Few among the nearly 10 million people who live in Los Angeles county were left untouched by last year’s disastrous firestorm. Driven by strong winds through parched vegetation, multiple fires exploded in quick succession last January, and devoured roughly 16,000 structures on all sides of LA.
Thirty-one lives were lost and thousands more were for ever changed. For many, a new chapter of the disaster began to unfold when the flames were extinguished, while the slow road to recovery started to take shape in the year that followed.
Their stories reflect the shared chaos that comes when lives and livelihoods are upended, but also the distinct ways climate disasters leave a mark on those affected by them.
The Altadena family that moved five times in a year: ‘It is a great tragedy that befell our town – but people are still showing up’
Elliott Hostetter and his wife thought they had found their forever home. They had spent 10 years in Altadena, raising two kids, growing an abundant garden filled with the chatter of their chickens and ducks, in a friendly and diverse neighborhood that made Los Angeles feel more like a small town.
Then in January, they lost everything. “Most of the spring was spent just dealing with various levels of shock,” Hostetter said, recounting the months he spent seeking stability for his children after they lost their house and school.
The family of four has bounced through temporary housing, moving into their fifth dwelling of the year just before the end of 2025.
Hostetter is a production designer whose work brought the family to Los Angeles, but after the fire he and his wife were not sure they could rebuild. The memories are still fresh on his mind: how the winds whipped through the trees that day, littering his yard with debris. His decision to evacuate before they were ordered to, after the power went out and howling gusts left his family sleepless. The next morning, staying with friends, they awoke to an eerie orange sky, the nearby mountains shrouded in a black cloud.
He heard from a neighbor that his house had not made it through the night. He and his family decided to see for themselves. Slipping past police barricades into the smoke-filled streets, the ruins still smoldered as the flames flickered through the debris.
Their peaceful sanctuary “was like hell on Earth”.
It was not until after they descended back down the hills to safety that the next string of thoughts came on like a cascade:
“We have nowhere to live. We have nothing. What are we going to do?”
The family has spent the last year trying to answer those questions. At the end of December, after months spent trying out other areas – from Palm Springs to the Pacific north-west – the Hostetters decided they would try to stay in Altadena. They secured a government loan to begin the arduous rebuilding process, with costs that far exceed their insurance coverage.
“Ultimately we have been left on our own to wade through so much bureaucracy and insurance and deal with a million different new challenges that none of us are equipped for,” he said. Others in the neighborhood are also “cobbling it together”, he added. But along with recovery, Hostetter is hoping for more accountability.
“There is a general sense that nobody evacuated us and no one was ultimately there helping people,” he said of the horrors that befell his community. In the year of reckoning that followed the fire, investigations showed evacuation warnings failed to reach thousands of people even as flames roared into neighborhoods. Hostetter and others have expressed concerns about whether the county, which oversees the unincorporated town of Altadena, will address the shortcomings that helped make this extreme weather event a catastrophe.
“To be safe rebuilding where I live, there needs to be some changes – and I don’t see those changes happening on a larger level.”
Ultimately though, the Hostetters found solace in what drew them to this corner of Los Angeles to begin with. “It was such a special beautiful place, but what made it so special was the people,” he said. “It is a great tragedy that befell our town – but the people are still showing up.”
The Palisades renter who lost her home – then leaned on neighbors and strangers: ‘Everything we have is thanks to them’
On the other side of Los Angeles, Jenny Weigle-Bonds shares those sentiments even though she has had to navigate a very different set of circumstances. Weigle-Bonds and her husband rented their home in the Pacific Palisades, a tightknit neighborhood overlooking the ocean on the city’s west side that, like Altadena, was left in ruins.
She described the zombie-like feeling that defined the days after the fire, the mental fog and fatigue that comes when grief and logistics overlap. But somehow, against the odds and in spite of the throngs of people all vying for the same spots, one week after the couple learned their house had burned, they secured a place to start over.
That set of keys was just about all they had to rebuild their life. They had packed for two or three nights tops, grabbing little more than prescriptions and passports during a frenzied evacuation.
“Thanks to our friends, family and complete strangers,” she said, the empty rental filled through the past year. “Everything we have in here is thanks to them,” she added. “It is because of the kindness that we started to make this a home.”
Weigle-Bonds counts herself among the luckiest in the aftermath of this disaster. But it has not been easy.
She is still haunted by memories of that week. Weigle-Bonds said they never got alerts to leave, and were saved by a community text thread she had started with neighbors. Her feelings were still raw as she recalled the frenetic flight from the home she shared with her husband and stepdaughter.
There was gridlocked traffic that kept them stalled in the smoke-filled canyons for more than an hour. It was followed by a second evacuation from the friend’s house in Santa Monica, where they were staying that night. The next day, glued to the news, the couple would see footage from their street, their neighbor’s home reduced to smoldering rubble. Fearing the worst, her husband hiked past the barricades to see if their home had survived.
When he sent her a photo via text, Weigle-Bonds collapsed into her friend’s arms.
“It was so taxing to pull myself together,” she said of the days that followed. Despite the mental and physical toll, there was work to do in the aftermath. Insurance documents still need to be filed. New rental applications needed to be finished. And she was determined to continue being part of the community experiencing such unimaginable loss.
“These small normal tasks were so hard to do,” she said. Looking back, she has felt both the strong ties to her neighbors that have helped the affected families navigate the challenges this year. But, like Hostetter, she said she feels like help from official sources has fallen short.
“As time goes on, the urgency and need of the survivors is being forgotten,” she said. The Palisades is under LA city’s jurisdiction and has different local governance, but both areas have faced challenges that come with a costly rebuild.
“When you go through something like this as a community, you hear a lot of different phrases, and one of the ones that stuck with me is: ‘You are the ones you are waiting for,’” she added. “I hate that that’s become true.”
The architect who stayed behind to help Altadena rebuild: ‘There are signs of recovery’
Trees on his street were already aflame when Steven Lewis and his wife drove through the dense black clouds of smoke and away from their Altadena home last January. He could see the flames roaring through a shed in his neighbor’s yard and soon they would be licking at his side fence. But when the smoke finally cleared, his home was still standing.
Still, it would take eight months before he and his wife would be able to move back in. Smoke had seeped in through the vents in his crawl space. The toxic debris strewn about his destroyed neighborhood had to be cleared for it to be safe enough to return.
By last fall though, he said, things felt as if they were on a path to normalcy.
“In the neighborhood, there are signs of recovery as new homes are being framed up, coming out of the ground,” he said. Lewis is familiar with building codes through his work as an architect, and has closely followed how construction changes are being applied and adapted.
The dangers here have not subsided, and will only increase as the world warms. Experts had hoped the rebuild would mean better resilience to future fires. But officials also promised to build back with speed. For the thousands still displaced, it’s a difficult balancing act, especially when costs are high and financial settlements have been limited.
“Things are working from both ends toward a middle,” Lewis said.
“Most of what we see going up is traditional stick-built wood-frame construction,” he added, noting that few are taking advantage of safer steel studs. But other fire-safe elements are being added and discussed, including interior sprinklers and finer mesh on attic and crawl space vents to stop embers from entering. “The homeowners themselves are trying to work with the financial settlements that they’re able to get.”
The fire destroyed many of the homes on his block, and some neighbors have given up rebuilding as challenges mounted during the last year. Lewis gets why they are at their “wits’ end”.
“Most people have never designed a home or had a home designed and built – this is all new,” he said, adding that “there are so many voices coming at them from so many different directions”, with little indication of who can be trusted and who might be predatory.
As the recovery lags on, Lewis is mostly concerned about preserving the elements of Altadena that made it special. For-sale signs are going up alongside yard placards urging residents to hold on to their properties. Older folks are not able to wait the years it may take for the town to bounce back. There are also local debates about new zoning that allows for lot splitting, offering the potential for more accessory dwelling units and higher housing density where single-family homes once stood.
“The question is going to be: how do we get a younger population that’s as diverse as the one that was here the day before the fire?” Lewis said.
Businesses, too, are concerned about the long wait. Reopening before residents return carries a lot of risk. But the community needs normalcy and vibrancy to cushion what could be a long road to restoration.
“So the chicken or the egg, you know,” Lewis said. “Do you have to build back the neighborhood and then restore the services? That’s a real conundrum.”
