You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
Recovering from a disaster like the Palisades or Eaton fire can take years. Here’s what they can expect.
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.”
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.
This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Hiya Brian. So why’d you get into the hail issue?
Obviously solar panels are made with glass that can allow the sunlight to come through. People have to remember that when you install a project, you’re financing it for 35 to 40 years. While the odds of you getting significant hail in California or Arizona are low, it happens a lot throughout the country. And if you think about some of these large projects, they may be in the middle of nowhere, but they are taking hundreds if not thousands of acres of land in some cases. So the chances of them encountering large hail over that lifespan is pretty significant.
We partnered with one of the country’s foremost experts on hail and developed a really interesting technology that can digest radar data and tell folks if they’re developing a project what the [likelihood] will be if there’s significant hail.
Solar panels can withstand one-inch hail – a golfball size – but once you get over two inches, that’s when hail starts breaking solar panels. So it’s important to understand, first and foremost, if you’re developing a project, you need to know the frequency of those events. Once you know that, you need to start thinking about how to design a system to mitigate that risk.
The government agencies that look over land use, how do they handle this particular issue? Are there regulations in place to deal with hail risk?
The regulatory aspects still to consider are about land use. There are authorities with jurisdiction at the federal, state, and local level. Usually, it starts with the local level and with a use permit – a conditional use permit. The developer goes in front of the township or the city or the county, whoever has jurisdiction of wherever the property is going to go. That’s where it gets political.
To answer your question about hail, I don’t know if any of the [authority having jurisdictions] really care about hail. There are folks out there that don’t like solar because it’s an eyesore. I respect that – I don’t agree with that, per se, but I understand and appreciate it. There’s folks with an agenda that just don’t want solar.
So okay, how can developers approach hail risk in a way that makes communities more comfortable?
The bad news is that solar panels use a lot of glass. They take up a lot of land. If you have hail dropping from the sky, that’s a risk.
The good news is that you can design a system to be resilient to that. Even in places like Texas, where you get large hail, preparing can mean the difference between a project that is destroyed and a project that isn’t. We did a case study about a project in the East Texas area called Fighting Jays that had catastrophic damage. We’re very familiar with the area, we work with a lot of clients, and we found three other projects within a five-mile radius that all had minimal damage. That simple decision [to be ready for when storms hit] can make the complete difference.
And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.
1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.
2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.
3. Garrett County, Maryland – Fight readers tell me they’d like to hear a piece of good news for once, so here’s this: A 300-megawatt solar project proposed by REV Solar in rural Maryland appears to be moving forward without a hitch.
4. Stark County, Ohio – The Ohio Public Siting Board rejected Samsung C&T’s Stark Solar project, citing “consistent opposition to the project from each of the local government entities and their impacted constituents.”
5. Ingham County, Michigan – GOP lawmakers in the Michigan State Capitol are advancing legislation to undo the state’s permitting primacy law, which allows developers to evade municipalities that deny projects on unreasonable grounds. It’s unlikely the legislation will become law.
6. Churchill County, Nevada – Commissioners have upheld the special use permit for the Redwood Materials battery storage project we told you about last week.
Long Islanders, meanwhile, are showing up in support of offshore wind, and more in this week’s edition of The Fight.
Local renewables restrictions are on the rise in the Hawkeye State – and it might have something to do with carbon pipelines.
Iowa’s known as a renewables growth area, producing more wind energy than any other state and offering ample acreage for utility-scale solar development. This has happened despite the fact that Iowa, like Ohio, is home to many large agricultural facilities – a trait that has often fomented conflict over specific projects. Iowa has defied this logic in part because the state was very early to renewables, enacting a state portfolio standard in 1983, signed into law by a Republican governor.
But something else is now on the rise: Counties are passing anti-renewables moratoria and ordinances restricting solar and wind energy development. We analyzed Heatmap Pro data on local laws and found a rise in local restrictions starting in 2021, leading to nearly 20 of the state’s 99 counties – about one fifth – having some form of restrictive ordinance on solar, wind or battery storage.
What is sparking this hostility? Some of it might be counties following the partisan trend, as renewable energy has struggled in hyper-conservative spots in the U.S. But it may also have to do with an outsized focus on land use rights and energy development that emerged from the conflict over carbon pipelines, which has intensified opposition to any usage of eminent domain for energy development.
The central node of this tension is the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline. As we explained in a previous edition of The Fight, the carbon transportation network would cross five states, and has galvanized rural opposition against it. Last November, I predicted the Summit pipeline would have an easier time under Trump because of his circle’s support for oil and gas, as well as the placement of former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum as interior secretary, as Burgum was a major Summit supporter.
Admittedly, this prediction has turned out to be incorrect – but it had nothing to do with Trump. Instead, Summit is now stalled because grassroots opposition to the pipeline quickly mobilized to pressure regulators in states the pipeline is proposed to traverse. They’re aiming to deny the company permits and lobbying state legislatures to pass bills banning the use of eminent domain for carbon pipelines. One of those states is South Dakota, where the governor last month signed an eminent domain ban for CO2 pipelines. On Thursday, South Dakota regulators denied key permits for the pipeline for the third time in a row.
Another place where the Summit opposition is working furiously: Iowa, where opposition to the CO2 pipeline network is so intense that it became an issue in the 2020 presidential primary. Regulators in the state have been more willing to greenlight permits for the project, but grassroots activists have pressured many counties into some form of opposition.
The same counties with CO2 pipeline moratoria have enacted bans or land use restrictions on developing various forms of renewables, too. Like Kossuth County, which passed a resolution decrying the use of eminent domain to construct the Summit pipeline – and then three months later enacted a moratorium on utility-scale solar.
I asked Jessica Manzour, a conservation program associate with Sierra Club fighting the Summit pipeline, about this phenomenon earlier this week. She told me that some counties are opposing CO2 pipelines and then suddenly tacking on or pivoting to renewables next. In other cases, counties with a burgeoning opposition to renewables take up the pipeline cause, too. In either case, this general frustration with energy companies developing large plots of land is kicking up dust in places that previously may have had a much lower opposition risk.
“We painted a roadmap with this Summit fight,” said Jess Manzour, a campaigner with Sierra Club involved in organizing opposition to the pipeline at the grassroots level, who said zealous anti-renewables activists and officials are in some cases lumping these items together under a broad umbrella. ”I don’t know if it’s the people pushing for these ordinances, rather than people taking advantage of the situation.”