- 3 months ago
How will Los Angeles recover from the devastating fires of January 2025? An analysis of satellite imagery, historical fires, and data on building codes, insurance, and fire risk suggests that the tragedy may well be a turning point in the city's history.
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00:00From above, we can see that Los Angeles is becoming a more and more dangerous place to live.
00:19Maps and satellite images show us how housing, climate and geography are colliding to devastating effect.
00:30And though politicians are pushing to fast-track reconstruction after the fires of January 2025,
00:36evidence from past fires suggests we've reached a tipping point.
00:41People are going to have to come to the recognition that you can't rebuild the way it was.
00:47We analysed the latest views from above and overlaid them with the maps that really matter.
00:52To ask whether the 2025 fires can finally force LA's ever-expanding suburbs
00:58to pull back from the brink.
01:12All fire needs is fuel, oxygen and heat.
01:15In early January 2025, LA had all three in abundance.
01:21Take a look at these satellite images of Altadena in Los Angeles County from January 6th.
01:30We can see modest single-storey homes on small plots of land,
01:35surrounded by trees and shrubs.
01:37And here, over in the more affluent Pacific Palisades neighbourhood,
01:43multi-million dollar estates with ocean views,
01:46again surrounded by greenery.
01:53By January 10th, both neighbourhoods had been reduced to Ash.
01:58Take a look at these side-by-side street view images of Sunset Boulevard.
02:11These colonial-style wood-framed homes were little more than kindling.
02:19California has seen too many times before, dense housing and dry vegetation don't mix.
02:24Where the two meet is known as a wildland-urban interface.
02:30Between 1990 and 2020, 45% of new homes in California were built in these transition zones.
02:38The Eaton and Palisades fires both occurred in places like this.
02:45No wonder that when fire comes, as it always does,
02:47it is becoming more and more destructive to people and property.
02:51This study found that of all the structures destroyed by wildfire between 1985 and 2013,
02:58more than 80% were in the zone where homes and nature meet.
03:03We've known for decades now about the emergence of these risks in these high-risk areas,
03:09and yet we've done very little to essentially move people out of harm's way.
03:13Many now see 2025 as a turning point, the time to finally reconsider LA's urban sprawl.
03:24Looking back at fires from California's past suggests that when Los Angeles does recover,
03:31it may look very different.
03:32Take these two fires that occurred over 50 years apart.
03:37Similar location and scale, but the outcomes were very different.
03:42In 1964, the Hanley Fire in Sonoma County scorched nearly 56,000 acres,
03:49but destroyed only 108 homes. No one died.
03:52Aerial images from the time show that apart from vegetation, there was very little else to burn.
03:59Fast forward to October 2017 and look at the same landscape.
04:05Thousands of closely packed homes nestled among the trees.
04:09So when the Tubbs Fire of October that year ignited, the result was very different.
04:18It claimed 22 lives and destroyed more than 5,600 structures.
04:26One of the hardest hit neighbourhoods was the Coffee Park area in Santa Rosa.
04:31Around 1,500 homes were destroyed here in a single day.
04:34Take another example, Paradise, California.
04:42A ridgetop community in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
04:47Many working class families moved to this part of California in the 1960s for its affordability.
04:54Ryan Miller's family was one of them.
04:58My family, literally, we used to kind of think a little bit about wildfire risk and joke about it.
05:03But we used to say, I mean, we don't really have fire risk.
05:06We're not on the edge of town.
05:07The whole town would have to burn down for our house to be at risk.
05:12Heavenly Father, please help us.
05:16But on November the 8th, 2018, a fire tore through Ryan's community,
05:21destroying his mobile home and more than 80% of the properties in the area.
05:25The campfire became one of the deadliest in US history, claiming 85 lives and destroying more than 18,000 structures.
05:40Seven years later, you can still see the empty plots where homes used to be.
05:51We can see that Paradise is being rebuilt, but all these years later, less than half of the population has returned.
05:59Will this be the fate of Altadena or Pacific Palisades in LA?
06:06There's still a really big shortage of especially affordable apartments.
06:10And we haven't really replaced that affordable housing stock.
06:14So the region's kind of been permanently transformed by just losing 14,000 houses overnight.
06:20Ryan and his family are scattered across different parts of California.
06:27They couldn't afford to rebuild.
06:30Ryan decided to track down where his neighbors ended up settling, and he made this map.
06:36It shows Paradise residents scattered across almost every state in the US.
06:41Of the displaced people he surveyed, over 40% said they had no intention of returning.
06:47I think for a lot of people too, there was a sense that that property was associated with that trauma that maybe they didn't want to relive.
06:56I think it made a lot more sense, both financially and also just psychologically, to move on from that property.
07:03The pine trees of Paradise used to offer shade and a sense of privacy.
07:08But much of the woodland has now been removed to reduce the risk of fire.
07:15This map shows the tree loss over time.
07:22I want to see Paradise recover.
07:25I don't necessarily think it should look exactly like it did in 2018 again.
07:31Maybe it wasn't the best place to have 26,000 people.
07:34Will this be what the rebuilt suburbs of LA will look like, more sparsely populated with less vegetation?
07:44Or, like in the case of Coffee Park after the Tubbs fire, will they simply be rebuilt almost exactly as they were before?
07:50Many say that LA should never have been allowed to expand as much as it did in the first place.
07:58You could say the blueprint for these flammable suburbs was laid down more than 100 years ago.
08:04In the 19th century, the government encouraged people to move out west with the promise of cheap land.
08:08The growth of LA coincided with the advent of the motor car, meaning city suburbs could afford to sprawl far and wide.
08:18Farming and the oil industry boom saw LA's population jump from 170,000 in 1900 to 2.2 million by 1930.
08:26Homes were built primarily with wood for its ability to withstand small earthquakes, but it made them more vulnerable to fire.
08:40Over the decades, properties stretched further up among the ridges and ravines north of LA and along the coast.
08:48Most suburbs were designated for single-family homes like these.
08:51Homes for all incomes. New, original, architecturally exciting.
08:57Today it is the second most populous city in the United States, after New York City.
09:02But unlike New York, LA grew out, not up.
09:06And this is where urban sprawl is meeting climate change head on.
09:11Our infrastructure that we have built in this country is built for a climate of the past, a climate that no longer exists.
09:18This map shows how year-round temperatures have been steadily increasing in LA.
09:27Average temperatures in LA County have risen around 4 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 50 years.
09:33We see in some parts of the West, we now have an additional two more months of fire weather days now compared to the 70s.
09:40Here, the heat combined with the winds that funnel through the canyons and valleys, contributes to the intensity of fires.
09:5019 of the 20 largest fires in California's history have occurred in the past 25 years.
09:57Research by the University of Colorado Boulder, using two decades of NASA satellite data, suggests that fires are also spreading faster than ever before.
10:08If we have strong winds coming in, sometimes they're 60 miles per hour, sometimes they're 100 miles per hour.
10:15If there is a fire that has been ignited, that wind will spread the fires so quickly across the landscape that's already fire-prone.
10:23This map shows the drought conditions in the LA region in the six months leading up to the 2025 fires.
10:32Over the same period, LA received just 16 hundredths of an inch of rainfall, making it the second driest on record since the late 1800s.
10:42Even before the fires, data shows that one in ten properties in Los Angeles County were at very high risk of fire.
10:54Climate change and associated extreme weather events displaced two and a half million Americans in 2023.
11:00Of the more than 150,000 Angelenos displaced by the January 2025 fires, how many will risk returning?
11:11About 1% of the US population in recent years, every year, is being displaced by natural hazards.
11:18Some are not related to climate, but about a fifth of those people will never return home.
11:22For those who do choose to stay and rebuild, costs will only go up.
11:31Changes to building codes means you can't just replace like for like.
11:36Around 85% of the homes destroyed in the recent LA fires were built before 1980.
11:43In 2008, California implemented stricter codes that required new homes to be built with ember-resistant roofs and vents,
11:51as well as external wall insulation.
11:55A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that homes built after 2008 are 40% less likely to be destroyed by wildfires.
12:05Take a look at this damage map of Altadena.
12:09Every red house symbol is a property that has been at least 50% destroyed by fire.
12:15And if you look closely every once in a while, you'll see one of these so-called miracle homes, seemingly untouched while the properties around them turn to dust.
12:26The result of pure chance modern building specifications or even prompt intervention from fire services.
12:32There's really no such thing as a fireproof home.
12:35You can build a home to a higher standard that's fire resistant, but there's no such thing as a zero risk building in that regard.
12:43Building back better can be expensive. Adding basic fire resistant features can cost around $10,000, with more extensive renovations reaching up to around $100,000.
12:54Demand for builders and materials to reconstruct LA's over 12,000 destroyed structures may also drive up costs.
13:06Rialtor.com estimates the cost of rebuilding a home in Altadena at over a quarter of a million dollars,
13:13and around one million in Pacific Palisades.
13:15Wildfires also push up house prices and rent elsewhere as people displaced by fires compete over fewer homes.
13:24We've seen this throughout the history of California in recent years where in a post fire context people come back and they actually double down and build at a higher standard performance in these post fire areas.
13:39Build bunker like type buildings that significantly increase the cost and the value of housing and that actually operates as well to drive people out.
14:00Look at the car.
14:01Oh my gosh.
14:06In Pacific Palisades after the 2025 fire, architect Michael Kovac returned to find his home intact.
14:13These walls are, you can see the edge here, it's a few, you know, maybe a centimeter and a bit thick.
14:22And it's a super dense fiber cement panel.
14:26Michael had sprinklers fitted inside as well as out.
14:29When people see the big air tankers dropping the orange fire retardant in wildfires, that's what this is.
14:37So this is a material that's designed to be sprayed onto the landscaping or any surface that you're trying to keep from burning.
14:45The system worked, but defenses like this are expensive and increasingly fire survival is becoming a preserve of the wealthy.
14:52And I think, frankly, the insurance side will drive us to like if insurance says we're not going to we're not going to insure your house unless you can demonstrate something like this, that that will make it happen.
15:06Building codes in L.A. have improved in recent years, but the city doesn't insist on quite that level of protection.
15:13And there are signs that as the city looks to rebuild once again, it will prioritize recovery and reconstruction over safety.
15:22The real estate industry is passing on the risk. That's part of their business model.
15:27On the other end, we see a kind of willful negligence, a gross negligence sometimes by policymakers to just overlook these underlying risks.
15:36Why? Because they get the short term benefits of addressing housing and the housing crisis, and they can pass on the buck or the responsibility for climate risk to somebody else.
15:47California Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass issued orders in January 2025 designed to speed up reconstruction.
15:55California has had a hard time learning its lessons before.
15:58A study looking at the aftermath of fires between 1970 and 2009 found that almost 60% of buildings destroyed by the flames were replaced within six years.
16:09And there was little evidence that the newer homes would stand any better chance of resisting future fires.
16:15It seems to be a cycle of build, burn and repeat.
16:19I'm not terribly optimistic.
16:21Those are strong influences politically and they could very well align with the housing and real estate agenda to just rebuild at any cost.
16:30I think we know exactly what we need to do, but it's going to come at a very large economic and political cost.
16:36It's not clear whether Los Angeles will build homes in at risk areas like this again.
16:42The very same area that suffered the Franklin, Woolsey and Thomas fires and others in between.
16:48So I think one of the drivers of development out into these dangerous zones has been this kind of old school and I would argue outdated version of the American dream.
17:01But I think that maybe obsession and the centering of that dream in the way we plan our communities has created a lot of this risk.
17:10So we've got to reshape where our new housing goes.
17:12The cost of rebuilding combined with the increased fire risk brings with it another headache, insurance.
17:19For insurance companies, the fire risk is proving too great and the numbers no longer add up.
17:25Between 2020 and 2022, firms canceled 2.8 million homeowner policies in California.
17:32Over half a million of these cancellations were in Los Angeles County.
17:35State Farm, California's biggest insurance company, cancelled 72,000 policies less than a year before the latest LA fires, refusing to offer renewals.
17:47What we're seeing since the January 2025 fires is that people with homes that survived but were rendered uninhabitable by smoke damage are not getting payouts.
17:57The latest LA wildfires are expected to be the costliest in US history, with losses exceeding 250 billion dollars, according to one estimate.
18:09We are kind of running out of options and I think people don't really understand what a huge problem that is because there's always been kind of some safety, something to fall back on, someone to help you rebuild, pay for the costs.
18:22Experts suggest the result may be climate gentrification, where only the rich remain.
18:35What we see in general in the United States in a post-disaster context is really only the wealthiest people are able to return or at least return before everyone else.
18:45And so those who are under-insured or not insured at all or have a lower net wealth to be able to cover the loss that they've incurred, they struggle and they struggle to return.
18:59Over 9,000 structures were destroyed in January's Eton fire.
19:03In Altadena, black households were disproportionately hit by the fires.
19:08Nearly half of their homes were destroyed or badly damaged, compared to 37% of non-black households.
19:16A UCLA report puts this disparity down to the concentration of black families in western parts of Altadena, in part a legacy of historical racial segregation practices.
19:27This is my block right here.
19:32This is where I live, or where I lived.
19:40Nothing prepares you for this amount of destruction.
19:57I mean, there's no manual, there's no book.
20:01The community was already at the lower end of the area's income scale.
20:07Studies suggest residents are, as a result, now less likely to be able to afford to rebuild.
20:13The fires may well entrench the wealth and racial divides that have always been a feature of LA.
20:19Everything that we know and love is gone.
20:22Not just this house, my whole city gone, man, the whole thing.
20:26Even after a wildfire is controlled, the danger isn't over.
20:35This map shows how January's fires affected LA's air quality.
20:39There were a lot of buildings that burned, a lot of cars that burned, and so it released a lot of toxic contaminants into the air.
20:48Lots of lead, arsenic, asbestos, different plastics were also burned a lot.
20:55And so that all goes into the air, and it can travel as far as 150 miles.
21:01Studies suggest it can take months for the toxic particles in the air to clear.
21:06But it's the ground that will take far longer to treat.
21:11Clearing up the surface debris can take a matter of weeks, but the task of rehabilitating the soil could take years.
21:21Even after the wildfires, we have a lot of ash and toxic debris.
21:26A lot of that can stay on the land for a long time until it rains.
21:31And when it rains, it gets really concerning because then all that toxic debris goes into our waterways and into our oceans.
21:38Take a look at Lahaina in Hawaii.
21:42Satellite images show that over a year and a half after the fires of August 2023, almost nothing has returned.
21:51Authorities here needed to remove 400,000 tonnes of fire debris.
21:56According to a recent survey, one in five fire-affected households is considering leaving Maui.
22:01A recent poll shows that the majority of Los Angeles County residents don't plan on leaving.
22:08California is at a crossroads. The question remains, who will be able to stay, and at what price?
22:14If businesses impacted by the fires also leave town, that will further hamper LA's recovery.
22:20There are fears that the movie industry still recovering from Covid-19 lockdowns, and the writers and actors strike, will also suffer.
22:28This is definitely a very rough time for Los Angeles and, of course, for the film industry.
22:35It's definitely going to change the face of the population and the industry of Los Angeles.
22:40There's only so much you can take, and everybody has a breaking point.
22:45Everybody has a time when they have to be very honest with themselves and say,
22:49can I keep doing this, or do I need to do something else?
22:56There's also the psychological impact of fleeing a fire, of losing a home and a whole community.
23:03The trauma, for some, will prove too much.
23:05I feel broken. I feel lost. I feel devastated. I don't want to have to tell my boys that this is their home and it's gone.
23:18I feel nothing.
23:48You
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