I couldn’t imagine the devastation that left behind after the fires of Eton and Palisade in January. The firestorm was caught up in Southern California, 59 square miles more than twice the size of Manhattan, transforming the entire urban block of Altadena and the Pacific Palisade into corridors of ash, twisted metal and skeletal wood.
Federal disaster officials quickly deployed thousands of workers to collect wreckage across the burn scars. Armed with shovels and heavy construction equipment, the crew quickly collected fire debris from heavy-duty cliffs, dim coastlines and vast burning neighbours. Within a few months they were ready to rebuild a mountain of burnt tiled bleeds.
Recently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have said it has completed clearing around 2.6 million tonnes of wreckage from around 9,700 properties. The private contractor removed fire debris from the additional 2,100 plots.
However, many experts worry that the rapid pace of federal cleanup could ultimately put a cost on homeowners.
The Army has been largely demobilized and contractors have been cleaned up, and they have left those preparing to undertake one of the region’s biggest reconstruction campaigns in the past century.
Federal officials also denied the need to conduct soil testing, claiming it was too time consuming. However, soil sampling carried out by university researchers discovered excessive levels of toxic metals with properties already cleared by the Army.
A team of university scientists from UCLA, Loyola Marymount and Purdue tested soil samples from 47 already cleaned homes in Altadena and found 49% of homes already cleaned above California housing standards.
“This recovery cannot be compared to other wildfire cleanings in recent memory,” said Andrew Welton, an engineering professor at Purdue University who studies natural disaster recovery. “It is because of a deliberate decision by government officials at all levels to skip soil testing, they did not determine that the property was safe when the contractor left the property.
“If 50% of the property is unsafe, it’s not a recovery. The federal government may demobilize it, but liability is currently being pushed into the property owners to finish work.
Despite such concerns, many people praise their efficiency efforts. The rapid recovery allowed some survivors, including Carlos Lopez, a resident of Altadena, to rebuild much faster than expected.
“That’s hope,” Lopez said of his home site. There, workers were already building wooden frames on September 10th. “The neighbor I spoke to, we wanted to know that we were actually moving forward. There’s a realization that we can get home sooner than later.”
Colonel Jeffrey Palazini, who oversaw the debris removal operation due to the Palisade Fire, said the Army and its contractors have received almost positive feedback from property owners like Lopez. He said speed is a reflection of the urgency of the threat of public health and is not necessarily a sign of poor workmanship.
The cleanup of LA County wildfires tackles a historically destructive barrage of fires, each showing the maturity of federal wildfire response, each of which was the largest wildfire in the state’s history.
““We’ve seen a lot of people in the world,” said Laurie Johnson, a well-known urban planner who specializes in natural disaster recovery.
Lindsey Horvas, the Luika County supervisor who represents Parisades, expressed cautious optimism about the road ahead. “Through the cleanup, we follow all the best practices recommended and continue to follow the advice of our recovery experts,” Horvath said in a statement. “I will continue to seek soil testing to give homeowners greater security before rebuilding, and I will continue to support efforts to ensure recovery support can be restructured faster and safer. Recovery won’t end here.”
initial
In Pallisad and Malibu in the Pacific, wildfires have transformed some of the region’s most famous roads, including Sunset Boulevard and the Pacific Coast Expressway, into unrecognised maze fragments. Burnt slabs of stucco, broken concrete and dust, taking in picturesque views of the Pacific Ocean.
In Altadena, we consumed a middle-class melting pot thrust into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, a 100-year-old cottage and family-owned business on Lake Avenue, the community’s main commercial drug.
In the wake of these twin disasters, Gavin Newsom’s administration will lead the recovery. On his last day in his administration, President Biden approved the funding and deployed it to federal agencies to begin removing and disposing of the most dangerous materials from affected property.
In mid-January, the neighborhood was a literal minefield of explosives, including propane tanks, firearm ammunition, electric vehicles, electronic motorbikes and blackout-enabled battery storage systems. There were also many household items that contained corrosive acids and toxic ingredients that must be collected to prevent contamination of soil and groundwater.
On January 16th, the Environmental Protection Agency deployed its first team to assess the damage and presence of dangerous materials. The agency ultimately identified around 13,600 properties, mostly single-family homes, that were damaged or destroyed in the fire and are probably dangerous materials.
Within days of taking office, President Trump signed to direct the EPA to promote the removal of dangerous materials. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin later said Trump had directed the agency.
In response, the Federal Emergency Management Agency increased disaster funds nearly $179 million. It was used to “surge” 850 contractors to collect the most dangerous materials from burn scars by that deadline, according to records obtained by The Times.
With a white coverall suit and full-face respirator, Hazmat workers sifted through the ashes and sifted the property through the grounds to drip lead-acid batteries, canned paint and pesticide cans.
EPA HR and agency contractors have converted popular community gathering spots to the Hazmat Stockpile site, including the driving range of Altadena Golf Colse and the parking lot at Will Rogers State Beach. Workers laid multiple layers of plastic liners that could organize the materials and ultimately carry them to a dump of dangerous waste.
– 2 days before schedule – The EPA has announced that it has completed the work. The crew of that dangerous material was overseeing removal from the 9,400 properties, making it the biggest cleaning of dangerous materials for wildfires that the EPA has ever carried out.
However, the EPA thought 30% or 30% of the properties were not safe to enter. A time analysis of residential properties found that workers accessed 1,336 homes damaged or destroyed in the Palisade fire and all accessed 1,453 homes in the Eton fire.
EPA spokesman Julia Jalmoreo said the postponed properties include dangerous trees, dangerous obstacles, steep slopes and unstable walls, which prevented the EPA field team from accessing the property safely.
“EPA’s operations are always based on completing the entire task as quickly, efficiently and safely as possible,” Giarmoleo said. “In the case of the LA fire, the EPA encountered a higher proportion of properties that require delay due to partial structural destruction compared to previous EPA wildfire reactions.”
Instead, the remaining dangerous material work was left for the Army Corps of Engineers. The agent was tasked with handling the second stage of debris removal.
The army rolls
The Army and its leading contractor, Environmental Chemical Corp., have been charged with removing millions of tons of ash, concrete and metal. They vowed to restore 12,000 properties by January 2026, within a year when the fatal wildfire first broke out. The ambitious timeline outweighs the wildfire debris removal missions the Army Corps have worked on so far, including an 18-month recovery from the 2023 Lahaina wildfire that destroyed 2,200 homes and buildings.
The Army and ECC hired several subcontractors and were hired by several schools that were ruined by the fire in early February. This includes Pasadena Rosebud Academy Charter School in Altadena, where Hazmato workers pushed asbestos waste into thick plastic bags. They walked through fields of burnt debris and gathered ignited steel bars, metal door frames and structural beams into stakes.
Soon afterwards, the workers moved into the burned house. In mid-February, after a two-day delay due to heavy rain, crews finished cleaning up their first home sites in Altadena and Pallisard, Pacific.
As the cleanup progressed, one civil servant’s disability had tracked down thousands of displaced people and had the federal cleanup crew sign documents granting permission to clear their property. Fast-moving wildfires forced people to evacuate with most warnings, so many escaped only clothes on their backs.
Army officials have tried to spread sign-up instructions and appeal to the public at press conferences and community meetings. Local officials helped by calling disaster victims in parts of Altadena, where responses are scarce, according to Anish Sarayya, the recovery director for the supervisor at the office of LA County Supervisor Kasin Berger..
“Our offices have begun calling individual property owners due to concerns about the disparity after the west fire on the lake (Avenue),” Saraiya said. “One thing we certainly wanted to do is that this is a fair process that reached everyone at once. Obviously someone would have to be the last one. But we wanted to make sure that the process was transparent.”
By April, the federal government cleanup had reached a significant extent with around 9,000 opt-ins. About 230 clean-up crews and 4,000 workers blew fans across the burn scars and in a 12-hour shift, they removed debris from the house and transported them to landfills and scrapids.
Following FEMA and the Army Corps, criticism from environmental advocates and fire survivors led to criticism of the decision after the cleanup, ensuring that the property exceeds the health standards of California residential properties and does not have toxic metals such as lead.
This will be California’s first major wildfire reaction since 2007, without a measurable target to remove toxic substances.
The homes destroyed by the Eton Fire were cleaned at a faster rate than the homes affected by the Palisade Fire, according to a Times analysis of residential real estate. Army officials said they tried to prioritize real estate near schools, coastlines, waterways and occupied homes.
One such property belonged to Bronwen Sennisch and her husband. Their Spanish-style home was a little further away from the charter school at Palisade Elementary School.
Senish said he appreciated the sense of urgency and sensitivity that the Army Corps approached her home. One April morning, when she and her husband arrived in their town, the heavy machines were already humming. Sennish said the crew were happy to explain the parameters of their work. The excavator operator then sifted through the roof tiles in search of the two of them, looking for something salvation. “Military trained people are very good at problem solving and logistics,” Sennish said.
But not everyone has a positive experience.
For example, the cleanup crew excavated a lot of soil from a lot of Corten Sheridan in northeastern Altadena in April, according to an Internal Army report obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Sheridan, who is still evacuated and temporarily lives in Santa Cruz County, said he has never been informed of a potentially expensive mistake.
Instead, five months later, Sheridan was thinking of a reconstruction plan, but he was shocked to learn from a journalist at the LA Times that his property was the subject of complex internal debates in Army Co. and in debris removal workers.
“I feel I should have absolutely been informed. I’m just engaging my head right now,” he said. “If they’re overeating and they’re not going to do anything about it, what’s my hope? I don’t know.”
In early September, Sheridan called for an Army hotline dedicated to dealing with questions and concerns about federal cleaning, but he couldn’t get an answer.
Now Sheridan fears that before he can rebuild, he may have to bring in clean soil and put forward a bill to rebuild his property. If your home is too low, you won’t be able to properly connect sewers and storm drains.
Army officials declined to comment on Sheridan’s property, citing privacy concerns.
Many environmentalists and community members were worried that the speed of cleanup could lead to angular cuts and substandard finishes.
Army Corps records show that cleanup supervisors routinely observed them. In some cases, workers ignored decontamination protocols by stepping outside the contaminated area without rinsing their boots.
Additionally, internal documents achieved by The Times show that Debris Crews regularly disrupt how they handle it. Researchers have found to contain trace amounts of lead, arsenic and other toxic chemicals. The contractor is said to have sprayed it onto the building, on the footprint, the front lawn, nearby facilities, and even on the streets.
James Mayfield, owner of Mayfield Environmental Engineering, a private contractor specializing in dangerous goods, has cleaned around 200 properties destroyed in LA Fires. For the ashes filled pool, he sucked contaminated water in a vacuum truck and sent it to a place where he would treat the wastewater.
Mayfield believes that inexperienced workers and a ferocious timeline have probably led to crews who ignored these best practices and re-deposited toxic metals into residential properties and local waterways.
“Properly dangerous material disposal is around $10,000,” Mayfield said. “You can imagine, most people didn’t want to do that. They want to cut corners.”
Many wealthy homeowners who opted out of federal cleaning and decided to hire private contractors may have, in some cases, expedited their timeline for cleanup and restructuring, and provided access to services that government programs didn’t offer.
The temporal analysis of private cleanup highlights the wealth gap between the wealthy residents of Palisades in the Pacific and the working-class communities of Altadena. Analysis shows that at least 1,392 homes have opted out of Pallisard cleanup, almost four times as much as Eton’s fire area.
Lifelong Palisade resident Tom James decided there was too much uncertainty about cleaning the Army. He also did not feel comfortable signing a liability exemption to indemnify the federal government and contractors in the event of a mistake. He instead chose to hire a civilian crew who could pay with his insurance contract, clearing up fire fragments from his historic Victorian home in his heart, along with his collection of vintage cars and motorcycles in his garage.
Still, James was influenced by federal contractors. The Army crew working next door left a large pile of soil for his neighbors in his backyard. He walked to the American Legion, where Army officials were stationed to let them know. The representative apologized and vowed to remove the soil, but James said they had not returned.
Time to rebuild
According to the Army, the federal project cleared 9,673 properties, namely a mixture of home land, commercial facilities, parks and schools.
This paves the way for reconstruction submissions. Approximately 900 of these have already been approved.
In Altadena, some residents ready to rebuild have returned to the empty lot of RVS. The screams of table saws and pops of nail guns break the silence of these neighborhood fireplace corners.
Real estate agent Lamar Bontrager has already laid the foundation and has begun framing his home on Loma Alta Drive. He believes in the Army in a quick start.
“I had a very simple lot and they took everything I wanted to remove,” Bon Rager said. Bontrager counts good fortune. Looking at the other lots around town, he said some of his neighbors had big lifts. “In some homes, they (federal contractors) have dug huge holes. My neighbors have a real problem that needs to be solved now by retrieving the dirt.”
Cleanup was the fastest in history, but some survivors feel it has been forgotten. Federal records show that the 391 property owners who requested federal assistance were deemed ineligible by FEMA.
FEMA says some of these properties did not do sufficient damage to qualify. The agency considers others, including many multi-family homes, as commercial real estate and therefore unqualified.
These decisions have tied up some of the biggest residential developments affected by the fire. For example, across the street from Will Rogers State Beach, Pacific Palisard’s Army Park did not clean the Pacific Palisades Bowl, a 170-unit mobile home park next door.
Residents were never able to tell why one property was entitled and the other property was not entitled. These decisions are entirely up to FEMA.
A rusty metal frame and a pale ash blanket still sits within hundreds of feet of the ocean. Residents who have little to hear about the dilemma from landowners;
“There are hundreds of people still having sleepless nights,” said John Brown, co-chair of the Pallisard Bowl Community Partnership, which is fighting for the right to return to the resident’s home. “I just drove by the park today and got sick.”
Brown and others saw the legions clearing up thousands of lots, and a handful of owners began rebuilding, leaving the pile of burnt pieces virtually untouched. They rarely get back to what they’re before.
Faced with sudden rent for temporary housing, Brown fears that the owner is looking for a way out – selling the land or changing its use.
“If they can’t even motivate them to clean it up, what forces them to rebuild it as a mobile home park?” Brown asked.
Federal disaster officials and contractors are no longer able to answer these questions.
Before the Army and its workers pack, they commemorate the last home, cleaned with each burn.
At Altadena, it was specifically demanding that her daughter, Tami Outterbridge, be her last.
She and her mother, Beverly, lived in two separate homes in the family lot in West Altadena. They postponed the cleanup several times, and asked his father’s friends and contemporaries to help them wash the ashes of his artwork and other memorabilia. They found his father’s vintage glasses and fragments of his sculpture.
When the cleanup crew arrived in mid-August, they came along with a team of dog support archaeologists who helped them find their grandmother’s ashes.
“These are literally irreplaceable,” Tami Ottervilage said. “I was thinking about what I was saying I lost two homes and all of my possessions, so that was when the idea began to be formulated. It was literally very important about this concept of finding someone else finding a trash can instead of something abandoned.”
The August 14th ceremony marked the final Altadena home to be cleaned as part of a federal project, and looked around the neighborhood, which was packed with ashes and rings a few months ago. Now it was a drastic panorama of lots covered in almost empty mulch.
“I’m not a very emotional person, but I felt choking,” he said.
Saraiya said local officials understand that they need to quickly rebuild roads, install underground power lines and plan more fire-resistant communities. “After all these months, after this work and all this effort, there’s a lot to do.”
Assistant Data and Graphics Editor Vanessa Martinez and senior journalist Lorena Iñiguez Elebee contributed to this report.
