Fires continue to burn, ominous wind warnings abound, and in devastated communities, residents search through the rubble for belongings and pets.
Over time, residents, elected officials, developers and planners will have to make decisions about what happens to this burned land.
The people who lived and lost in communities destroyed by these fires, the most destructive in the history of Los Angeles County, will ultimately decide whether to settle elsewhere forever or rebuild their homes and neighborhoods where they were. In the Palisades, some had lived there for decades and others not long. In Altadena, generations of families had lived in their homes. Whatever residents decide, the rest of us (including state, county and city leaders) must be careful not to displace them again by preventing them from rebuilding.
However, with a series of devastating fires in recent decades leading up to this latest one, we should all understand now that we have to make adjustments to the way we live and build.
That doesn't necessarily mean you'll never rebuild in an area that suffered a wildfire. It means creating firebreaks and buffer zones to provide some barrier between developments and wild lands. It means building with more fire-resistant materials and ember-resistant vents.
Every horrific large-scale urban fire sparked by a wildfire in California has taught cities something about how to better build and design communities.
Building codes have changed over the years and newer homes are more fire resistant. But that doesn't begin to solve everything.
“The construction industry has kept saying, 'We can definitely build safely in these neighborhoods,'” says JP Rose, policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity who has worked to support legislation regulating construction in areas of high fire risk. “He will not admit that these codes are not enough because buildings built to the codes have burned down. We are literally playing with fire when we refuse to see if they really work and put all our faith in them.”
One thing that largely hasn't changed is where Californians want to live. For decades, they have been perched high on slopes, hidden in canyons or spread out at the foot of hills. And it's not always about a view. People live in the communities they know, perhaps where they grew up, close to family and friends, close to their work.
Rebuilding in fire-prone areas may mean moving power lines underground, widening roads to facilitate access in and out of a neighborhood during a fire, or installing outside sprinklers on the roofs of homes. Few of these ideas are economical, but neither is a destructive fire.
In the coming days there will be much debate about whether there were enough firefighters during the fires and whether enough firefighters were proactively deployed when windstorm warnings in an arid county predicted danger.
“The death and destruction caused by the recent wildfires should have served as sufficient reminder that California cannot continue to expand into dangerous wildfire terrain. So far, California leaders have refused to act. What will it take? The editorial board wrote this more than five years ago.
But if we want to continue living here and building more housing (which we desperately needed long before thousands of fire victims were left homeless), then we have to build carefully for an environment that promises to become increasingly challenging.
We also have to continue thinking and acting as neighbors, supporting those who want to rebuild. There are many problems ahead. And returning residents must be part of the solutions.
