Out of the top 20 most destructive wildfires in California, 15 of them have occurred in the last decade. There’s the Camp Fire, the Woolsey Fire, the Tubbs Fire, the Carr Fire, the Thomas Fire and, of course, LA’s Eaton and Palisades Fires. The list is long.  It’s stunning when you think about it. Fires of this magnitude were rare before the year 2000.Most of these communities have started to build back but …how far along they are depends on a lot of factors…especially how much money people have access to…and even then…the same residents don’t always move back in.As we near the first anniversary of the fire here in LA, we want to look at what can be learned from other communities who’ve been through it, and what the next several years might look like for us.

Guests: Nicole Lambrou, executive director of Tinkercraft, an environmental and design research studio.  She’s also an Assistant Professor at Cal Poly Pomona, and has spent the last few years studying wildfire recovery efforts in California.

Rebecca Zandovskis, Altadena resident

Check out Nicole’s work:How Do You Rebuild Community After Wildfire? https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/how-do-you-rebuild-community-after-wildfire/Social drivers of vulnerability to wildfire disaster: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169204623001160Housing and Economic Recovery as Interdependent Pathways in the Wake of Wildfires: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/395635200_Housing_and_Economic_Recovery_as_Interdependent_Pathways_in_the_Wake_of_WildfiresRelated stories from the LA Times:What can Palisades, Altadena learn from other California wildfire rebuilds?22,500 homes lost. Over five years later, only 38% rebuilt: What California fire survivors face: https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2025-09-30/rebuilding-california-after-major-wildfires
Younger, richer and smaller: How California’s era of wildfire has changed communities forever: https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2025-09-30/how-communities-change-after-wildfire