As Los Angeles County marks six months since January’s devastating wildfires, elected officials Monday honored the 30 lives lost and unveiled new measures to accelerate recovery and rebuilding efforts.
At a news conference at Pasadena Community College, Gov. Gavin Newsom outlined steps as the region enters what he called the “restoration phase,” with plans to lower construction costs, reduce property taxes and expedite rebuilding.
“I’m grateful that we’re here. Altadena, in particular, is a special community,” Newsom said. “In Altadena, the average life lost is 77 years old. We had great grandparents, not just grandparents, and we had a father and a son that died. Brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles that perished in this fire.”
“I hope it puts in perspective the moment we’re in,” he added. “I hope it also puts in perspective how blessed we are to be here… and to have the opportunity to be part of this recovery.”
Newsom said recovery efforts will prioritize restoring community focal points alongside individual homes. He was expected to sign executive orders Monday expanding Coastal Act and California Environmental Quality Act exemptions to speed up rebuilding of homes and schools, exempting fire-affected homes from select building codes to avoid delays, while still requiring compliance with local zoning rules.
L.A. County Supervisor Board Chair Kathryn Barger, who represents Altadena, thanked the governor and other elected officials, including L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, for their partnership.
“We’ve worked hard to lead concurrent efforts across both the Palisades and Eaton fire areas,” Barger said.
She announced the county’s new “Forward: Blueprint for Rebuilding” plan, expected to be posted online in the coming weeks. The plan includes:
— Waiving requirements and lowering rebuilding costs, which is expected to save the average resident up to $30K in costs during construction while giving individual homeowners choices about their project;
— Expediting property tax relief to provide homeowners with property value reassessments that can save them between $3,000 to $10,000 per year;
— Accelerating permitting and inspections; and
— Undergrounding more than 150 miles of overhead utilities.
The county also plans to launch AI-powered software on July 15 and hire additional staff to meet increased permitting and rebuilding demand.
“We’re working to restore schools, parks, businesses, services for seniors and childcare — everything that makes a neighborhood whole,” Barger said.
Bass was scheduled to attend Monday’s event but was responding to early morning U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity at MacArthur Park.
Deputy Mayor Rachel Freeman spoke on her behalf, saying the region is on track for the fastest disaster recovery in California’s history. Freeman said community spaces in Pacific Palisades are set to reopen later this month.
“…Construction is well underway in the Palisades, and L.A. is moving beyond the initial emergency response and firmly into the rebuilding phase,” Freeman said.
On Sunday, Bass’ office announced that nearly 80% of residential properties destroyed in the Palisades Fire have been cleared of debris and approved for rebuilding. More than 640 plan check applications have been submitted to the city’s Department of Building and Safety.
“We owe it to the families who lost everything to continue cutting red tape and working around the clock until this community is rebuilt even stronger than before,” Bass said in a statement over the weekend.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla emphasized the need for more federal funding to support Southern California’s fire recovery.
He also criticized the Trump administration for reducing the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s budget and workforce, and for ongoing immigration activity in L.A. County.
Here’s my question if you electrocute a person everyday for 50 years how many times do you have to blow the transformer off the pole before somebody notices that your electrocuting people out there your prison cell. No shouldn’t there be a way that you can find out from Edison or PG&e how many times they replace the transformer on the pole after somebody was electrocuted and blew the transformer off of the pole. Now PG&e in Edison have never really did any severe maintenance to any of the lines across the United States of America so with the electrocution blowing out a transformer on the side of a pole would cause other wires down the line to blow off the conduit off the line so that the wire would be causing Sparks within the terminals down the line of the wiring system. So if you give it a strenuous force of blowing up a terminal or a transformer on a signal Pole you would cause more strenuous actions further down the lines and around the state so if you’re doing one failure by electrocuting people and you’re causing all the fires in the state to burn down all the rest of the shit to cover up your bullshit just don’t make no sense that you have to blame it on the electrical company because there’s nobody there to take the blame. And you always make out Rich because how you got The recyclables from the land after the house is burnt down and everybody’s murder was covered up all the jewelry and everything fell into the length and you can imagine there’s many of bags of diamonds and all them celebrities houses that burnt down. That’s more than welcome to fire department in the city gets right then you got the law enforcement I just don’t make no sense everybody’s making 10.424 trillion dollars a year but the average person walking down the street can’t make $20 an hour. at some point you’re going to have to go to the prison cell for the fraud the treason and the governmental Mutiny that you’ve got gone and caused the United States of America’s communities citizens.
How they can get you a compensation for the Los Angeles Fire Department for burning down your fucking homes right they’re going to actually go out there and prove to the fucking world that they never had a fucking education to put the fucking fire out in the first fucking place but yet they allowed everything to burn across the state of California right and you’re going to actually prosecute every one of these fucking tired ass fucking firemen that came down here and did all this shit from Oregon that bought a fucking illegal fire truck from a fucking public auction right because hell nobody can follow the fucking laws in this country right but you’re going to do all this fucking shit for all them people that died out there in them fires they’re dead and everything of their fucking wealth is all in the ground waiting for the recycling company to come through and screw him even further because they seized everybody’s shit that got burnt out there but yet you’re going to figure out something they make $300 an hour and 75 million dollars a year just to be law enforcement in the fucking country and the president of the United States can’t make $250,000 a year man so you tell me where the fucking drug dealers aren’t ruining the fucking world at.