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For the past 70 years, Fox’s Restaurant has served pancakes, pork and catfish to the people of Altadena, Los Angeles County. That was until last week’s devastating wildfires reduced it to a charred ruin, leaving only the diner’s roadside sign alive.
Paul Rosenbluh, Fox’s owner, is now wondering if it makes sense to stick around to rebuild. “You can only stay in a disaster zone for so long,” he says. “At some point you say, ‘I don’t want to deal with this shit anymore.'”
Hundreds of thousands of other people across Los Angeles face the same dilemma — whether to stick it out in an area left smoldering by the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, or move somewhere less vulnerable to climate change-related disasters.
The wildfires, fueled by powerful monsoon winds known as the Santa Anas, started on the morning of January 7 in the affluent coastal Pacific Palisades area. Other fires soon spread across the city and its suburbs, leaving at least 27 dead, devastated. More than 12,000 structures and nearly 180,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes.
Potential economic losses are estimated at between $135 billion and $150 billion, far exceeding the $16.5 billion record set by the 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California, which was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the state’s history.
The two worst fires in Altadena, the Palisades and Eaton fires, continued to burn through Friday. But Karen Bass, the mayor of LA, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have already issued emergency executive orders this week to begin the rebuilding process. They are promising to cut red tape to speed things up, including streamlining planning reviews and dropping environmental requirements.
“People have lost their homes, but they’re also ready to get back up and running,” Bass, who has faced harsh criticism of his handling of the crisis, said this week. “If your property burns down and you want to rebuild it as it was, you don’t have to go through an elaborate, time-consuming permitting process.”
Yet some difficult questions dogged the rebuilding: Can the city afford to rebuild an area that is becoming uninsurable? Are the most affected areas safe for people to live in? And does Los Angeles as it is configured today, dramatically positioned on hillsides and homes perched on forested land, still make sense in a warming world?
The fire “raises significant questions about the long-term sustainability of a city that is fundamentally based on sprawl and single-family development,” said Michael Maltzan, an L.A.-based architect who designed the Sixth Street Viaduct Bridge downtown and is a proponent. Sustainable, high-density housing in the city.
“Is this a moment where we should, in a radical way, rethink the way we live in cities?” “Every few years there are fires of different scales,” he said. As much as we’d like this to be a one-time anomaly, it’s not — it’s part of a regular cycle of life in Southern California.”
Altadena’s beautiful natural setting at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains attracted people to live there. The city became a haven for middle-class black families who had been pushed out of white-dominated neighborhoods.
But the terrain is dry, with little rainfall and therefore a suitable environment for wildfires. The situation becomes dangerous with the Santa Anas, the so-called “devil winds”, which blow from the desert and wither the vegetation.
Shawna Dawson Bear, a marketing consultant whose Altadena cottage burned in the Eaton fire, is convinced that the dangers of living in Southern California are on the rise. “The fires have underscored the fact that none of these communities are safe anymore,” she says “High-risk areas have tripled in size.”
California has attempted to “fire proof” such neighborhoods with a model building code that sets rules for building homes in fire-prone areas. Residents must create a 100-foot defensible space around their homes and clear flammable materials to provide a safe perimeter for firefighters.
But that hasn’t helped much in the recent flare-up. “The winds were so strong there was nothing firefighters could do,” said Moira Conlon, founder of PR firm Financial Profile, who lost her home in Pacific Palisades, an upscale neighborhood home to many Hollywood stars and studio executives.
Conlon is uncertain about rebuilding. “The place is a toxic waste zone with no infrastructure,” he says
The cost of rebuilding at a time when thousands of others are also rebuilding can be prohibitive, he added. “Can you imagine the material and labor shortages we’re going to see? Do I want to spend the next five years of my life fighting for manufacturers?
And then there’s the threat of more wildfires. They are no longer merely a seasonal hazard but an ever-present risk at a time when a changing climate fuels rising temperatures and prolonged droughts. “It’s horrible and God knows it could happen again,” Conlon said.
The threat of natural disasters has always been seen as a fair price for the convenience of living in LA, with its dramatic coastline and Mediterranean climate.
A flood occurred in 1938 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. Fires are always a concern, especially during the dry season between August and October.
in his book Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of DisasterLA writer Mike Davis chronicles the fires in the coastal paradise of Malibu, which he declares “the wildfire capital of North America and possibly the world.” He questioned the cycle of rebuilding after each fire, which he said was enabled by decades of cheap fire insurance. The result was an even larger “firebelt suburb”.
That cycle can now be broken. Many homes destroyed by fires this month were uninsured. Companies like Allstate and State Farm recently stopped selling new home insurance policies in California, blaming regulatory caps for price increases that have made covering losses increasingly challenging.
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 move after this month’s fire. Many homeowners dropped by State Farm turned instead to California’s state-backed Fair Plan, which provides coverage for up to $3mn of a residential property – not taking into account the value of real estate in these parts.
The complicated insurance picture may mean that, whatever the political rhetoric, it will be difficult to make it better. “Many people will have no insurance, and many more will be underinsured, which means people will be under pressure to cut as many corners as possible in rebuilding,” Maltzan said. “This means homes will be less well built than before.”
Dawson Bear’s home was insured, but he fears his policy won’t extend to the huge cost of rebuilding a new home in Altadena. “Costs are going to increase significantly, just based on supply and demand,” she says. “I heard it would cost $700-900 per square foot to remodel, and no insurance company would cover that.”
Then, after the homes are rebuilt, the new insurance premiums can be too high for most homeowners, as more companies change policies to reflect the higher risk of fire. “When we come back and rebuild, isn’t our community at risk of becoming uninsurable?” he says
The devastation has already hit California with a livability crisis. The sudden presence of thousands of homeless residents looking for a roof over their heads will exacerbate the city’s chronic housing shortage. The median price of a home in Los Angeles is already over $1 million after growing 30 percent between 2018 and 2023.
“The big question is housing affordability,” said Manfred Keil, chief economist at the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, a nonprofit development organization. “Housing costs will go later [fires]People won’t be able to afford it and that’s when they’ll start leaving.”
There is precedent for this: Six years after the Camp Fire destroyed California’s Paradise, the town’s population is about 9,300, up from 26,500 before the wildfires.
Despite Buss and Newsom’s promises, the red tape will also slow down the restructuring process, said 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’ll spend $100,000 on permits and fees. Imagine what that means when you’re trying to rebuild. .”
Meanwhile, it is unclear who will foot the bill for rebuilding not only the homes but also the infrastructure destroyed by the fire.
“We want to rebuild but how long will it take [authorities] Pay back the utility? How do you plug in a saw?” said Rosenbluh, the restaurant’s owner. “The fatigue and the length of time will take its toll. People can just take the insurance money and move to Virginia.”
All this adds to Los Angeles, where Hollywood already has enough problems the struggle And a stubborn homelessness crisis remains. City leaders will have to oversee the recovery from the fire while preparing to host eight FIFA World Cup matches next year and the 2028 Olympics.
But the city has endured “very painful times,” notes Ian Campbell, a longtime L.A. businessman who played a key role in the California Department of Commerce and was later vice-chair of the PR company Abernathy McGregor. Along with floods, earthquakes and fires, L.A. also survived the shrinking of the aerospace industry — a major employer — after the end of the Cold War, he noted.
“LA has a long history of these shocking moments, in part because we live in such a fragile geography,” he says. “This could be another time of reckoning for Los Angeles. Is the city going to allow people to live in risky areas and should society all subsidize it? These are things that have to be dealt with.”
