Suburban, Rural Areas Tell Differing Wildfire Stories

It’s been eight months since the deadly Palisades and Eaton fires ripped through the Greater Los Angeles region, and if other parts of California scarred by fires are any indication, the communities that will reemerge from the ashes will be largely unrecognizable. 

Residents new and old are moving into areas damaged by wildfires, the Los Angeles Times reported.  

Take the Northern California town of Paradise, burned by the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest in the state’s history.

Paradise native Jen Goodlin returned to her hometown six months after the 2018 Camp fire with plans to rebuild. Her family bought a lot where they parked a trailer, and eventually they moved into a new four-bedroom house. As younger residents like her are attracted to cheap land and room to rebuild, the demographics of the town have changed significantly from once being dominated by retirees. “It took the fire to bring me home,” she told the Times. 

While less than a third of the 10,700 homes destroyed in the Camp fire have been rebuilt, Paradise is still humming with life, the Times reported. Parks are open, construction crews work as taco trucks provide food for workers and residents, and registration for Little League is higher than they were before the 2018 fire. What’s more, the new homes are often bigger as returning owners buy up adjacent lots and outsiders move in. 

Renters and low-income residents, however, have a different story. 

In the Paradise area, many have moved into nearby Chico and other urban areas with more state-backed affordable housing projects away from fire-prone regions. In Santa Rosa, the 2017 Tubbs fire destroyed the Journey’s End mobile home park, which provided housing to seniors on fixed incomes. It was later redeveloped into new apartments, but few former residents were able to return. Meanwhile, Santa Rose’s formerly middle-class Coffey Park subdivision was rebuilt with homes now selling for more than $1 million, per the Times. 

Camp fire recovery has been slow and steady, though the rebuilding efforts after the 2020 North Complex fire in Butte County’s Berry Creek has been even slower. 

Only 5 percent of the nearly 1,500 homes have been rebuilt, the Times reported. That marks the lowest recovery rate of any major California fire in the past eight years. By contrast, about 30 percent of its housing stock has been replaced, thanks in part to billions in settlements and government aid. Berry Creek residents, however, were largely uninsured or underinsured; plus, because the fire was sparked by lightning, there was no legal standing to sue and little public attention or private donations. As a result, hundreds of residents are still living in trailers, recreational vehicles and makeshift shelters as officials direct affordable housing funds to denser hubs like Chico and Oroville. 

As wildfires continue to spark across California, the divide between suburban and rural fire zones could become more pronounced. 

In unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County torched by the Palisades and Eaton fires, 469 building permits have been issued so far, according to the county’s permitting dashboard. More than 16,000 structures were torched in the January wildfires. 

— Chris Malone Méndez

Read more