Where is LA a year after the fires? Checking in with survivors, rebuilding and nature

January 9, 2026·49 min·4 clips

A 94-year-old Holocaust survivor lost her Palisades home in the fire and compares it to a second holocaust.

One year has passed, and the rebuild is still uneven. Nereida Moreno opens on the January fires as a deadly Los Angeles-area disaster, drawing on LAist's earlier coverage without sanding down the scale of it: 31 people killed, 200,000 forced to evacuate, and more than 18,000 structures destroyed or damaged. The Eaton Fire in Altadena and the Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades come through as two of California's most catastrophic fires. Survivors are not in one neat recovery phase. Some families are still deep in the hard parts. Others are starting to piece together what comes next. The episode then returns to Altadena and moves from individual stories to the work happening block by block. Libby Rainey joins Moreno and talks about coming back after months away. What she sees is stark: mostly empty lots, with only a spattering of homes. The reporting stays close to the neighborhood. Rainey meets block captains, local leaders who help neighbors communicate and coordinate after a fire. Their job is practical, and probably exhausting. They help people share information, talk through the next steps, and keep the long rebuild from becoming something each family has to handle alone. A community center gives the story its center of gravity. There, Rainey meets Altadena residents considering group purchasing for rebuilding, pooling demand in hopes of building back faster and more sustainably. Moreno keeps the questions plain: what did Rainey see, and how would this collective approach actually work? The episode does not pretend recovery is simple. It sits with the uncertainty and shows residents testing whether numbers, neighbors, and a little coordination can matter after the Eaton Fire.

As heard by us

A clear-eyed check-in on fire recovery that finds hope in coordination, not slogans.

The episode takes stock of Los Angeles one year after the January fires, and it uses the scale of the disaster to ask a more practical question: what rebuilding actually looks like for survivors.

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Why you'd press play

You want a clear take on how Altadena residents are rebuilding a year after the January fires.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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