Monday, February 3, 2025

California Leaders Promise a Quick Rebuild, But That May Put Homes At Risk of Fire Again; I Was Evacuated During the California Fires. The Same Politicians Responsible for LA’s Destruction Shouldn’t Oversee Its Rebuilding

Josh Edelson / AFP - Getty Images
California leaders promise a quick rebuild, but that may put homes at risk of fire again:
Reconstructing fire-ravaged neighborhoods in their former image could make residents sitting ducks for future blazes, experts say.
As wildfires continue to smolder in Southern California, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass are both promising a speedy rebuilding of the thousands of destroyed homes.
“This is no time for urban planning exercising. That’ll delay it by 15 years. We need people back in their houses,” Steve Soboroff, a businessman and former police commissioner tasked with overseeing the city’s rebuilding efforts, said at a news conference on Friday.
But reconstructing Pacific Palisades and other fire-ravaged neighborhoods in their former image could make residents sitting ducks for future blazes, according to urban planners, engineers and disaster management experts. To make communities resilient to wildfires — especially as they become more frequent and intense due to climate change — the experts said it’s essential to restrict development in high-risk areas, create buffer zones between properties and wildland, and space homes farther apart.
“One of the things that people talk about is, don’t let a disaster go to waste. This is the time to change,” said Stephen Miller, a law professor at Northern Illinois University who specializes in land use and sustainable development.
That’s at odds with Soboroff’s emphasis on speed.
“The planning of the Palisades is beautiful. The way that community works is beautiful. You don’t need to rethink Pacific Palisades. You need to rebuild Pacific Palisades,” he said on Friday. Soboroff did not respond to a request for comment. (He is the father of NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff.)
Given such rhetoric, as well as examples from past fires, urban planners are skeptical that the changes needed to make new homes safe will come to fruition.
“Right now, it’s like they’ve got the pedal all the way down to the floor on the speed side and not necessarily the deliberation side,” said Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a social and economic policy think tank. --->READ MORE HERE
Apu Gomes via Getty Images
I Was Evacuated During the California Fires. The Same Politicians Responsible for LA’s Destruction Shouldn’t Oversee Its Rebuilding:
Virtually the entire town of Pacific Palisades, my home, has been destroyed by the recent fire. The fact that Pacific Palisades and so much of Los Angeles is in ruins is all one needs to know to conclude that Los Angeles’ and California’s leaders were grossly negligent. This simply cannot happen in a modern, wealthy, highly taxed, American city set to host the next Olympic Games.
Allowing Pacific Palisades’ sole reservoir to sit empty awaiting a minor repair for close to a year is but one of many examples of neglect already identified. A severely under-resourced Los Angeles Fire Department, with staffing at the same level as the 1960s yet subjected to additional budget cuts this year, is another.
The question now is whether these same negligent leaders should be trusted with the rebuilding of Pacific Palisades and the other fire-damaged parts of Los Angeles. The rebuilding will be extremely complex. How do you start reconstructing a single home when the entire block and those around it are gone?
In a desperate attempt to show leadership after obvious failure, city and state leaders are rushing to establish new rules governing such construction even as firefighters are still searching Los Angeles’ charred remains with cadaver dogs.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency and is using that power to go after developers seeking to profit from the tragedy by making “unsolicited offers” to those who lost their homes. But is cracking down on real estate developers the best way to ensure the redevelopment of the city’s real estate? Personally, I have never been offended by someone offering me money. Californians remember well the last time Newsom abused his state of emergency powers during COVID-19, violating his own orders by dining at the French Laundry.
Mayor Karen Bass has announced that she will streamline LA’s notoriously onerous building permit process for those looking to rebuild, but there is a catch. They cannot increase the size of their homes by more than 10%.
The cost of construction in LA was through the roof before the fire, thanks to supply chain problems brought on by the COVID-19 lockdown, followed by inflation caused by enormous COVID-19 and “Inflation Reduction Act” spending and California’s Green New Deal, which imposes onerous environmental restrictions and requirements on builders.
The cost to build before the fire was over $1,000 per square foot. After the fire, demand will drive those prices even higher. It likely will be far too costly to rebuild a 1,600-square-foot home, about the size of many of the homes that burned in Pacific Palisades’ downtown area, if the new home cannot exceed 1,760 square feet. The value simply will not justify the cost. --->READ MORE HERE
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