This is not a reflection about who or what to blame. But blame was the tagline I was watching on TV within the first 24 hours of the Palisades and Eaton fires that wiped out swathes of communities in southern California. This is my account of what I saw and my contemplation about what comes next.
I needed to see this urban conflagration for myself. The fires were so outside my 40 years of wildland fire experience there was no rational part of my brain to reconcile what I was witnessing.
I went to bed Jan. 7 and woke up the next day to a request from California to neighboring states for help. The call for fire engines went out far and wide as an Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) request – a national disaster-relief compact that allows states to share resources during emergencies or disasters. Could it be possible that our little White Bird Fire Department (population 100) could be part of this effort? I was repeating over and over, we have to go, we have to go, we have to go. The morning of Jan. 9, I found myself loading my summertime fire gear in the dead of a snowy winter in Idaho and heading south for our two day trip to Los Angeles.
After I retired in 2019 from a 35-year career working for the US Forest Service and National Park Service I found myself volunteering for many opportunities to give back to my community and the larger wildland fire community nationally and internationally. These opportunities allow me to see things differently. I’m no longer a fire chief or a member of an incident management team; I’m no longer a supervisor. In LA, I was happy to be serving as a firefighter, as I had done in 1984 when I was humble, curious and excited for the journey ahead. We left the frigid winter of central Idaho and after two days of traveling, slowly emerged into the envelope of the warm ocean breeze along the Pacific Coast Highway. I see now why so many people are attracted to the ocean and the temperate climate. Many millions of people choose to live in LA, even with the deadly Santa Ana winds always lurking in the background. No amount of human intervention will tame the Santa Anas.
This LA assignment brought my career full circle. I remember the epiphany I had at the Grand Canyon when I was flown by helicopter to the North Rim for a wildfire response. Sleeping in the rocks, dead tired after a seven-day wilderness fire experience, I knew at that moment every day from then on would be dedicated to working as a wildland firefighter. My younger self could never have imagined my older self-responding on an engine to a wildfire in LA, suppressing flare ups behind multi-million-dollar homes, helping people recover something – anything – that was recognizable of their past lives. The extreme contrast of my first fires in the wilderness of Grand Canyon National Park and the urban conflagration of LA could not be greater. I continue to remind myself that I had, and am still having, an amazing career serving the American public, and I’m extremely proud to have been part of a national response.
During the long trip from deep-winter Idaho to summer-like conditions in Malibu, I spent a lot of time being mindful about what I was getting into: tens of thousands of homes gone, lives lost, and billions of dollars of loss that surely would take years of recovery. Our travel route took us through the heart of LA in our oversized engine in gripping traffic. As we were given the wave to pass through the roadblock on the Pacific Coast Highway, it was as if everything became quiet and the anxiety of driving in heavy traffic was gone. It was game time. There was no one on this popular highway, just our five engines in perfect spacing. Our taskforce rumbled toward the first visual of the devastation. When people tell you the scene was unlike anything anyone has ever experienced, it’s true. My first impression was how could so many buildings for miles along the Pacific Coast Highway be gone, nothing but rubble – ash, concrete and metal – large, commercial buildings just gone. How do so many buildings built literally on the ocean coast go up in flames? Truly unbelievable.
Our fire engine was assigned a very specific area to suppress hotspots and open flames. We got to know our area quite well and got to know where small spot fires could threaten containment. The physical geography of this area was my first revelation about what we were witnessing. The area was densely populated. Homes lined both sides of steep canyons; some homes were built further up the slope with incredible views of the ocean. I soon discovered why these neighborhoods were very desirable places to live.
Idaho Taskforce #4 patrolling the burned area near homes for hotspots and taking suppression action to ensure no reignition. Photo by Kelly Martin
I spent the better part of my fire career working and living in Yosemite National Park and on incident management teams, but Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles were new ground for me. I felt like everything was novel again. Our first assignment was along the eastern boundary of the Palisades fire. Our mission was to keep the fire from jumping the canyon and igniting highly volatile vegetation that could reignite the eastern spread and threaten more homes and lives. I felt grateful the most severe Santa Ana winds had passed, but we all felt the heavy weight of protecting multi-million-dollar homes from any further damage.
The next 14 days we covered a lot of ground throughout the Pacific Palisades area and just to the east of the fire’s edge to ensure no reignition. I was struck most by the sheer devastation, block after block of leveled buildings, but occasionally I would see a house still standing and I could not help but study these houses up close. Had firefighters been there? What was the construction of the house? How old was the house? How and why did particular homes survive? The heroic efforts of individual engine companies is likely one of the untold stories that will come out over time. For CAL-FIRE, LA City and LA County and surrounding fire departments that were called into to assist, I can’t help but try to put myself on their engines with the firefighters who did their very best – as they had been trained to do – to save life and property, watching home after home, and business after business, fall.
I saw first-hand concrete bank buildings that were but shells. How does a concrete building in the middle of town on flat terrain just disappear? My curiosity began to shift to try to understand the many factors that contributed to this devastation. Weeks later, at home, I was still processing what I saw and the people we met and helped.
The first glimpse of what was to come; major buildings on both sides of the Pacific Coast Highway were destroyed. Photo by Kelly Martin
My experiences in LA will forever be part of my fire career: Homes reduced to ashes with Christmas decorations on their hedges and fences; miles and miles of ash, concrete rubble and twisted metal; devastated homes and buildings along the pacific coast washing into the ocean; remaining homes that did not burn that were saved by owners or firefighters and home hardening construction. Amid such destruction and devastation of life and property I looked for color among the chaos. I found small comfort in emerging new flowers, just two weeks after Jan. 7.
LA experienced a great boom after the Second World War. Houses and small lots were the first indication to me that the building boom after 1945 likely did not consider the possibility that whole communities could be destroyed by fire. Communities continued to expand into the wild, untamed fire territory. Building continued and the population surged from 3.5 million to more than 18 million by the 21st century. Combine the population growth with few if any builders or homeowners who understood home hardening or Firewise™ concepts, and the lack of building codes. Community planning 70 years ago was very different than it is today, and the number of communities still in the path of future wildfires is staggering. Devastating loss of life and property will happen again. Closely packed housing units, vegetation hedges 15 to 20 feet tall between homes, home development in steep canyons, and narrow roads – it’s clear how this catastrophic urban conflagration developed.
Kelly Martin was IAWF President in 2024. Martin retired as chief of fire and aviation, Yosemite National Park, National Park Service, Pacific West Region, in 2019.
She began her federal career as a GS-3 with the Apostle Island National Lakeshore in 1984 while attending college and worked her way up through the ranks during her 34-year career. Martin also served on the Presidential Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission. She is the past chair of two National Wildfire Coordinating Group programs: Fire Environment Committee and the National Fire Management Leadership (M-582) course. Martin is a mentor and coach for the national and international Women in Fire Training Exchange (WTREX) program. She now serves as a volunteer firefighter and trainer for White Bird Fire Department in Idaho and started a fire consulting business in 2024.
What started as a wildland fire quickly catalyzed into a widespread urban wildfire in Los Angeles on Jan. 7. In the wake of the tragedy, researchers are understanding more about just what fueled the conflagration.
A new report from the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety outlines the timeline of both the Palisades and Eaton fires. Institute researchers also entered the community in the days following the destruction and uncovered what types of homes were worst-hit by the fires, and which were more fire resistant.
The Palisades Fire ignited near Skull Rock in the Summit neighborhood at 10:30 a.m., when gusts were reaching up to 60 mph, relative humidity was falling, and severe Santa Ana winds created a highly volatile environment for rapid fire spread. The fire quickly spread downhill and eastward, spreading 771 acres in 4 hours, 2,920 acres in 8 hours, and 15,832 acres in nearly 27 hours, which accounted for 70% of the fire’s total growth, despite it going on to burn for 43 more days. The Palisades Fire was fully contained on February 20 after burning over 23,000 acres, destroying 6,833 structures, and claiming 12 lives.
The Eaton Fire ignited in the Eaton Canyon area of the San Gabriel Mountains at around 6:20 p.m., around eight hours after the Palisades Fire began. At that time, peak gusts surpassed 60 mph, sustained winds exceeded 40 mph, and relative humidity had dropped to around 10%, creating extreme fire weather conditions. Just 16 hours after igniting, the fire had grown to over 10,000 acres. Although the fire continued burning for 42 more days, its initial 24-hour growth of over 13,600 acres would be 96% of its final size. The fire was fully contained on Feb. 20 after burning over 14,000 acres, destroying 9,418 structures, and claiming 17 lives.
Flames from burning tightly spaced buildings only worsened the fires’ spread, according to the report. Each home ignition generated short-range and ground-traveling embers, further amplifying the fire, specifically in downtown Altadena and Pacific Palisades. Fire-resistant building materials, however, reduced damage severity and interrupted the chain of conflagration.
Natural Hazards Research Australia is holding a public webinar on the report at 11:30 a.m. AEST on April 16 (9:30 p.m. ET on April 15). Click here to register.
On January 8 this year a film crew was on the ground in the LA firestorm capturing footage that is, in the aftermath of the tragedy, helping to explain the fire behavior and sheer destruction of the event.
Their work is now ready for viewing as an hour documentary on PBS. The program has interviews with fire officials who were there on the day, scientists, residents, and a volunteer fire brigade, who discuss the challenges of urban firestorms and the need to better protect communities.
Weathered- Inside the LA Firestorm is out of filmmaker Trip Jennings and Balance Media, who produced Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire two years ago.
Camera operator, Josh Finbow films the aftermath of the Eaton Fire from a fire helicopter, Altadena, CA. Photo: Connor Nelson
Watch the television premiere of Weathered- Inside the LA Firestorm on Wednesday, March 19 and online thereafter:
Television broadcast PBS Member Stations – 10PM Pacific and Eastern/9PM Central, online at that link from 5.30pm Pacific.
PBS Terra YouTube – Join director Trip Jennings, PBS host Maiya May and crew for a live chat at 5:30 PM Pacific Time
PBS host Maiya May surveys the destruction of a home in the Eaton Fire, Altadena, CA. Photo: Josh Finbow
Produced as a special edition of PBS Weathered, host Maiya May explains a play-by-play of the fires with first-person footage, cinematic fire footage, and animations created in collaboration with NASA.
The show will be available after the premiere at the link above so please share with anyone you believe would be interested in this program.
But please note – for those outside of the United States access to PBS may be denied, but the YouTube links should work everywhere.
Connor Nelson, while filming the Palisades Fire. Photo: Josh Finbow
Remains found late last year in the San Bernardino Mountains in California have been positively identified as Carlos Baltazar, a US Forest Service firefighter who went missing during the El Dorado Fire in 2020, county officials have confirmed.
An investigation began in October last year when a hunter discovered a human remains in a remote part of the mountains near Highway 18.
As reported by Wildfire Today at the time, Baltazar was a member of the Big Bear Interagency Hotshot Crew in September 2020 that fought the El Dorado Fire, sparked after a gender reveal party gone wrong. Charles Morton, serving as the squad boss for the crew, died in the fire, and Baltazar’s family told local media that Baltazar had seemed depressed in the days after Morton’s death and went missing the week after.
The deadly El Dorado Fire scorched nearly 23,000 acres after erupting in September 2020.
A California couple pleaded guilty after accepting a plea deal to take responsibility for the blaze that was sparked by the gender reveal. The male pleaded guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of recklessly causing a fire to an inhabited structure, while the female pleaded guilty to three misdemeanors. He was sentenced to one year in a county jail, two years felony probation and 200 hours of community service. In addition, the family was ordered to pay victims’ restitution of $1,789,972.
The challenge of post-fire recovery is one faced by communities around the world. Terms like “build back better” and “managed retreat” are often heard, but what do they mean for people complex making decisions on the ground? Here is the emerging story of just one community. This story, written by Jake Bittle, was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.”
Less than a month before the Eaton Fire engulfed Altadena, longtime residents thought they’d finally resolved a bruising debate over the California suburb’s future.
Eaton Fire Aftermath. Credit: Mario Tama / Getty Images via Grist
For months they’d debated a Los Angeles County government plan poised to dramatically alter the character of the quiet community of just over 40,000 people, which sits at the edge of the Angeles National Forest. The plan limited construction in Altadena’s fire-prone foothills and simultaneously increased buildable density in its commercial corridors, allowing for hundreds of new housing units in the flat downtown area. It promised to both relieve the region’s critical housing shortage and also reduce wildfire risk accelerated by climate change.
In prickly public meetings and press statements, prominent residents staked out opposing positions. One side was represented by Michael Bicay, a retired NASA scientist who has for decades opposed construction in the Altadena hills on ecological grounds. When county officials arrived with their plan to add population density in Altadena, Bicay was in the middle of a campaign to stop a proposed prep school sports complex in the hills. He used the rezoning as an occasion to push for limits on future development on the community’s wildland edges.
Simultaneously, however, he recognized that Altadena had a role to play in mitigating L.A.’s sky-high housing prices — the county faces a shortage of about half a million affordable homes — which could be achieved by building more apartments along Altadena’s commercial corridors, many blocks away from the tinderbox in the hills.
On the other side of the debate was another longtime resident, Alan Zorthian, who owns a 50-acre artists’ colony in the foothills. Zorthian’s father Jirayr, a famous bohemian artist who hosted parties for luminaries like Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol, built the colony into a local curiosity and tourist attraction in the decades before his death in 2004, constructing idiosyncratic homes and sheds out of colored stone and scrap metal.
Faced with the prospect of a downzoning in the hills, the younger Zorthian and other nearby landowners fought back against what they called “regulatory taking” that could devalue their property by limiting possibilities for future development. At the same time, though, the landowners argued that new apartments in the commercial areas would mar Altadena’s historic character. The community was home to Queen Anne-style mansions like the famed Andrew McNally House as well as several exemplars of mid-century modernist architecture.
After months of debate, Bicay’s side won. In December, the county voted the plan forward, signaling a retreat from Altadena’s foothills and a commitment to development in its more urban core. But the timing could not have been worse: Just a few weeks later, the Eaton Fire tore through the foothills, incinerating more than 9,000 homes and ravaging not only the town’s recognized fire zones but its commercial flatlands as well. The blaze was one of the worst urban firestorms in United States history: Together with the Palisades Fire that struck the western part of Los Angeles County simultaneously, it has caused at least $95 billion in damages.
Alan Zorthian talks on the phone while he examines the ruins of the Zorthian Ranch, an artists’ colony in the Altadena foothills. Jake Bittle / Grist
As Altadena begins to rebuild, residents and local officials are fearful that the once-affordable neighborhood will see rents spike and a hollowing out of its middle and working class. Real estate speculators have already descended on the area making lowball cash offers to fire victims, including Black families who lack the savings and insurance coverage to get back the homes they’ve had for generations. Some locals now worry that the county’s plan to open up Altadena for new construction, which was controversial even before the fire, could attract a rush of new development that will hasten this process of what some scholars call “climate gentrification.”
To thread this needle, local officials will have to look beyond the traditional housing debate in the United States. Most development debates in Los Angeles and other big cities pit NIMBY (“Not In My Backyard”) residents who oppose the disruption of new construction against YIMBY (“Yes In My Backyard”) advocates who want to bring down housing costs by allowing the construction of as many new housing units as possible. Altadena’s divide is not so simple: Both the Bicay and Zorthian factions are simultaneously for and against new development in the town — they just have opposite views on where and how it should happen.
Sudden disasters fueled by climate change only complicate matters further. Altadena must now balance a need to shift its population away from its wildland edges, state and county policies pushing it to add housing capacity overall, and the demands of residents who want to return to their homes — homes that have burned down once and may well burn again in the future.
“We’re talking out of both sides of our mouth right now,” said Bicay. “I think it’s OK to [say] that we’re going to have a lower density in Altadena in the future. But the county, driven by the state, is allowing people to build. So there are going to be some tough decisions.”
The county’s zoning revision in Altadena was part of a broader effort to promote new housing development and reduce hazard risk. (About 15 percent of the county’s land area is classified as vulnerable to wildfire.) Los Angeles County controls 2,600 square miles of land in the region — everything that isn’t part of an incorporated city like Pasadena, Burbank, or the city of L.A. itself. This patchwork unincorporated territory is home to around a million people and includes dense neighborhoods near the Pacific Ocean as well as huge swaths of undeveloped mountain range.
As county planners confront both a housing crisis and a climate crisis, they are facing a difficult paradox. California requires them to enable the construction of thousands of new homes under a decades-old planning law, but they can’t let people build in areas prone to fire or flooding, or in protected nature areas. The housing demand in the region is so great, and the risk of disaster so widespread, that the county has no choice but to loosen zoning rules in safe areas in order to comply with the law — a move that in the United States nearly always triggers protests and pushback from residents opposed to growth in their own neighborhoods.
An aerial view of homes that burned in the Eaton Fire on January 7, 2025, in Altadena, California. Mario Tama / Getty Images
In the summer of 2023, county officials announced that they would rework Altadena’s decades-old zoning restrictions, which only allowed for single-family homes and a handful of multi-story buildings, to further this housing mandate. After a series of meetings and hearings, none of which drew much attention, planners unveiled a two-pronged proposal. First, the plan would upzone to allow new housing in Altadena’s commercial corridors like Lincoln Avenue, a semi-blighted west end corridor home to little more than a few churches and Mexican restaurants. Second, the proposal would limit development in the fire-prone foothills, where subdivisions have crept up steep slopes alongside forest preserves and hiking trails.
The plan also included a light-touch version of what climate experts often call “managed retreat,” or the government-sponsored relocation away from areas vulnerable to disaster. Most places pursue managed retreat only once it’s too late, for example by buying out homes that flood repeatedly, but the county was hoping to reduce risk over the long run by nudging investment away from the hills and preserving undeveloped space.
At first, the community was warm to the idea of new housing on Altadena’s main streets, according to Amy Bodek, the planning director for Los Angeles County.
“Altadena is very accepting of density in appropriate locations, and is very accepting of new residential units,” she said, describing the community as more amenable to growth than other parts of Los Angeles where the county has worked. “That was a really big benefit to working with that community.”
But that may have only been true of the small subset of engaged residents who bothered to chime in on the zoning plan. A typical Altadena town council election draws a few hundred voters at most — hardly surprising in an unincorporated area that most people see as just another part of sprawling Los Angeles — and just a couple dozen people showed up to the county’s “visioning workshops” about rezoning in the summer of 2023. Bicay pushed other local preservation organizations to support the plan, and that was enough to get it to the final stages.
The former site of Altadena Hardware, a long-running neighborhood business that sat just off Altadena’s main commercial corridor, Lake Avenue. Jake Bittle / Grist
Only in the last months of 2024 did a few outspoken residents start to gin up opposition to the plan, saying the county was devaluing their property by depriving them of the right to build on it. Zorthian joined together with a few other large landowners who had contemplated new construction and a few business owners on commercial corridors who opposed new affordable housing, fearing it might worsen traffic and bring in low-income residents.
“We found out what the plan was doing to the handful of us left who still have larger property, and we don’t want people telling us what to do,” said Zorthian.
The Eaton Fire changed everything. Tearing west through the San Gabriel Mountains toward Altadena, it burned almost the entirety of the Zorthian ranch, including several homes in the artists’ colony and much of Jirayr Zorthian’s remaining artworks. Embers from the fire then spiraled down into the denser flatlands and burned thousands of homes, including all but a few on Bicay’s cul-de-sac block, which sits right at the base of the hills. (The zoning on his own block has not changed, but the surrounding areas have been downzoned.) The blaze then continued west and destroyed a patchwork of homes and businesses along Lincoln Avenue, turning the northern stretches of the corridor into a moonscape.
The question now, in light of the fire, is whether the county’s preexisting plan to bring fire-conscious growth to Altadena is the right path out of this devastation, or whether a surge of new development will hasten gentrification and displacement. The county plan proposed to build new apartments on commercial corridors and direct investment toward the city’s west side, but planners had assumed that these changes would happen over years or even decades. Now, as burned-out residents tangle with real estate speculators in every corner of the town, there’s a chance that this shift could happen in a matter of a year or two. Developers could take advantage of the new zoning to buy up fire victims’ damaged homes and develop large apartment complexes allowed under the new paradigm.
Altadena residents take to the street to protest land developers trying to buy their land immediately following the catastrophic Eaton Fire in Altadena, California, on January 18, 2025. Katie McTiernan / Anadolu via Getty Images
Some locals who supported the plan are now wary of the upzoning effort. The longtime manager of Mota’s Mexican Restaurant on Lincoln Avenue, Lupe, said she worried that a big developer could buy up multiple lots and build expensive new housing that the former residents of those lots couldn’t afford. (In an interview with Grist, Lupe only provided her first name.) Her own house suffered smoke damage in the fire, and she has been living there while waiting on a contractor to fix it.
“[The county plan] is a good idea, but only if they do it the right way,” she said. “But if people don’t have insurance, and they come and want to take your property to do whatever they want to do, I don’t like that way.”
“Gentrification had already started, and I would think fire would speed it up,” said Veronica Jones, president of the Altadena Historical Society and former president of the Altadena town council who represents a census tract on the more disinvested west side of the town, home to many. She pointed to the fact that wine bars and yoga studios had opened in recent years, a change that residents referred to as the “Pasadena-fication” of Altadena.
“I think it’s a good idea to put more housing, but now it’s going to have to be rethought,” she added.
Bodek, the county planner, said she understood the fear of gentrification and vowed that the county will work to prevent developers from snapping up victims’ homes or buying out longtime businesses.
Sisters Emilee and Natalee De Santiago sit together on the front porch of what remains of their home on January 19, 2025, in Altadena, California. Brandon Bell / Getty Images
But there’s also the matter of fire risk. The Altadena plan discouraged development in the foothills because the state of California classifies them as extremely vulnerable to wildfire, but the Eaton Fire burned almost the entirety of the town, reaching almost 2 miles south of the fire zone and destroying homes that had never been seen as risky.
That means it’s possible the county’s original plan didn’t go far enough. Bicay, who was a lead advocate for the plan, now says it might be necessary to reduce the density of Altadena’s flatlands by between 5 and 10 percent, which would require leaving many burned-out lots empty without rebuilding them. Nic Arnzen, another member of the town council, says the town might consider leaving vacant some lots that residents don’t want to rebuild, carving out a larger zone of open space near the hills. An analysis from the climate risks firm First Street Foundation, which home listers like Zillow use to inform prospective buyers of property hazards, shows a much broader area of fire danger than that shown on maps from Cal Fire, the state firefighting agency.
Zorthian, who opposed the plan, acknowledges that the fire risk in the hills was greater than he had assumed. But he now sees the county plan as hypocritical: If almost the whole town burned down, why should he and a few other large landowners be the only ones with new limits on what they can build?
“It’s going to change the character of Altadena,” he said. “You’re going to have behemoth apartments like you have all over Los Angeles.” For his part, he’s trying not to let the new plan affect him. Once he’s finished cleaning up the scarred ranch, he plans to forge ahead with his vision to erect a museum in honor of his father, and he’s hoping to reacquire some of his father’s works to replace the ones lost in the fire.
Alan Zorthian used a water pump to draw from this swimming pool in his effort to fight the Eaton fire burning through Zorthian Ranch. Numerous structures were destroyed. Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Except for supporters like Bicay and opponents like Zorthian, not many Altadena residents engaged in the debate around the county’s original plan. Now, though, a larger agglomeration of residents and community groups have emerged to help steer the town’s rebuild. There are nonprofit associations like Altadena Strong and Rebuild Altadena, existing preservation groups like Altadena Heritage, plus a new foundation run by real estate magnate Rick Caruso and an informal recovery council that Bicay serves on. The county will also convene its own commission.
Other fire-struck areas in the Golden State have dealt with similar questions in recent years, with mixed results. The northern California mountain town of Paradise, for instance, saw a furious debate over where and how to rebuild after the deadly 2018 Camp Fire. It ended up imposing a strict barrier of undeveloped land that now functions as a firebreak. In Santa Rosa, meanwhile, the neighborhood of Coffey Park built back on its original footprint after the 2017 Tubbs Fire, with almost all residents returning to single-family homes that are still vulnerable to wildfire.
Nicole Lambrou, an Altadena resident as well as an architect and urban planner at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, said that local governments vary in their commitment to changing the built environment when they rebuild after a fire.
In many cases, she said, governments bow to political pressure from fire victims, scrap planned reforms and try to get everyone back in their homes as soon as possible. But such a rushed recovery is often bad for the long-term resilience of a community in the wildland-urban interface. Residents end up rebuilding the same flammable homes in the same vulnerable areas, ensuring future losses and more displacement.
“A lot of times the measure of success is, ‘is it a one-to-one rebuild?’ That emphasis on building back what was there as soon as possible makes bypassing existing plans much easier,” she said. On the other hand, she added, the scale of loss in a place like Altadena might force the community and its elected officials to reconsider the assumptions behind their previous commitment to more density — after all, the effort to build more homes is premised on the belief that Altadena is a safe place to live.
“The plan was put in place with a certain baseline of a built environment that is no longer there,” she said.
Bodek, the county planner, says she thinks that building more density in Altadena’s downtown core is still the right move. As she sees it, to declare Altadena too risky would be to write off huge sections of California’s exurban sprawl, much of which sits well within range of flying embers from mountain fires.
“I’m looking at this as a once in a lifetime, catastrophic event,” she said. “If this is going to be the new norm, then everyone, not just Altadena, but everyone in the entire state, is going to have to reassess their land use policies. That could mean the demise of, you know, 200 years of the way of life in California. And I’m not going to go there.”
Thousands of Los Angeles residents fled their communities in January as the Palisades and Eaton fires neared their homes. While they escaped the dangers of the flames, another danger was spewed into the air, affecting countless other people.
Airborne lead levels in the city were 110 times higher than usual during the wildfires, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Los Angeles’ “Atmospheric Science and Chemistry mEasurment NeTwork (ASCENT)” (sic) site measured the increase from Jan. 8 to 11, with lead amounts spiking on Jan. 9.
The CDC attributed the increased lead levels to the homes that burned, many of which were built before 1978 when use of leaded paint was still common.
“The presence of heavy metals such as lead is not unusual in urban fire emissions, particularly in California, where legacy pollutants from older infrastructure, industrial sources, and soils can be remobilized during fires,” the CDC’s report said. “For example, during the 2018 Camp fire, monitors recorded ambient PM2.5 lead concentrations that averaged 0.13 μg/m3 during a period of 17 hours.”
Palisades Fire aftermath via Cal Fire
The health effects from the lead-heavy emissions won’t be specifically known for some time, but center officials said ASCENT’s real-time measurements of airborne lead and other chemical constituents from the wildfires will be combined with health data of smoke-exposed individuals to gain a better understanding.
Generally, increased lead levels affect nearly every human organ, accumulate in teeth and bones, and pose significant health risks, especially for children who are more vulnerable to the element’s neurodevelopmental effects, the CDC said.
“Measures including removing lead from gasoline and leaded pipes and the banning or limiting of lead in consumer products, such as residential paint, have led to a 97% decrease in airborne lead concentrations in the United States since 1980,” the report said. “However, unlike chronic lead exposure, which has been widely studied, the health effects of brief, elevated lead exposures, such as those described in this report, are not well understood. Additional health research is needed, because airborne lead levels alone do not necessarily indicate exposure.”
