai said. He isn’t sure where it came from or how old it is, though he remembers his father bringing it onto the property at some point. The conservancy expressed some interest it in, but he hasn’t heard anything in a while.

The closure isn’t for a lack of business, Nakai said. He declined to share revenue information but said the business was doing well and there’s been an additional boost since the closure — and sales to clear inventory — was announced.

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Early on a recent Monday morning, the nursery was quiet other than an occasional phone call answered by his brother, David, in a back room. It was a far cry from the days during the COVID-19 pandemic, when South Bay residents were stuck at home and came looking for plants to cultivate and distract.

“This place was packed,” Nakai said. “It was never empty.”

A man in a gray vest and dark shirt stands near a chair

Kei Nakai said he has been discussing retirement over the last 15 years and was just waiting for the right time.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

A man wheeled his baby boy into the store to ask when the doors will shut for good. “I love this place,” he told Nakai.

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Kevin Baker, 45, frequented the shop when he first moved to the area from Pacific Palisades four years ago, drawn by the rare or interesting offerings not easily found at other nurseries, he said. He visited weekly, then monthly, then less frequently after his two children were born and his schedule got busier. “I’m glad I got to see it before it closed,” he said.

Nakai said he has been discussing retirement over the last 15 years and was just waiting for the right time. As a kid he worked for his parents in the shop and made 25 cents a day. When he graduated from UCLA in 1976 as an engineer, he said, government layoffs at the end of the Vietnam War meant he’d be jockeying for work right out of college. It made sense for him to take over the business instead.

His own children, now in their 30s, are happy with their own careers and have no interest in taking over, he said.

A photo, plaques and a Hawthorne Nursery sign hang on a brown wall

Memorabilia cover the walls of Hawthorne Nursery. The Nakai family “really did live, breathe and thrive in the plant world,” another nursery owner said.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

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The Nakai family brings a century of knowledge and skill to its horticulture work, said Russell Akiyama, a third- generation owner of the nearby Sunflower Farms Nursery in Torrance. “They really did live, breathe and thrive in the plant world,” he said.

Nakai spent time studying the Dudleya genus, succulents native to the West Coast, and contributed to its taxonomy, or scientific classification. In a presentation recorded in 1992 at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, a younger Nakai flips through pictures and describes different species of Dudleya plants.

And David Nakai “could make something grow out of a rock,” Akiyama joked. He recalled once seeing David propagating a flourishing flat of white wisteria, which is particularly hard to grow, and wondered how he’d managed to do it. And the nursery’s passion fruit, which Akiyama called “the best passion fruit you’ve ever tasted,” will live on in Sunflower Farms’ own collection, he said.

As Hawthorne Nursery prepares to close, Akiyama said he takes solace in seeing the influence the Nakai family and other Japanese American nursery owners have had when he drives through neighborhoods in Torrance, Gardena and other cities nearby and sees trees cultivated by the nursery owners decades ago.

“Our landscaping is just as much of a monument to who we are as our buildings,” he said. “There is no full, total goodbye. It’s just an, ‘I’ll see you later.’”

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AP Accuses White House of Violating First Amendment

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AP Accuses White House of Violating First Amendment

The Associated Press on Wednesday accused the White House of violating the First Amendment and called on the Trump administration to stop blocking its reporters from press events.

Julie Pace, the executive editor of The A.P., said in a letter addressed to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, that the White House had blocked A.P. journalists from attending two press events with President Trump on Tuesday: an executive order signing in the Oval Office and an evening press event in the Diplomatic Room.

Ms. Pace said that the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, had earlier informed an A.P. reporter that the news organization’s access to the Oval Office would be restricted if the news organization did not start using the term “Gulf of America” to refer to the Gulf of Mexico. On his first day in office, Mr. Trump ordered U.S. authorities to make the change to official maps in an executive order.

“The actions taken by the White House were plainly intended to punish The A.P. for the content of its speech,” Ms. Pace wrote in the letter. “It is among the most basic tenets of the First Amendment that the government cannot retaliate against the public or the press for what they say. This is viewpoint discrimination based on a news organization’s editorial choices and a clear violation of the First Amendment.”

Ms. Pace said The A.P. was prepared to “vigorously defend its constitutional rights.”

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The A.P. had issued editorial guidance on the geographical name change, explaining that it would continue calling the body of water the Gulf of Mexico because Mr. Trump’s executive order only carried authority within the U.S. and had not been recognized by Mexico. The outlet did, however, say it would refer to Denali, the peak in Alaska, as Mt. McKinley, a change Mr. Trump declared in the same order.

At the White House briefing room podium on Wednesday, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, talked about the administration’s commitment to the First Amendment while maintaining that the administration was within its rights to single out The A.P.

“It is a privilege to cover this White House,” she said, calling her own role a privilege, too. “Nobody has a right to go into the Oval Office and ask the president of the United States questions.”

She added that other reporters with credentials were not part of the press pool and said, “We reserve the right to decide who gets to go into the Oval Office.”

Asked if the standard was being set for how news outlets would be dealt with if they did not use “Gulf of America,” she did not directly answer but said she’d been clear “that if we feel there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable.” She maintained that “Gulf of America” was the name for the body of water and said she did not understand why some news outlets were not using it.

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Later on Wednesday, another A.P. reporter was blocked from an Oval Office event, this time the swearing in of Tulsi Gabbard as the director of national intelligence, according to an A.P. spokesman. Ms. Pace, the executive editor, added in a statement that the outlet was “deeply concerned that the White House continues to prevent AP reporters from doing their job covering the president.”

First Amendment supporters and freedom of the press groups objected strongly to the Trump administration’s moves on Tuesday. Timothy Richardson, the journalism and disinformation program director at PEN America, a free-expression nonprofit, called the actions “retribution, plain and simple, and a shameful attempt to bully the press into ideological compliance.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association president, Eugene Daniels, said in a statement on Tuesday that the White House “cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decisions.”

Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesman for The New York Times, said in a statement on Wednesday: “We stand by The Associated Press in objecting to governmental retribution for editorial decisions that the government disagrees with.”

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