Life changed for everyone in Pacific Palisades, Topanga and Malibu on January 7 2025. A year after the Palisades Fire those who live or work in its shadow still aren’t used to the endless roadwork, the delays, the road closures, the fear of mudslides and the shock of evacuation warnings.
Life in Topanga is beginning to feel more like something that approximates normal, despite the challenges.
It helps that early and heavy rains have brought a new wave of green to the burn scare, covering the barren, blackened canyon walls with new growth, and that the worst damage isn’t visible from the road. All that changes at the bottom of the canyon.
No matter how many times one drives along the burned and battered stretch of Pacific Coast Highway that lies within the burn zone, one never gets used to the devastation, the disorientation of vanished landmarks, the grief for the loss of houses and homes. PCH represents a small part of the extraordinary damage done by the fire, but it is arguably one of the the most visible manifestations of the wholesale destruction: mile after somber mile of chainlink fences enclosing bits of wall or foundation, or just empty sand, with the sea slowly eroding the remaining pylons or pieces of seawall.
Many of the burned lots in Malibu—as many as 20 percent of all of them—have “for sale” signs up. A few have story poles—indicators of where someday a new house may stand—but progress is slow, and while the view of the sea is beautiful, it is framed by rubble that just last year was people’s homes.
Conflicting reports from a variety of sources indicate that investors, including corporations, have been snapping up burned properties in the Palisades and along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, although it remains unclear how many of the properties. Data collected by the Los Angeles County Tax Collector’s office shows an estimated 33 percent drop in property values in the Palisades burn scar, adding an incentive for investors and making it more difficult for property owners to recoup their losses.
While much of the fire debris has been cleared, there are still properties that contain burned vehicles and rubble.
The Palisades Bowl Mobile Home Park remains one of the starkest reminders of the fire. The entire 170-unit park was destroyed in the fire and the debris has remained in place all year: twisted metal, the hulks of burned out vehicles, piles of unidentifiable rubble.
Former residents of the Palisades Bowl Mobile Home Park were notified on Christmas Eve that debris removal would finally begin on January 2, and that the residents were required to arrange for removal of the remains of their burned vehicles, after spending the entire year in limbo, but there is no word if those displaced families will ever be able to return home.
New revelations about the fire continue to dismay those who endured it. Reporters at the Los Angeles Times recently broke a story that suggests that the primary federal contractor responsible for safely removing and disposing of fire debris from the Palisades may have instead illegally dumped toxic and contaminated soils and ash in the burn zone instead of removing it—a direct violation of state policies and a potential health and safety hazard for already traumatized fire victims.
People on the outside have no idea how stressful the last twelve months have been for those who live in and around the burn zone. Those of us whose homes were undamaged can only have the vaguest inkling of the pain, grief, and frustration experienced by our friends and neighbors who lost everything and for whom the exhausting road closures, evacuation warnings, and delays are but a small part of the hardships they face as they negotiate the labyrinthine and costly rebuilding process and grapple with insurance companies and government agencies.
Each step seems agonizingly slow, but buildings are now beginning to go up more rapidly in Pacific Palisades and Sunset Mesa. The progress in Topanga is slower, and in Malibu, only a dozen permits have been issued so far, although the Malibu City Council seems to have finally settled on a new city manager, filling a void that began before even the Franklin Fire, in December of 2024.
Joseph D. Irvin, whose appointment was announced on December 17, 2025, is embracing a challenging job. Staff turn-over during and after the Palisades Fire has been high, and morale is reportedly low.
Morale is also reportedly low in the Los Angeles Fire Department. Recent reporting in the Los Angeles Times alleges a cover-up by fire officials that includes the allegation that the after report was fudged and that the Lachman fire, which preceded the Palisades Fire by a week, was not adequately extinguished, leaving hotspots that flared up to become the out of control Palisades blaze. According to reporting in the Los Angeles Times, “the author of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades Fire declined to endorse the final report because of substantial deletions that altered his findings.” He called the final, edited version “highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards.”
The 2026 Los Angeles mayoral election, to be held on June 2, 2026, is expected to be a referendum on incumbent Mayor Karen Bass’ performance during and after the disaster, and a year after the Palisades Fire, fingers are still being pointed in an endless game of pin-the-blame-on-a-scapegoat: the actions of the mayor, the fire chief, State Parks, and Jonathan Rinderknecht, the man accused of starting the Lachman fire either accidentally or on purpose are all under scrutiny. Rindernecht, arrested in October and awaiting trial, has entered a not guilty plea. He maintains that the spark that ignited the Lachman fire was an accident, and that he called the fire department in good faith. The prosecution alleges that he set the fire deliberately and is therefore also culpable for the Palisades Fire.
More details on this incident and also on the fire department’s actions or inactions are expected to emerge during the trial. None of this helps the people struggling to rebuild or move on, although some of it may provide fuel for future lawsuits.
How the Palisades and concurrent Eaton Fire started may ultimately prove less important than why both incidents spread so quickly and so lethally. Fire conditions were extreme on January 7 2025—single-digit humidity, 100 mph Santa Ana Winds, and no rain for ten full months. No matter how either fire started, once the blaze was driven by hurricane-force winds into neighborhoods, fire fighting and suppression could only do so much to prevent the urban conflagration from spreading, one structure to the next. Decades of inadequate fire preparation and bad zoning decisions that have allowed intense urban development in areas of high fire risk without sufficient protective measures are as much to blame as anything else.
Much of the area impacted by the Palisades Fire has burned before, in some places, multiple times. Fire conditions on January 7 2025 were critical, with winds gusting up to nearly a hundred mph, no rain for months and tinder-dry vegetation. Any spark could have ignited the blaze. Topanga residents have always lived with the threat of wildfire. Nothing to emerge from the after action reporting has changed that, but the magnitude of the Palisades Fire disaster is bringing change. There is renewed interest in and support for TCEP, the Topanga Coalition for Emergency Preparedness. There is increased interest in creating and maintaining fire safe neighborhoods in parts of the Santa Monica Mountains that previously did not have them. And throughout the burn zone, many of those who are committed to building back are doing so with building materials that are more fire resistant than the wood and stucco buildings they will replace.
The Palisades Fire was a bitter reminder that the pleasures and beauty of living in the mountains and on the coast come with the price of fire, flood, and isolation. This time the devastation was so extensive and painful, the losses of homes and memories and lives so painful, that many are raising the question of when enough is enough. For others, the love of place outweighs the risks. As we enter the second year of recovery, the mountains endure and so do the people who call this place home.
