The Los Angeles fires
Disparity in Loss: The Aftermath of L.A.’s Two Fires
An inadequate home insurance market and increasing wildfire risk are leaving California’s most vulnerable communities at a disadvantage.
At midnight on January 7, 2025, Aimin Li and Shigang Xiong and their neighbors in West Altadena began packing to evacuate. They left at midnight after receiving an evacuation order a couple of hours prior.
“People were packing their emergency bags but nobody really thought that they weren’t going to be able to come back,” said Wei Xiong, a behavior specialist at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. Xiong’s childhood home was destroyed in the Eaton Canyon Fire.
About 40 miles away, at around 2:00 pm that same Wednesday, Katia Hausman and her family evacuated from their home in the Pacific Palisades. They took enough clothes for a couple of days, electronics and not many valuables. They didn’t think they wouldn’t come back.
“We were not leaving forever. We were leaving for a couple of nights.”
“That same night we saw our house burning live on TV,” Hausman, a vice president at an advertising tech company, said in an interview earlier in April. The Hausmans had lived in a condominium around 6 miles south of the Temescal Canyon – with a balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean. They moved there after they got married in 2012. Their now nine-year-old daughter was born there.
“It’s so hard to find something like this,” she said. “We were so proud of it.”
Two of California’s most destructive fires blazed on for more than two weeks in Los Angeles county simultaneously early in 2025. The Palisades fire burned across more than 23,000 acres of land destroying almost 7,000 properties and homes; the Eaton fire burned across 14,000 acres and destroyed almost 10,000 properties and homes.
As survivors begin to move on, many will have to decide how feasible it is to rebuild and how expensive it is to relocate. Especially in vulnerable and low-income communities like Altadena, the options are limited and the decision, hurtful. Even in wealthier neighborhoods, the cost to rebuild is staggering.
California is prone to natural disasters like wildfires and droughts. Global warming has made this worse in recent years. According to statistics from the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 15 out of the 20 most destructive fires in California have occurred in the past decade. In March, Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency, revised its map of Fire Hazard Severity Zones to include over 1.2 million acres previously not under fire risk. In San Luis Obispo and Monterey counties, fire-risk acres increased by four and five-fold.
But the effects of climate change aren’t equal for everyone. A study last year found that there exists economic gaps between communities that live in California’s fire hazard zones and the ones that get affected most by wildfires. The state’s high cost of living and increasing wildfire risk are affecting disaster victims in vastly unequal ways.
An example is one of the state’s most destructive fires in the past decade – the Camp Fire – that burned through parts of Butte and Tehama county in 2018 and leveled much of the town of Paradise. Jacquelyn Chase, a researcher studying the relocation of the Camp Fire survivors through changes in addresses said that the main reason for people living in Paradise to move to cities closer to Paradise was the lower cost of living. Her research showed that more than half of her 13,000 respondents chose to stay in Butte County – but move to cities closer to Paradise. 28% of them moved to Chico, a neighboring city.
Colette Curtis, Paradise’s recovery and economic development director, said that the population of the town diminished exponentially overnight. According to data provided by the city, 90% of homes in Paradise were destroyed in the fire. Many of those displaced didn’t come back to the town. “Only about 40 - 50% of the people have stayed back,” said Curtis.
She said that even years after the fire, the trauma of the incident lives on. “The community is destroyed,” she said. “There is a difference between just losing your own home and being able to recover and also losing your entire community.”
Climate change and disparity
According to the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, the annual mean temperature in California has increased by 2.5F since 1895. The state is only expected to get hotter over the years, taking the annual mean temperature increase to between 5F and 6F by the end of the century. Not only are temperatures rising, so are the number of extreme heat days in the state. Wildfires season runs almost year-round now - an ominous recent development. The recent fires in Los Angeles broke out in January, when traditionally blazes rarely broke out.
Xiong’s parents moved to Altadena 15 years ago - closer to the hills so they could hike often. They always knew of a fire risk caused by the strong Santa Ana winds. Xiong said that changing climate patterns have increased their exposure to fires. LA’s past few low-rainfall years had caused excessive dry vegetation growth in the Angeles forest. “We were expecting it to be a fairly difficult season because we get fire almost every year but it’s never gone this far into the residential areas,” he said.
In 2018, California’s Department of Insurance found that almost 4 million homes are built in regions that are severely exposed to wildfire risk. While the solution might seem as easy as not building in fire hazard severity zones, the answer is far more nuanced. The state’s affordability crisis is driving many people to move into these areas which are at higher risk for wildfires. As a result, the number of homes being built in these zones has increased over the past few years.
Anqi Xu, a research analyst with the CA Department of Finance has been using Department of Motor Vehicles and Internal Revenue Service data to trace migration between counties in the state. In 2023, Xu found that the movement of people inland and towards fire hazard severity zones was directly linked to their low income.
“While people are seeking better living conditions, they also want some urban proximity - that’s how we get a lot of people moving from those coastal areas to a lot of lower-density, suburban and exurban areas,” she said.
Insurance companies have been pulling out of the homeowners’ markets for years. Since 2019 – less than a year after the Camp Fire – over 100,000 policies were dropped in the state.
Hausman and her husband are planning to continue paying their mortgage for six more years to buy off a home that doesn’t exist anymore. Even though the Hausmans’ home was insured, the payout isn’t going to cover the expenses of their temporary relocation. “Where we find ourselves now is we have to pay mortgage, HOA dues and find money to rent. All of a sudden, imagine you ended up with double mortgages, essentially,” said Hausman.
The L.A. County sued Southern California Edison, an electric utility company, for alleged involvement in what caused the Eaton Canyon Fire. Multiple lawsuits were brought on behalf of renters, homeowners and residents of the towns damaged by the fires. Lengthy legal proceedings have put decisions on hold for many people who expect payouts from Edison.
Insurance companies write and formulate policies based on a historical model that analyzes the potential risk of certain geographical locations. For insurance companies in California, continuing to write policies at the same rates as 10 years ago is a business model that doesn’t generate much profit – because wildfires are more frequent and far more destructive.
Experts believe that some areas in California are so high-risk that there will never be adequate home insurance unless drastic policy changes are initiated.
Worsened by climate change, inadequate insurers in the state add to an overwhelmed response system that places the burden of recovery on the survivors.
Often, state and federal agencies come in too late with very little to offer. “It’s very very badly set-up. It’s not set-up to assist people,” said Hausman, recalling her ordeal to get assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A letter from FEMA denying the Hausmans assistance told them to go back and live in their house.
While Xiong’s parents felt taken care of by local governments, there were concerns. Of the 29 casualties of the Eaton Canyon Fire, 18 were from West Altadena – a historically low-income neighborhood. “As far as I know, it appears that the resources given to West Altadena were relatively insufficient,” said Xiong.
Collaboratives made up of multiple non-profits and disaster case managers that worked with the survivors of the Camp Fire still have open cases and pending approvals to begin rebuilding from the state. “It seems like everytime we have a fire, we’re starting from scratch,” said Abigail Mebrahtu, case management supervisor at Northern Valley Catholic Social Service. Mebrahtu and her coworkers often talk about how much more efficient things would be if cities had response teams in case of wildfires.
“We feel like it would be way more beneficial to the survivors if there was something that was already ready to go.”
Speaking to me from a guest house in Santa Monica, Hausman remains resilient.
“For us, this was it. It was this amazing place and we want to come back. We want our lives back,” said Hausman.
Hausman’s work is taking her and her family to Europe after her daughter finishes the school year. “We need to get out of here… give ourselves a break,” she said.
“In another place, in another country, it’s just different. You’re not comparing what [you] could’ve had.”
Xiong’s parents find themselves at the crossroads of a difficult decision – whether to rebuild or relocate. But there are caveats to both. “Taking into consideration insurance and also lawsuits, the payout is expected to be more if there is intention to rebuild,” said Xiong.
“Our main concern is that if it has happened once, it can happen again. I guess we’re weighing the risk of whether or not it’s worth it to rebuild.”