'Unanticipated opportunity': LA residents contemplate rebuilding better as fires burn

On Jan. 4, Becky Nicolaides and a group of her neighbors held a progressive dinner party to welcome several new families to their tight-knit cul-de-sac. They started with appetizers at one house, had the main course at another and ended with dessert at Nicolaides'.

Less than a week later, the homes were reduced to piles of ash by the Eaton Fire which has ravaged more than 14,000 acres in Northeast Los Angeles.

A historian and author of the book “The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles after 1945,” Nicolaides said she always knew living in the foothills near Altadena was risky. Still, she loved the abundance of nature in the community – the views of mountains rising off in the distance and palm trees doting the sidewalk.

“It was the physicality of the place,” Nicolaides reminisced. “It was beautiful, that natural environment, which I always knew was dangerous for us.”

As fires continue to burn across Los Angeles County, conversations are already beginning about whether, and how, to rebuild. In an area known for astronomical real estate prices, a housing market in crisis, and the ever-present danger of natural disasters like fires, earthquakes and mudslides – the challenges can feel overwhelming.

Nicolaides told USA TODAY that she and her family are unlikely to move back and rebuild their piece of paradise.

Memories of throwing their belongings into carry-on size suitcases and fleeing as they watched the fire approach their home remain fresh and traumatizing.

She choked up thinking about the items she scrambled to take that feel silly now – a giant bag of dog food, her work laptop, the papers she needed – and things she forgot and won’t ever quite be able to replace, like her wedding ring.

Having researched the spread of suburbs for years, she views the fires as a lesson in urban development.

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“If we go back now and try to rebuild these places, do we want to do it exactly as they were?” she questioned. “I don't think it's a good idea. This could be, on some level ... a kind of unanticipated opportunity to build back in a better way.”

Building back differently

Frank Frievalt, director of the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fire Institute at California Polytechnic State University, has spent the better part of his career in emergency management trying to identify ways to develop fire-resilient communities.

The natural forces that contribute to California’s wildfires, including the powerful Santa Ana winds, tall mountain ranges that sweep into low valleys and weather patterns, aren’t going to change anytime soon, he said. And climate change is likely to only increase the amount of dry brush that fuels the fires.

But that doesn’t mean areas like the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, which border natural habitats with wildfire-fueling vegetation, can’t be rebuilt.

Frievalt argued that people must avoid “building back in the same places, in the exact same way.” Doing so, he said, will lead to similarly destructive wildfires in the future and the tactics each community takes must be tailored to their needs.

He pointed to broad building protocols developed by a consortium of groups, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Cal Fire and the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, as a potential starting point.

They recommend that people living in wildfire-prone areas remove all greenery within a 5-foot perimeter of their home and replace it with stone or decomposed granite. Other tips include installing ember-resistant vents, fire-retardant roofs and building the first 6 inches of exterior walls with noncombustible materials, like brick.

Frievalt sees the push to implement better wildfire building protections as similar to other public health initiatives, including COVID-19 vaccine campaigns and efforts by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to decrease vehicle deaths.

Implementing such protocols could take decades and, as with a vaccine, a majority of people in wildfire-affected areas will need to apply the methods to decrease the spread of wildfires. But if the policies take hold, they could save lives, he said.

“We're the ones in the petri dish, and we've got to figure out how to adapt to really a hotter, drier world,” Frievalt said. “If we don't do that, we're in peril.”

Cost-barriers to better development

As Los Angeles County looks to rebuild entire city blocks that were destroyed by the fires, some in the local housing industry see a need for more wide-scale planning efforts to prevent future disasters.

Azeen Khanmalek, executive director of the nonprofit Abundant Housing LA, which advocates for affordable housing, said jurisdictions throughout the county need to reevaluate low-density zoning restrictions that forced people to move farther into wildland areas where fire risk is higher.

Around 72% of residential land in Los Angeles is reserved for single-family homes, according to a 2022 study by the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

More: 'What America should look like:' loss in the Altadena fires, and a hard road to recovery

Khanmalek suggested that building more homes in low-density neighborhoods near job centers and transit infrastructure could reduce the need for people to live in areas that stretch farther into nature. He said it’s a matter of “housing choice.”

Others, such as architect Geoffrey von Oeyen, argue that fire mitigation methods should also include constructing homes out of better, fireproof building materials including reinforced concrete or a 3D-printed mixture of concrete and earth.

“We have to be considering ways that, even in those more suburban and urban areas ... we don't have buildings that contribute to fire,” von Oeyen told USA TODAY.

The only problem? Money.

Los Angeles has one of the most expensive housing markets in the country. The median home price in the county was just shy of $1 million in December 2024, according to Realtor.com. The area also has a high population of unhoused people, around 75,000 as of June 2024.

Traditional stick-frame housing ? built with a wood frame supported by plywood and other building materials ? is among the most affordable methods of construction, von Oeyen suggested. But not the most fire-safe.

“People can't afford housing, and when they're building housing, they're going to build it in the most economical way that they can,” he said.

He and Khanmalek both argued that government incentives, such as tax credits for solar panels, and funding could be needed to offset the cost of building with better materials in some cases.

“If we're to minimize both financial costs and human costs and save human lives in the future, we have to be willing to spend a little bit more money now in order to build in a more safe and resilient manner,” Khanmalek said. “We can't go back to businesses as usual.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Challenge or opportunity? LA residents consider rebuilding post-fires