Fire officials said winds that fueled the wildfires have weakened.
“We’re already organizing a ‘Marshall Plan,’” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Saturday. “We already have a team looking at reimagining L.A. 2.0.”
Yet the promise of L.A. 2.0 glosses over the grueling process of recovery and rebuilding that affected residents will now have to endure — a logistical and emotional grind that will dominate their lives not just for the next few weeks and months but for years to come.
When residents are eventually cleared to reenter the burn zones, even those whose homes remain standing won’t be able to live in them. Utilities — water, power and gas — may be offline for months. Wind could stir up toxic ash. Dead trees will be everywhere, threatening to topple.
According to Zeke Lunder, a California fire management expert with nearly 30 years of experience, this is the point at which “disaster capitalism” kicks in, with billions of dollars flowing through the Federal Emergency Management Agency to big contractors who effectively scrape the area clean.
“There’s this incredible bureaucracy now that’s been built around post-fire cleanup,” Lunder said, citing his work after the devastating Camp Fire of 2018, which nearly erased the Northern California town of Paradise. “Before [a] lot can get certified as safe to rebuild, they have to come and they have to haul away the burnt home. They have to test the soil. If they find any contaminants, they have to take more soil away — and they also have to track all the wreckage and make sure it’s being dumped [properly].”
Meanwhile, residents who until recently lived in million- or multimillion-dollar homes — before the fires, the average market price was $3.4 million in the Palisades and $1.3 million in Altadena — will have to contend with “this really complex bureaucratic response that’s going to involve a lot of steps, regulations and hurdles,” as Lunder put it.
Applications for federal disaster assistance. The search for a long-term place to stay as landlords hike rents. Lawsuits over how the fires started — and who has to pay. Private equity swooping in to snap up prime lots. Battles with insurance companies that have been retreating from disaster-prone California. Planning, permitting — and hopefully, years from now, construction.
