Over the final 12 months, the Los Angeles Occasions revealed numerous letters to the editor associated to the Eaton and Palisades fires. They’ve included messages of solidarity, expressions of grief, frustrations over the fire response and recovery, and demands for accountability, all of them revealed as L.A. and its residents proceed to unravel precisely what occurred.
As we approached the one-year mark, I checked in with some Occasions readers who had letters revealed over the final 12 months to see what has modified and what hasn’t. What are their ideas on the restoration efforts? What questions concerning the response and restoration stay unanswered? What has given them hope in these difficult months? How can Los Angeles keep away from devastation on this degree sooner or later? And in the event that they misplaced their properties, how is their rebuilding going?
In response we acquired emotional reflections of loss, gratitude for the resilience of L.A.’s communities and, nonetheless, requires solutions and accountability. They function a reminder {that a} 12 months later restoration is much from over, however Californians press ahead nonetheless.
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To the editor: On Jan. 7, 2025, my dwelling, my belongings and my neighborhood have been diminished to ashes. My preliminary feeling was shock. How might I’ve lived so precariously on the sting for 35 years in my little paradise?
Hearth had by no means crossed Sundown Boulevard from the mountains, my husband, the native, instructed me so many instances and once more the morning of the Palisades fireplace. When the fireplace was within the mountains and the smoke grew to become troubling, he instructed me to return to his workplace in Santa Monica. If I had actually believed we have been in peril, in fact I might have introduced my cats.
Just a few hours later, we received an evacuation discover and we desperately tried to get again to rescue our cats, however legislation enforcement blocked each roadway. I misplaced all hope. We watched our dwelling burn in footage from a neighbor’s Ring digicam earlier than their dwelling burned as effectively.
What was misplaced? Photograph albums that may by no means get replaced, going again to generations of my immigrant ancestors. My marriage ceremony album from pre-digital days. My kids’s artwork and our diaries. My grandmother’s self-portrait. My neighborhood the place I served on many boards and walked into city and into the mountains day by day. My false sense of safety.
What remained? Unbelievably, my cats. A tremendous rescue nonprofit, Viva Rescue, captured my two cats on video earlier than really rescuing them weeks after the fireplace. They’d been returning to the rubble of our dwelling each night time. The reunion with my cats on the veterinary ER in Santa Monica was like getting again items of my damaged coronary heart.
Our security deposit field someway survived the overall destruction of our financial institution. In it was my great-grandmother’s ring, introduced from Russia as she escaped pogroms.
Additionally our temple, Kehillat Israel on Sundown, someway remained untouched.
What was gained? Perspective and freedom from possessions. Everyone knows we are able to’t take it with us. However solely dropping nearly every thing instantly can actually carry this consciousness dwelling. And surprisingly, this sudden realization introduced my husband and me a way of reduction and freedom. We now know for certain that we aren’t our possessions and that every one we actually want is one another.
Lisa Kaas Boyle, Nashville, Tenn.
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To the editor: There was a lot that has come out over the previous 12 months that tells us that the devastation of this fireplace might have been prevented. Folks throughout the nation want to look at the “Paradise Abandoned” quick documentary on YouTube by Rob Montz.
The Santa Ynez Reservoir was empty at the time of the fires and now needs to be drained again, for the reason that Los Angeles Division of Water and Energy can’t work out the way to exchange the reservoir cowl with out emptying it. And the top of the LADWP nonetheless has a job?
What’s occurring with the federal support of $40 billion that Gov. Gavin Newsom requested for?
Why can’t the L.A. Metropolis Council work out the way to waive the allow charges for the Palisades properties that have been misplaced? Mayor Karen Bass recommended this, however it’s as much as the Metropolis Council. The county waived charges for Altadena.
Insurance coverage corporations gladly took our premiums and agreed to particular protection. Now that we’ve got misplaced every thing, why aren’t they paying us?
Why can’t gross sales taxes be waived on rebuilding supplies?
FireAid raised more than $100 million for restoration efforts. Once I watched the live performance, I used to be hopeful that these funds could be distributed immediately to fireside victims, contemplating the assorted profiles featured all through the night of affected households. As a substitute, the cash was funneled to varied nonprofits (some with CEOs incomes six-figure salaries), leaving many victims outraged.
We really feel fortunate to be a part of the Alphabet Streets neighborhood of the Palisades, the place individuals are coming collectively to assist each other and lots of properties are already underneath building, together with ours. We are able to’t wait to get again dwelling.
Jill Smith, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Firstly, I need to thank and congratulate the Los Angeles Occasions specifically for the continued, usually in-depth protection of the Eaton and Palisades fires and their aftermath, and for documenting the struggles of the 1000’s of newly homeless survivors.
For these of us making an attempt to stand up from the devastating lack of our beloved Altadena properties and neighborhood, the common information protection has been a significant supply of ethical assist, in addition to info. We have to know that we aren’t forgotten and that the higher neighborhood nonetheless cares. It sustains us.
Much more, witnessing the overwhelming outpouring of assist in these quick weeks after the calamity (and since) that got here from scores of volunteering residents and organizations all through L.A. County and past has been so stunning and inspirational. The kindness of strangers made survivors really feel beloved, valued and never alone. These acts of generosity proceed to this present day.
I’m proud to be a resident of higher Los Angeles. GoFundMe published a study recently displaying that in 2025, Los Angeles was the highest giving metropolis within the U.S. I consider it. The goodness within the hearts of our individuals right here lifted me up.
Within the face of the horrific cruelty being enacted by the present president of this nation and his enablers, realizing we are able to depend on one another, our neighbors, for compassion and assist means the world.
Walter Dominguez, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Concerning the Palisades fireplace, I’m very disillusioned within the Los Angeles Hearth Division. Figuring out that Temescal Canyon is extraordinarily vulnerable to brush fires, it ought to have taken higher care in ensuring that the Lachman fire was absolutely extinguished. I place many of the blame on then-Hearth Chief Kristin Crowley.
I don’t blame Mayor Bass for the town’s response. Nevertheless, I do assume she was overwhelmed and lacked the required expertise in dealing with a significant emergency.
Concerning the Eaton fireplace, the emergency response system was clearly not ready. Alerts were delayed for hours on the top of the fireplace. There needs to be extra transparency as to what occurred and, if essential, leaders of the emergency command employees and the county board of supervisors needs to be held accountable.
As a result of Altadena is an unincorporated space, I’m involved that residents and companies within the space won’t obtain the assets they deserve. The American Planning Assn. and a task force led by UCLA have made a number of suggestions. I simply hope the county and others take heed of them.
Talking broadly concerning the state’s response, it isn’t clear that the Division of Insurance coverage is performing in one of the best curiosity of customers and policyholders. Insurance coverage corporations ought to at the very least partially cowl prices for brush clearance, constructing resilience, higher landscaping, and so forth.
The present invoice mandating landscaping buffers must also be reconsidered. The jury remains to be out on whether or not barring vegetation in a five-foot zone round buildings is one of the best method. My landscaper has instructed me that if every thing is well-watered and the lifeless brush is eliminated, then it needs to be high quality. I noticed examples of this with the Eaton fireplace.
Stewart Chesler, Granada Hills
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To the editor: Virtually a 12 months after the Palisades fireplace torched Malibu on Jan. 7, 2025, a November survey performed by the Malibu Rebuild Process Drive, which I chair, exposes a neighborhood nonetheless smoldering in purple tape. With 70 householders voicing their “greatest want,” greater than half fixated on permits: “A allow so I can go dwelling,” one begged. “Expedite the allow course of,” echoed others, slamming “delays” and “pointless geo opinions” that “value residents and the town thousands and thousands of {dollars} and months and months of time — they’re pointless and have to be eradicated.”
Frustration boils over in feedback: “It’s felony that Malibu has solely accepted three permits. In the meantime, the Palisades has properties which can be preparing for occupancy,” one fumed. “Cease shifting the goalposts,” one other demanded, decrying “totally different necessities” and “super-expensive modifications” to unaffected property like driveways and retaining partitions.
Monetary woes compound the ache: “Takes too lengthy to get a allow, how are we going to pay lease after we run out of insurance coverage cash? … We’re paying $15k a month.” Aged voices add heartbreak: “At 83, I believe a very powerful factor for me is time. Can I end this venture earlier than I’m not right here anymore?”
Regardless of metropolis pledges to streamline — waiving charges, including case managers — progress lags. As of late December, solely 22 rebuild permits have been issued for Malibu’s 720 destroyed constructions, far behind Pacific Palisades. This isn’t restoration; it’s neglect.
Malibu’s historic gradual progress mindset has compounded the woes. Metropolis Corridor should minimize the tape, favor residents over forms and ship on guarantees. As one respondent urged, “Streamline every thing.” Malibu deserves to rise from the ashes — now.
Abe Roy, Malibu
This author is chair of the Malibu Rebuild Process Drive.
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To the editor: A lot has modified since my household evacuated our Altadena dwelling through the Eaton fireplace. The world is crammed with empty tons, building and salvage vehicles. Many individuals are nonetheless with out secure housing as they battle insurance coverage corporations that deny or slow-walk claims (my household was displaced for eight months).
As we rebuild, Los Angeles County is lacking a possibility to create a safer, climate-resilient neighborhood.
Public works crews have bulldozed mature bushes that slowed embers, protected properties and cooled neighborhoods throughout more and more scorching summers. Regardless of the botched, deadly evacuation of West Altadena, the county is allowing new properties with out up to date evacuation plans. It’s offering scant assets for home-hardening or rooftop photo voltaic, which might scale back the cost of burying power lines and get rid of the necessity for methane fuel traces.
However the greatest missed alternative belongs to the state. These efforts require funding.
Whereas Altadenans are shouldering skyrocketing constructing and insurance coverage prices, the world’s largest oil corporations — whose air pollution generated the local weather chaos contributing to those and different climate-fueled disasters — received off scot-free.
California must make polluters pay their fair proportion. The Local weather Superfund payments, Senate Bill 684 and Assembly Bill 1243, would require these company polluters to take a position a small share of their huge earnings in reasonably priced clear vitality. This may assist our state combat the local weather emergency, higher put together for the subsequent catastrophe and decrease family payments. This laws has broad, bipartisan assist from Californians. The Legislature should cease dragging its toes and move a Local weather Superfund invoice.
Maya Golden-Krasner, Altadena
This author is deputy director of the Heart for Organic Variety’s Local weather Regulation Institute.
