The carpeted floor of the main theater at Vidiots is drizzled with popcorn as dozens of children and their families crowd around a puppet show. Show tunes blast over the speaker as a puppet named Yellow Cat (who is, indeed, a yellow cat) prances and twirls across the floor.

Vidiots is a historic theater in northeast Los Angeles, a few miles from where fires are still burning in the Altadena and Pasadena neighborhoods. Vidiots joined forces with the Bob Baker Marionette Theater nearby to give families and parents a way to take their minds off the devastation.

Diego Montoya shows off a marionette puppet.

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“The show was planned as a way to give families some relief, an opportunity to do something that’s fun and silly. To sit back and get away from the chaos of the world right now,” says Yellow Cat’s puppet master, Diego Montoya. Vidiots also screened movies and gave out pajamas and coloring books. Many of the families at the free event earlier this week are victims of the fire in one way or another — some have lost homes, others have children who have lost schools.

Three-year-old Leo Bane is one of the spectators of the puppet show. Part of his school burned down in the Eaton Fire, so this event is a welcome distraction for Leo and his mother, Tania Verafield.

“I think this is the only two hours I haven’t been constantly checking my phone and trying to get updates and I feel just some relief at watching my son giggle [as he watches] these amazing puppets,” says Verafield.

Iris Wong (left) sits with her mothe, Tina Yen, and Tania Verafield holds her son, Leo Bane, as they watch the show.

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Schools in the Pasadena and Altadena areas are largely closed as the fires continue to burn. The YMCA and local government are offering child care, but slots are filling up fast, and it’s falling on many families to look after their young ones. Many told me they’re relying on each other to get through this time.

“People don’t know LA. It’s an amazing community,” says Ursula Knudsen. Both of her children lost their school campuses to the fire, and her younger daughter saw her school in flames as she evacuated with her father. Their home was also severely damaged.

“It’s not like Altadena needed a tragedy to come together as a community. That’s what’s wild. It’s only showing up 100 times more than it already was,” Knudsen says.

Buster Balloon shows off a puppet to children at the Vidiots theater.

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Coming to this free event with puppets, movies, and even a 6-foot-tall roving giraffe mascot has brought a moment of relief for Knudsen and her friend, Kate Mallor, whose children’s schools were also severely damaged by the fire. “It’s been so beautiful to see other moms here and to see our classmates and be able to hug,” says Mallor.

The puppet show in the main theater draws to a close with a grand finale. Yellow Cat is dancing to Barbra Streisand’s “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” and that’s no coincidence, says Montoya, the puppeteer.

“It’s got a great message, you know, ‘Don’t rain on my parade, I’m going to have fun no matter what,’” Montoya says. “‘I’m going to do what brings me joy.’”

People walk by the exterior of Vidiots, which has a sign that says, “Here for you LA.”

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The California Newsroom is following the extreme weather from across the region. Click through to LAist’s coverage for the latest.

The tens of thousands of people displaced by the devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area are increasingly anxious to know when they can return home — or to what remains of their properties.

Officials say crews are working to reopen closed areas, snuffing out hot spots and clearing hazardous debris, but no timeline has been announced for lifting the evacuation orders.

Experts have warned that it could take weeks before people can return to the hardest-hit neighborhoods because of the amount of work needed to ensure the safety of residents.

Firefighters are still trying to contain the Palisades and Eaton fires, the biggest ones in the Los Angeles region, a prerequisite to allowing people to return. Both remained largely out of control on Wednesday evening, though their growth had slowed.

Captain Erik Scott of the Los Angeles Fire Department said the timeline for people returning to their neighborhoods can vary. It depends on the extent of the damage, which needs to be mapped and carefully assessed in every impacted community, he added. There is also the threat of hazardous materials, such as asbestos and chemicals.

“We want people to have realistic expectations,” Mr. Scott said.

It took weeks in the aftermath of some previous destructive blazes for people to return. In 2018, the Camp fire destroyed most of Paradise in Northern California and killed 85 people. The final evacuation orders in that town were lifted more than a month after the fire started.

Similarly, after a devastating fire in Lahaina on the island of Maui killed more than 100 people in 2023, it was nearly two months before the first of the thousands of displaced residents could return to their properties.

The suppression of the fire is only one step in the process, according to fire officials. There are yet more safety and infrastructure issues to tackle. Workers need to clear and replace downed power lines, stabilize partially collapsed buildings and remove toxic ash from the ground.

“That’s why the orders are still in place,” said David Acuna, a battalion chief with Cal Fire. “It’s not just about the fire. There are all these other elements to address.”

The grim search for human remains has further complicated efforts to clear neighborhoods. Officials are using cadaver dogs to comb through the thousands of structures damaged or destroyed in the fires to locate remains.

“We have people literally looking for the remains of your neighbors,” Sheriff Robert Luna of Los Angeles County said at a news conference on Monday. “Please be patient with us.”

Even for those whose homes survive, the lifting of evacuation orders does not necessarily mean they can return to live in them right away, warned Michael Wara, a climate policy expert at Stanford University.

“There’s going to be smoke damage,” he said. “There’s going to be the fact that you don’t have utilities.”

In Pacific Palisades, the recovery process was underway in its incinerated downtown. The air buzzed with the sound of jackhammers, bulldozers and tree shredders. Workers cleared debris, pulled down charred utility poles and ground up the skeletal limbs of burned eucalyptus trees.

Ali Sharifi managed to inspect his lower Palisades home on Tuesday. Aside from a burned backyard fence, it was intact. Yet the destruction around it, including charred schools, churches and grocery stores, gave him second thoughts about returning.

“Who wants to live in a ghost town?” Mr. Sharifi said.

Erica Fischer, an associate professor at Oregon State University who studied the aftermath of the Camp fire, said that a fast recovery is not always a good one, especially if it means rebuilding in ways that contributed to the disaster.

Of the ongoing evacuation orders in California, she said, “I know it’s not convenient, and it’s disruptive, but it keeps people out of harm’s way.”

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US President Joe Biden has warned that an “oligarchy is taking shape in America” that risks damaging democracy, as he blasted an emerging “tech industrial complex” for delivering a dangerous concentration of wealth and power in the country.

Biden’s comments during a farewell address to Americans from the Oval Office on Wednesday night amount to a veiled attack on Donald Trump’s closest allies in corporate America, including tech billionaire Elon Musk, just five days before he transfers power to the Republican.

Biden said he wanted to warn the country of the “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people” and the danger that their “abuse of power is left unchecked”.

He cited late president Dwight Eisenhower’s warning in his 1961 farewell address of a military-industrial complex and said the interaction between government and technology risked being similarly pernicious.

“I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well. Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact checking,” Biden said.

Biden’s words were a reference to the world’s richest man, Musk, the owner of social media platform X and the founder of electric-vehicle maker Tesla, who gave massive financial backing to Trump’s campaign and has become one of his closest allies during the transition to Trump’s new administration.

Some of Silicon Valley’s top executives, from Jeff Bezos of Amazon to Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, have also embraced Trump since his electoral victory and are expected to have prime spots at the inauguration ceremony in Washington on Monday.

Biden also used his remarks to cast a positive light on his one-term presidency, which ended with the big political failure of him dropping his re-election bid belatedly in late July, passing the torch of the campaign against Trump to vice-president Kamala Harris — an effort that ended in a bitter defeat.

Biden’s approval ratings have hit new lows as he bows out from the presidency and a political career in Washington that has spanned more than five decades. Just 36.7 per cent of Americans approve of his performance on the job, and 55.8 per cent disapprove, according to the FiveThirtyEight polling average.

Biden said he hoped his accomplishments would be judged more favourably in the future.

“It will take time to feel the full impact of all we’ve done together, but the seeds are planted, and they’ll grow and they’ll bloom for decades to come,” he said.

Biden has not only faced seething criticism from Republicans, but also rebukes from Democrats who blame him for seeking re-election despite his advanced age. He is now 82.

Biden’s presidency was defined by a record-breaking jobs market and a robust recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as a series of legislative accomplishments on the economy. But the pain of high inflation became a massive political vulnerability for him.

In foreign affairs, he took credit for western support for Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in 2022, but his response to conflict in the Middle East, including staunch support for Israel’s war in Gaza, drew a strong backlash from progressive Democrats, undermining the unity of his political coalition.

It was not until Wednesday, with five days to go before he left office, that Biden — with help from Trump aides — was able to broker a ceasefire deal to free hostages held by Hamas. 

“This plan was developed and negotiated by my team and will be largely implemented by the incoming administration. That’s why I told my team to keep the incoming administration fully informed, because that’s how it should be, working together as Americans,” he said at the start of his address.