The planners and residents working to rebuild Los Angeles won’t be starting from scratch, however. Existing roads, infrastructure and land will all shape how the city is rebuilt. Some residents may want to rebuild immediately on the same land, while others may be willing to sell their land to create a buffer zone.
On January 13, Mayor Bass issued an executive order that speed up permits for “identical” reconstruction and exempts them from examinations which would slow down the reconstruction process. Governor Newsom also relaxed permitting rules under the California Environmental Quality Act to expedite rebuilding.
Exactly how Los Angeles then chooses to rebuild is a “question of social values,” Moritz says. “It’s not really a scientific question anymore. Shouldn’t we, as a society, be able to determine where and how people build or rebuild, so that it is safer and has less impact from a public funding perspective down the road? Because a lot of these events are going to happen again.
Wildfires in California have become larger and more devastating in recent years. Some 7.08 million acres burned in California between 2009 and 2018, more than double burned area between 1979 and 1988. The number of fires engulfing urban areas also increased. In the 10 years between 1979 and 1988, about 22,000 acres of burned land were in what are called wildland/urban interfaces, areas where homes are close to wildfire-prone wilderness. Between 2009 and 2018, this area increased to 32,000 acres.
One result of all this is that California officials have good maps of high-risk areas. Many areas affected by the Palisades and Eaton fires have been classified as areas with very high fire riskmeaning new developments in these areas must take steps to minimize the risk of fires spreading from wild vegetation to homes, including planting fire-resistant vegetation and keeping all other trees and shrubs trimmed and away from houses.
But the demand for housing is so high in cities like Los Angeles that developers often end up building in these very high fire risk areas anyway. After a wildfire, developers tend to slow construction in high-risk areas for a while, but after a few years they return to previous development rates, says Nicholas Irwin, who studies real estate economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. .
Cities and local authorities need to think about ways to discourage development in high-risk areas, Irwin believes. One solution would be to increase development taxes in fire-prone areas, but another would be to incentivize developers to build more houses and apartments in underutilized urban areas.
“We need more dense development, especially in places like Los Angeles. The real estate market is out of control there and the situation will get even worse,” he says. “We need to think about ways to rebuild that build more units to improve affordability, but also ways that are more resilient to future wildfire risks. »
Burying power lines could also go a long way in protecting homes from the risk of wildfires. The fire that destroyed Heaven has been unleashed by a power line failure, as were at least seven other of California’s most destructive wildfires. Burying power lines is expensive, and these costs are passed on to utility customers, many of whom do not live in wildfire-prone areas.
“It’s these little things that would make a difference in the long run,” Irwin says. Bury power lines, encourage denser development, and build more defensible communities. But these long-term investments require changing the way people think about living in areas at risk of wildfires and accepting that more resilient communities come at a cost. “I just don’t know if we’re going to learn anything,” Irwin says.
