Los Angelenos Have a Long Road to Recovery Ahead of Them

Two weeks after two of California’s most destructive wildfires on record sparked on the same day in Los Angeles, tens of thousands of displaced residents are taking the first steps of their recovery processes. Officials have started lifting evacuation orders for both the Eaton and Palisades fires, allowing families to return to their properties for the first time. For those whose houses survived, that means suiting up in personal protective equipment and cautiously wiping away ash, throwing out spoiled food, and assessing the damage from smoke, heat, and flames. For those whose houses were lost, it means sorting through wreckage to see what, if anything, can be salvaged.

This moment marks the first of many milestones fire survivors will encounter in the weeks, months, and years to come. Urban wildfires launch complicated timelines that involve a braiding of bureaucratic checklists and personal choices. The volume of decisions can be daunting in both volume and scope, stretched over the course of months, if not years.

It took about 15 months for the first house to be rebuilt and occupied following the 2023 Lahaina Fire in Maui. Five years after the 2018 Camp Fire — which is currently the only California wildfire more devastating than the Eaton Fire — the hard-hit town of Paradise had still rebuilt only about a third of its lost structures. The recovery from the 2021 Marshall Fire in Colorado has notably outpaced many others. There, about two-thirds of the lost homes were rebuilt within the first three years, but that still leaves hundreds wading through their next steps with waning support.

Jennifer Gray Thompson, founder and CEO of the nonprofit group After the Fire U.S.A., told me it’s important to understand that every disaster — and therefore every recovery — is different. Her organization helps communities through this process, building on the knowledge of survivors from previous wildfires, and she said each community tends to make some adaptations and improvements. But the experiences of other wildfire-impacted areas can offer L.A.’s fire survivors an idea of the steps and potential concerns they can expect to encounter next.

Take the re-entry process. As Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass explained in a press conference on Monday, “Re-entry is based on safety.” And just because the fire has passed doesn’t mean the danger has: “Firefighters are still at work to prevent fires, to prevent flare-ups; there are hazardous materials being dealt with; utility repairs are underway; or there is other emergency work that makes it unsafe to be in the area,” Bass said. So far, officials doing this work have identified more than 16,000 destroyed structures and 28 fatalities from the two fires.

This waiting phase can be particularly challenging for those who evacuated, said Thompson. The adrenaline that helped impacted families make it through the fire might be waning under the weight of time, and the road ahead can start to feel overwhelming as various government agencies come to town and task forces pop up. It can take weeks for some evacuees to get the go-ahead to return home, particularly if they choose to wait for hazardous materials to get cleared, as L.A. County Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer has recommended.

That brings us to the two phases of cleanup: removing hazardous materials and disposing of debris. Since the L.A. wildfires are a federally declared disaster, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is able to direct resources toward these tasks, with more than 500 Environmental Protection Agency employees currently surveying the burned areas to identify and collect of things like propane tanks, batteries, and other contaminants, which are packaged up and then disposed of off-site. This reduces the risks for residents returning to their properties, removing some obvious sources of chemicals and toxins like heavy metals and asbestos.

Once residents do make it back, they’ll have the opportunity to both survey and sift through their homes and choose whether they would like the government to remove the remains or contract out to a private company. This part of the process traditionally takes months, if not longer, depending on the scope of the damage, volume of the debris, and cooperation of the residents. For perspective, one year after the Lahaina Fire, debris removal was still ongoing and had racked up a more than $1 billion bill. The Army Corps of Engineers, which led this effort in Lahaina, will take charge again in L.A., with the L.A. Department of Public Works overseeing both phases from the local level.

While these are the larger hurdles residents will need to cross on the property level in order to rebuild, there will also be a number of government and utility-led efforts to make their homes habitable. That includes addressing issues with electric and water systems, from downed lines to blocked or broken sewers. These efforts are now underway in both burned areas, with utility trucks becoming a common sight across the county.

All of this can clear the way for construction to begin on the impacted properties, which comes with its own set of timelines, costs, and players. California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have issued executive orders to reduce some of the bureaucracy that often accompanies permitting and building in L.A. These include suspending environmental reviews, expediting permitting, and clearing the way to “rebuild homes as they were.”

Still, residents will have to get those permits approved and source labor and materials for the project in what’s become a crowded national market. Other disasters, such as last year’s one-two punch of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, have created unusually high competition, with one development firm executive telling the Wall Street Journal he foresees a “Hunger Games-style competition for materials and labor.”

Fire survivors will also need to find the funds to put towards these projects, whether that’s through government aid, insurance, fundraising campaigns, or digging deep into their own pockets. Robert Fenton, Jr., a FEMA regional administrator, said that as of Wednesday, the agency has registered nearly 100,000 fire survivors to receive aid so far, including money to cover immediate needs for evacuees and to provide personal property and displacement assistance. But many previous disaster survivors will attest that navigating FEMA’s system can be challenging, particularly if you are also insured. Insurance claims need to be filed first — so that FEMA avoids duplicating aid homeowners are already receiving — another process that is known to be both slow and time-consuming, requiring a litany of paperwork and receipts.

And all of this is assuming no additional disasters occur during the recovery process. Wildfire-scorched areas are vulnerable to debris flows when it rains, as it is forecasted to do for the first time in months this weekend. Speaking at a county press conference Wednesday, Mark Pestrella, director of the L.A. Department of Public Works, said his office will be conducting 24/7 storm patrols, making assessments of burned properties and deploying sediment traps and sandbags in at-risk areas. Other weather conditions, like extreme heat or high winds, can also suspend operations and further delay residents from returning.

Overall, Thompson referred to rebuilding after a wildfire as “the biggest group project most people will have ever done in their lives.” Individuals, government officials, non-profits, attorneys, insurers, utilities, developers, and all sorts of laborers will be a part of the process, each bringing their own perspectives, needs, and costs to the table — some complementary and some competing.

Already, there is tension between the desire to rebuild for displaced residents and the desire to make the impacted area more resilient in the face of future hazards. In her newsletter, Susan Crawford, a climate adaptation expert and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, described the urge to quickly restore what was lost in L.A. as “both understandable and unthinkable” given the county’s ongoing housing crisis and wildfire risk. (Crawford is also a Heatmap contributor.)

“It’s obvious we should be taking a step back and thinking how and where we are rethinking how and where we live, but it may be too much to contemplate in this thickly populated area,” Crawford told me.

For those in L.A. trying to find their own way forward through these agencies and agendas, Thompson recommends turning to others who understand what you’re going through, like your neighbors. Establishing ways to share information, support, and organize can help ensure your community’s concerns and priorities are taken into account in the recovery process.

“You can actually do this,” she said. “It feels right now like it can’t, and it’s going to take time and it comes in stages. But you’re not alone.”