By Los Angeles County Politics (LACP)
Today is the anniversary of the start of the Palisades fire, and this site would be remiss not to take the time and space to solemnly memorialize the lives lost and the thousands who lost property, businesses, and physical keepsakes resulting from both the Palisades and Altadena fires.
Also worth commemorating is the bravery of the many first responders – firefighters and emergency personnel who fought these horrifying blazes, along with the emotional and spiritual toll it has taken on almost every Angeleno, many of whom donated time and money to those victims who suffered from the fires.
Having launched LACP in April, a full three months after the January fires that devastated Los Angeles, this site lacked the bandwidth and context to fully cover the aftermath.
That said, several media reports point to failings in both local recovery efforts and in taking a full, honest accounting of what went wrong in fighting the fires, so that such an incident never occurs again and damage can be greatly mitigated in a state where wildfires are common.
On the recovery effort, The New York Post, which is launching the California Post later this month, reported today that “only a handful of the nearly 7,000 destroyed homes have been rebuilt, and outraged residents say Mayor Karen Bass and city bureaucracy have failed them every step of the way.
“Building permits have been issued for just 686 of the roughly 6,800 homes and businesses destroyed after the Palisades Fire sparked on Jan. 7 and raged for nearly three weeks, LA city data shows.”
The media outlet additionally reported that things in Altadena, under LA County jurisdiction, are equally as grim, “with over 9,000 structures destroyed and more than $3 billion in estimated property value lost. Many in the area lost everything, and construction to help rebuild has been equally as slow.”
The Los Angeles Times has done multiple stories on how the Los Angeles Fire Department’s (LAFD) watered down and edited the after-action report on the Palisades Fire to protect top LAFD brass.
This culminated in the LA Times reporting yesterday that newly installed LAFD Chief Jamie Moore admitted the report was watered down and promised that this would never happen again under his watch.
In the Democratic Party echo chamber that is Los Angeles – and much of its media – it is often easy to assign blame for everything on the Trump Administration, but when it comes to last year’s fires, the state, the city, and the county must be held accountable.
Building permit costs and regulations, as well as insurance-sector oversight, must be reviewed and revised. Both homeowners and small businesses affected by the fires must know, in both words and deeds, that the local government has their backs.
Last January’s wildfires were one of the saddest chapters in Los Angeles’s storied history. Let its first anniversary be a call for local government to do better.
