Los Angles Needs to Fireproof Communities, Not Just Houses

The planners and residents working to rebuild Los Angeles won’t be starting from a blank slate, however. Existing roads, infrastructure, and plots of lands will all shape how the city is rebuilt. Some residents may want to immediately rebuild on the same plot of land, while some may be willing to sell their land to create a buffer zone.

On January 13, Mayor Bass issued an executive order that will expedite permits for rebuilding “like for like” and exempts these from reviews that would slow down the rebuilding process. Governor Newsom has also relaxed permitting rules under the California Environmental Quality Act in order to speed up rebuilding.

Exactly how LA then chooses to rebuild is a “social values question,” says Moritz. “It’s not so much of a science question any more. Shouldn’t we as a society be able to weigh in on where and how people are building or rebuilding, so it’s safer and has less of an impact from a public funding perspective down the road? Because a lot of these events will recur.”

Wildfires in California have grown larger and more damaging in recent years. Some 7.08 million acres burned in California between 2009 and 2018—more than double the area burned between 1979 and 1988. The number of fires encroaching into urban areas has gone up too. In the 10 years between 1979 and 1988 around 22,000 acres of burned land was within so-called wildland/urban interfaces—areas where housing is close to wildfire-prone nature. By 2009–2018 that increased to 32,000 acres.

One result of all this is that Californian authorities have good maps of high-risk areas. Many of the areas hit by the Palisades and Eaton fires were classified as very high fire hazard zones, which means new developments in these areas have to take steps to minimize the risk of fires spreading from wild vegetation into homes, including planting fire-resistant vegetation and keeping any other trees and shrubs trimmed and away from houses.

But housing demand is so high in cities like Los Angeles that developers often end up building in these very high fire-hazard zones anyway. After a wildfire, developers tend to slow down building in high-risk areas for a while, but after a couple of years they return to previous rates of development, says Nicholas Irwin, who studies real estate economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Cities and local authorities need to think about ways to discourage development in high-risk areas, says Irwin. One way would be to increase development taxes in areas prone to fires, but another would be to incentivize developers to infill—building more houses and apartments in underused urban areas.

“We do need denser development, especially in places like Los Angeles. The property market there is out of control, and it’s going to be getting even worse,” he says. “We need to think about ways to rebuild that allow more units to be built to help affordability but also ways that are more resilient to future wildfire risks.”

Burying power lines might also go a long way to defending houses against wildfire risks. The fire that destroyed Paradise was sparked by a power line fault, as were at least seven other of California’s most destructive wildfires. Burying power lines isn’t cheap, and those costs get passed on to utility customers, many of whom don’t live in areas at risk of wildfires.

“It’s these little things that would make a difference in the long run,” says Irwin. Burying power lines, encouraging denser development, and building more defensible communities. But these long-term investments require changing how people think about living in wildfire risk zones and accepting that more resilient communities come at a cost. “I just don’t know if we’re going to learn anything,” says Irwin.