What’s next for Los Angeles after the fires

Two of the most destructive blazes in California history continue to smolder on the fringes of Los Angeles. But as the Santa Ana winds subside, and as firefighters work to contain the burn, focus is already shifting to what happens next for the 82,000 evacuated Angelenos who still can’t go home — many because they no longer have homes to return to.

“We’re already organizing a ‘Marshall Plan,’” Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Saturday. “We already have a team looking at reimagining L.A. 2.0.”

It’s an appealing vision: The resilient metropolis, “infamous” for its “culture of reinvention,” literally rising from the ashes to become a new and improved version of itself.

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.

So far, officials have confirmed that the Palisades and Eaton fires have destroyed a combined 6,800 structures and damaged another 900 — numbers that are expected to grow. Ultimately, the 2025 L.A. wildfires could become the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, with total losses of $250 billion to $275 billion, according to early AccuWeather estimates.

“Living in this fire landscape, there’s trauma baked in,” Zeke Lunder, a California fire management expert with nearly 30 years of experience, recently explained on his show "The Lookout." “There is just such a wide variety of ways people are affected by fire, and ways they react.”

Even the luckiest evacuees — the ones from mandatory evacuation zones whose homes and businesses were spared — remain displaced, staying in temporary shelters or with friends and family. On Monday, local police and the National Guard turned away hundreds of Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Santa Monica residents trying to visit their barricaded properties.

“It’s just an overwhelming sadness,” one woman told the New York Times. “The uncertainty for the future — we don’t know when we will be able to get in.”

In some cases, authorities are starting to downgrade evacuation orders for peripheral, unburned areas and allow residents to return — particularly around the Eaton Fire in Pasadena and Altadena. They’re also reversing some Do-Not-Drink-Water notices as they restore water quality and reopen facilities previously contaminated by smoke and ash.

But in the footprint of the fires, repopulation — not to mention rebuilding — will take much longer.

Crews are currently inspecting every single building within the burn zone and posting their status online: destroyed (>50% damage), major (26%-50%), minor (10%-25%), affected (1%-9%), inaccessible or no damage. On these color-coded maps, Altadena, Malibu and the Palisades look like a sea of red (for “destroyed”).

Burn zones will remain off-limits to all residents until inspections are completed and any lingering dangers — debris, trees, hazardous materials and downed power lines — can be cleared from roadways. On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would be sending about 500 personnel to the area at a cost of $100 million to remove household hazardous waste from affected properties: paints, cleaners, pesticides, larger asbestos debris, pressurized fuel cylinders and lithium-ion batteries. Experts predict it will be weeks before this work is done.

When residents are eventually cleared to reenter, even those whose homes remain standing won’t actually 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 Lunder, 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.

It remains to be seen what shape this rebuilding — this L.A. 2.0 — might take. In the past, the largest California wildfires tended to nip at the edges of towns and cities; now, accelerated by climate change, they have permanently altered the urban fabric of America’s second-largest metropolis. There are questions about putting more space between homes, enlarging buffer zones along wilderness areas — or possibly, in some cases, just not rebuilding at all.

Residents of Altadena and the Palisades are asking themselves existential questions as well.

“It’s a big conversation,” said David Rager, a graphic designer and NASA creative director who lives just blocks from the burn zone — and whose daughter’s elementary school was destroyed in the fire. “This isn’t another wildfire where it’s just vegetation — it’s all the stuff that’s inside our homes. Then there’s our daughter’s experience to consider. What are the long term impacts of living in a hellscape? What are health risks for being around it during a cleanup?”

Asked if he and his wife are considering relocating, Rager said, “All options are open right now."

Fire changes everything it touches. Six years later, Paradise has been “largely rebuilt,” Lunder said on "The Lookout" — but it’s “by no means as dense as it was before.”

“It’s a very different place,” he added. “It used to be shady and cool, and kind of cozy and woodsy. Now it’s windswept and hot and dusty. Just very, very different.”