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Los Angeles is approaching the five-month mark since January's deadly wildfires, and federal clean-up crews are months ahead of schedule removing burned debris from thousands of properties. City leaders now say the recovery is on pace to be the fastest in modern California history, but the reality on the ground is more complicated. NPR's Kirk Siegler explains.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: On a recent morning, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass celebrated a milestone, standing beaming in front of one of the first homes being rebuilt in the Pacific Palisades.
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KAREN BASS: They're moving at lightning speed, expediting the timeline to get families home.
SIEGLER: Hammers pounding behind her, the scene is a sharp contrast to five months ago when the mayor was facing calls to resign for being out of the country when the wind-driven fires ignited. But on this morning, it's good news - almost a third of all the burned lots in the Palisades are now cleared of debris, a required step toward rebuilding.
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BASS: It's my job to make sure that the process goes smoothly, goes quickly and is safe, and that people rebuild fast, but they rebuild back better.
SIEGLER: Rebuild back better for Bass means building to safer fire-resistant codes. The city is also waiving building permit fees that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
WALTER LOPES: Wow. I mean, this is happening, you know? I want to move back.
SIEGLER: This home's owner, Walter Lopes, stood back kind of in disbelief.
LOPES: So I think now, it's a really sign of hope.
SIEGLER: And there's hope because federal crews are cleaning burned lots at a historic pace, faster than the early months after the Camp Fire burned down Paradise, California, or those deadly fires on Maui. The acrid smell of burned metal and plastics has only gone away here some, and there's still a ton of alarming destruction. And to be clear, many survivors have yet to even resolve insurance claims.
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SIEGLER: Maya Rahbari and her husband, Hossein Hashemi, have been staying in his parents' small apartment near the 405 freeway.
MAYA RAHBARI: I'm living in someone else's house right now.
HOSSEIN HASHEMI: And we don't have a local community.
SIEGLER: The couple lost everything in the Palisades. Hossein is back teaching at USC, and Maya is getting some work again as an occupational therapist. On a table is tea and fresh pistachios her family sent from Tehran as comfort food. They're stressed that their insurance isn't going to pay out.
RAHBARI: Even if we, like, sell our land right now, let's say for a million dollars, with $1 million, you're not lucky to find a good house in LA, in a good neighborhood.
HASHEMI: You know, we're trying to rebuild, but our friends and family are saying that, are you sure it's not going to happen again?
SIEGLER: And they worry if it's even safe to go back. Federal crews are now removing the top six inches of soil from burned lots. In a statement to NPR, FEMA says that's sufficient to take care of contamination, pointing to data from recent LA fires. In late January, President Trump ordered the fast-tracking of debris removal. Today, a growing number of scientists, like Andrew Whelton, are worried that clean-up is happening too fast.
ANDREW WHELTON: People need to build back. They need to rebuild. They need to know that they can bring their kids back to their properties without jeopardizing their health in future.
SIEGLER: Whelton is an engineer at Purdue University and is nationally known for exposing hazards that crop up after disasters. In Paradise, his team discovered that the town's entire water system was contaminated.
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SIEGLER: He's walking a street in Altadena, where lots were recently cleaned and smoothed out.
WHELTON: What we can't see is whether or not there are any other hazards there.
SIEGLER: Signs posted along the sidewalk indicate it's OK to start building here.
WHELTON: You know, how much lead is on the site, how much arsenic, how much cadmium?
SIEGLER: Whelton is in LA pushing for more testing of soils after the lots are cleared. The Feds are not, which he says is a departure from what's now standard protocol after urban wildfires.
WHELTON: It's unclear to me why this is different, but it clearly is. And this is a problem towards a safe and rapid rebuilding.
SIEGLER: Last week, LA County did approve a soil-testing plan for the Eaton Fire, after county health officials found more than a quarter of the properties scraped by federal crews still had toxins above California standards. And in the Palisades, LA Mayor Karen Bass says the city is looking for private groups to step in and test.
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BASS: So speed does not necessarily mean at all - or cannot mean - that rebuilding would be done in a sloppy manner or that we would skip steps.
SIEGLER: But no matter how many more steps they say they'll take, it's too late for survivors like Diana Lieb (ph) in Altadena. The uncertainty around toxins was the last straw.
DIANA LIEB: There's not much communication about, you know, what is healthy to be around, you know?
SIEGLER: Lieb put her lot on the market yesterday.
Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Los Angeles. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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