How We Rebuild: What Comes After the LA Fires

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the second in a special series, check out the first installment here.

In Los Angeles, survivors of last month’s fires will soon begin the arduous process of rebuilding.

In this second installment of a special series from KQED’s podcast, SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America, host Erin Baldassari brings together stories that examine what happens when people come home.

The show features reporting about how the fires are rocking an already shaking insurance industry and what Californians can expect from fires and floods of the future.

Survivors of past wildfires reveal how they rebuilt with wildfires in mind and worked with their neighbors to make their communities safer.

Here’s what listeners can expect:

Veteran Wildfire Survivors Help The New Recruits
There are some questions only veterans of past fires can answer, such as, “If you rebuild, does the sense of safety ever return?” That was a question Jodi Moreno, who lost her home in the L.A.’s Eaton Fire, posed to Erica Solove, whose home burned in Colorado’s 2021 Marshall Fire. As KQED’s Laura Klivans reports, Solove and Moreno connected through the group, Extreme Wildfires Survivors, which brings together disaster veterans with new recruits.

Coffey Strong
Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park was all but leveled in the deadly Tubbs Fire of 2017. But go there now, and it would be easy to miss its history and the subtle ways homeowners have rebuilt to better withstand future fires. As KQED’s Adhiti Bandlamudi reports, their experiences offer lessons backed by research for survivors of the Southern California fires.

Hydro-Climate Whiplash
Extreme floods, extreme heat, extreme fires: This is what residents can expect for California’s future. Ezra David Romero, climate reporter at KQED, spoke with Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources and UCLA, who dug into this weather phenomenon. He, along with a team of other researchers, published a new report that gave it a name: hydro-climate whiplash.

A Rocky Insurance Market Just Got Shakier
Even before the recent wildfires in Los Angeles, insurance carriers had been fleeing California. And this disaster was their worst nightmare: it’s estimated to be the most expensive on record. Carriers already paid out billions of dollars, with more to come. Climate reporter Danielle Venton went down to Los Angeles and spoke with insurance brokers, catastrophe adjusters and others about how these fires could transform the industry.

Neighbors Band Together
When insurance is working well, it becomes the foundation over which disaster survivors can begin to rebuild their lives. However, ensuring that the foundation is built on solid ground requires a village. That’s what UC Berkeley Professor Nancy Wallace discovered after she lost her home in the 1991 Oakland Hills fire. She spoke with KQED’s Rachael Myrow about how she and her neighbors teamed up to get fair compensation from their insurer.