For the past 70 years, Fox’s Restaurant has served pancakes, pork loin and catfish to the residents of Altadena, Los Angeles County. That was until last week’s devastating wildfire reduced it to a charred wreck, sparing only a roadside diner sign.
Paul Rosenbluh, the owner of Fox, is now wondering if it makes sense to stick around and rebuild. “You can only live in a disaster zone for so long,” he says. “At some point you say, ‘I just don’t want to deal with this shit anymore.'”
Tens of thousands of others across Los Angeles face the same dilemma — whether to stay in areas turned into smoldering mounds by one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history or move somewhere less vulnerable to climate change-related disasters.
The wildfires, fueled by strong seasonal winds known as Santa Anas, started in the affluent coastal neighborhood of Pacific Palisades on the morning of January 7. Other fires soon broke out across the city and its suburbs, leaving at least 27 people dead, destroying more than 12,000 structures and forcing an estimated 180,000 people to evacuate their homes.
The potential economic loss was estimated at between $135 billion and $150 billion, far more than the $16.5 billion record set by the Camp Fire in northern California in 2018, which was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the state’s history.
The two worst fires, the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire in Altadena, have continued to burn since Friday. But Karen Bass, the mayor of LA, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom already this week issued emergency executive orders to jump-start the rebuilding process. They promise to cut red tape to speed things up, including streamlining planning reviews and waiving environmental requirements.
“People have lost their homes, but they’re also ready to get back up and running,” Bass, who has faced sharp criticism for her handling of the crisis, said this week. “If your property has burned down and you want to rebuild it exactly as it was before, you shouldn’t have to go through an elaborate and time-consuming permitting process.”
Still, behind the renewal push lie some tough questions: Can the city afford the costs of rebuilding areas that are becoming uninsured? Are the worst affected areas even safe for human habitation? And does Los Angeles as configured today, with houses dramatically set on hillsides and forests opposite, make sense in an increasingly warming world?
The fires raised “significant questions about the long-term sustainability of a city fundamentally built on single-family sprawl and development,” says Michael Maltzan, an LA architect who designed downtown’s Sixth Street Viaduct and advocates for sustainable, high-density housing in the city. .
“Is this the moment when we should, in a radical way, rethink the way we live in the city?” he says. “Fires happen every few years on different scales. As much as we wish this was a one-time anomaly, it’s not — it’s part of the regular cycle of life in Southern California.”
Altadena’s beautiful natural setting, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, is what drew people to want to live there. The city became a haven for middle-class black families pushed out of white-dominated neighborhoods.
But the terrain is dry, with little rainfall, making it a perfect environment for wildfires. Conditions become dangerous with the Santa Anas, the so-called “devil winds,” blowing in from the desert and drying up the vegetation.
Shawna Dawson Beer, a marketing consultant whose Altadena cottage burned down in the Eaton fire, has become convinced that the danger of living in Southern California is growing. “The fires highlighted the fact that none of these communities are safe anymore,” she says. “The high risk area has tripled.”
California has attempted to “fireproof” such neighborhoods with a model building code that sets rules for building homes in fire-prone areas. Residents must create a 100-foot defensible area around their homes and clear combustible materials to provide a safe perimeter for firefighters.
But that hasn’t helped much in the recent fires. “The winds were so strong the firefighters couldn’t do anything,” said Moira Conlon, founder of PR firm Financial Profiles, who lost her home in Pacific Palisades, an upscale neighborhood home to many Hollywood stars and studio executives.
Conlon is unsure about rebuilding. “This is a toxic waste zone with no infrastructure,” she says.
The cost of rebuilding at a time when thousands of others are also rebuilding could end up being prohibitive, she adds. “Can you imagine the shortage of materials and labor we will see? Do I want to spend the next five years of my life fighting for builders?”
And there is also the danger of new forest fires. It is no longer just a seasonal hazard, but an ever-present risk at a time when a changing climate is fueling high temperatures and long droughts. “It’s scary and God knows it could happen again,” says Conlon.
The threat of natural disasters has always been considered a fair price for the privilege of living in LA, with its dramatic coastline and Mediterranean climate.
In 1938, floods occurred that killed 115 people and destroyed more than 5,000 homes. In 1994, the Northridge earthquake destroyed buildings and caused up to $40 billion in damage. Forest fires have always been a problem, especially during the dry period between August and October.
In his book The Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of DisasterLA writer Mike Davis has charted the history of wildfires in the coastal paradise of Malibu, which he has declared “the wildfire capital of North America, and perhaps the world.” He questioned the cycle of rebuilding after each fire, which he said was made possible by cheap fire insurance for decades. The result was ever-increasing “belt of fire suburbs”.
That cycle may now be broken. Many homes destroyed by fires this month were not insured. Companies like Allstate and State Farm recently stopped selling new home insurance policies in California, blaming regulatory restrictions for rising prices that have made covering losses more of a challenge.
State Farm also announced last year that it would not renew policies for 72,000 California homes and apartments, including 69 percent of insurance plans in Pacific Palisades — though it partially reversed the decision after this month’s fires. Many homeowners abandoned by State Farm turned instead to California’s state Fair Plan, which provides up to $3 million in coverage for a residential property — not a lot considering the value of real estate in these parts.
The uneven insurance picture may mean that, regardless of the political rhetoric, it will be difficult to get back on track. “Many individuals will not have insurance, and many more will be underinsured, which means people will be under pressure to cut as many corners as possible in rebuilding,” says Maltzan. “This means that houses will be built worse than they were originally.”
Dawson Beer’s house was insured, but she fears her policy won’t stretch to the enormous cost of rebuilding a new house in Altadena. “Costs are going to go up significantly, just based on supply and demand,” she says. “I’ve heard it will cost $700-$900 per square foot to rebuild, and no insurance company will cover that.”
Then, once the homes are rebuilt, the new insurance premiums could end up being too high for most homeowners, as more companies change policies to reflect the increased fire risk. “When we come back and rebuild, isn’t there a risk that our community can’t be insured?” she says.
The devastation comes with California already in the grip of a cost-of-living crisis. The sudden appearance of thousands of homeless people looking for a roof over their heads will only worsen the city’s chronic housing shortage. The average price of a home in Los Angeles is already over $1 million, after rising 30 percent between 2018 and 2023.
“The big issue is housing affordability,” says Manfred Keil, chief economist of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, a nonprofit development organization. “Housing costs will rise after [fires]people will not be able to afford it and then they will start leaving.”
There is precedent for this: Six years after a camp fire destroyed Paradise, California, the town has a population of about 9,300, compared to 26,500 before the fire.
Despite promises from Bass and Newsom, red tape will also slow the rebuilding process, says Edward Ring of the California Policy Center, an education foundation. “If you look at how long it takes to get a building permit in California, you can expect to start construction in only three years,” he says. “You’re going to spend $100,000 on permits and fees. Imagine what that means when you’re trying to rebuild.”
In the meantime, it is unclear who will actually foot the bill for rebuilding not only the houses but also the infrastructure destroyed by the fires.
“We want to rebuild, but how long will it take?” [authorities] to return overheads? How do you plug in a saw?” says Rosenbluh, a restaurateur. “The fatigue and the length of time will take a toll. People might just get insurance and move to Virginia.”
All this contributes to the already big problems of Los Angeles, where Hollywood is fighting and the stubborn crisis of homelessness remains. City leaders will have to oversee recovery from the fire as they also prepare to host eight matches of next year’s Fifa World Cup and the 2028 Olympics.
But the city has gone through “very traumatic times,” notes Ian Campbell, a longtime LA businessman who played a key role in the California Department of Commerce and later served as vice president of PR firm Abernathy MacGregor. In addition to floods, earthquakes and fires, LA also survived the downsizing of the airline industry — a major employer — after the end of the Cold War, he notes.
“LA has a long history of these jaw-dropping moments, partly because we live on such low topography,” he says. “This could be another time of reckoning for Los Angeles. Will the city continue to allow people to live in areas that are at risk and should the whole society subsidize it? Those are the things they will have to face.”
