The scorched Malibu coastline shows damage after burning in the 27-day Palisades Fire. This part of Pacific Coast Highway was not drivable for over five months. Photo courtesy of Brent Flaaten
The Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed 16,080 structures, according to The Los Angeles Times. Many of these were homes, which residents said held memories and an attachment that cannot be broken.
Homeowners in Malibu and the Pacific Palisades said they were concerned over the city’s response to the fires as their struggle to rebuild continues. Though they hope to return to their properties, they said they feel discouraged by the wait time and shortage of available resources.
“Personally, it’s nostalgic for us, so we really want to come back and live in our neighborhood,” Palisades resident Adrienne Lynn said. “We have a generational home, so my husband and his grandparents lived in the house originally. We’ve been there for over 20 years.”
The City of Malibu has issued two rebuild permits in nine months, according to the Malibu Times.
“It’s very slow,” Lynn said. “I mean, we lost our house January 7th, and we have no building permit yet. It’s ridiculous. I’m not being impatient because I know that this is a catastrophic event and there’s so many people that have lost their houses. But this is why you hire more people to help the permitting go more smoothly.”
Residents on City’s Fire Preparation
Aside from permit delays, the people of Malibu and the Palisades expressed their frustration with the city’s lack of fire preparation.
“In the Palisades, you had 40 years of growth,” said Brent Flaaten, who was born and raised in Ventura County. “Yes, you have to do weed abatement, but weed abatement is a very small percentage of the problem. It’s the grasses that grow after the winter rains.”
Flaaten said he works at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and studies weather.
“I follow the weather religiously,” Flaaten said. “I just love to know what’s going to happen, especially during Santa Ana.”
When driving through the Pacific Palisades after the wildfires, Flaaten said he noticed Palisades Village was one of the only places still standing. When he asked nearby firefighters why the building was unharmed, they told him Rick Caruso, a billionaire businessman who owns the property, hired private firefighters to protect it.
“They built those buildings with materials that are much less fire resistant than most of the homes that were built and burned down,” Flaaten said. “There’s a big divide that I hear and it’s ‘We couldn’t do anything, the winds were 80-100 miles per hour.’ There’s this, there’s that. ‘We ran out of water.’ But look what happened when someone did something. When someone was prepared.”
Flaaten said he believes devastation from the fires was a direct result of insufficient fire preparation, as well as the defunding of the Los Angeles Fire Department. In June of 2024, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass approved a 17.5 million dollar cut to the LAFD.
“It was negligence and unpreparedness mixed together,” Flaaten said. “Those residents didn’t see anybody prior to that fire. No one answered that little 10-acre fire that was burning on the seventh for 45 minutes. You can hear the radio chatter. Then it just exploded and no one was around.”
The Palisades Fire started as a 10-acre fire in the hills of the Pacific Palisades, according to NBC Los Angeles.
A car sits on PCH after it was burned in the Palisades Fire. The owner of the car is unknown. Photo courtesy of Brent Flaaten
Reason For Delay
It takes approximately 122 days to fully review a permit request, according to the City of Malibu’s Planning Agenda. The City of Malibu released a document stating every fire-damaged property in Malibu needs to obtain a comprehensive engineering and geotechnical engineering report to rebuild, unless it is eligible for a limited report.
A comprehensive engineering and geotechnical engineering report is a document that allows engineers to see if land is suitable to build on. It looks at environmental conditions that impact soil, sewer drainage and electrical connections.
Properties can only qualify for a limited report if they do not present a liquefaction hazard, or loose, unsaturated soil that can lose its strength and present difficulties when trying to build. Limited reports can also be used when only one part of a home needs rebuilding, as opposed to the full structure.
The California Department of Parks and Recreation has prevented certain homeowners and iconic businesses — such as the Reel Inn — from rebuilding due to land use restrictions along the coast. However, immense backlash from residents, as well as the over $205,000 raised on the company’s GoFundMe, caused the department to reconsider and issue a Sept. 5 letter offering the possibility of rebuilding, according to Eater Los Angeles.
Flaaten said homes, especially ones built before restriction, are at risk.
“Some of those homes have been there since the 1940s,” Flaaten said. “They were built at a time when there weren’t any restrictions. When you operate under what we operate under now, which is many environmental laws and codes that you have to adhere to when you’re going to build anywhere in nature, I just don’t think they’ll be allowed to.”
Affected residents said permissions from both homeowners associations and insurance companies are contributing to delays in rebuilding, and a structural engineer may be required in addition to city building and planning permits.
“Our neighbor, she’s elderly,” Lynn said. “It’s been really difficult for her. She’s having to go down to the emergency centers all the time and have somebody walk her through the process. She doesn’t know what to do. She hasn’t even applied for a building permit yet. It’s complicated and it’s confusing. It’s really sad.”
Lynn’s daughter and her boyfriend look at the destroyed home they once lived in. It was the first time they saw the property after the fires. Photo courtesy of Adrienne Lynn
Lynn also said she was concerned the city was not prioritizing those who submitted their rebuild requests first.
“You’re not going to be able to build at all because you’re going to be stuck in a sea of hundreds and hundreds of people,” Lynn said. “There’s not going to be enough contractors. There’s not going to be enough materials.”
Homeowners Are Unsure About Rebuilding
Ari Soffer, a resident of Point Dume in Malibu, said it took him over five years to rebuild after the 2018 Woolsey Fires.
“We were able to get the permit, but it took a long time,” Soffer said. “It took almost five years to rebuild a non-habitable structure that they made me sign off on, saying that I would never be living in.”
Photos show Soffer’s home before and after being incinerated in the 2018 Woolsey Fire. The Woolsey Fire burned more than 1600 structures across Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, according to Climate Resolve. Photos courtesy of Ari Soffer
Soffer said the city told him he could try to rebuild property on his ranch, but it wouldn’t necessarily be safe to inhibit.
“It literally costs you hundreds of thousands of dollars extra, and by the way, every delay costs the owner what’s called a holding cost,” Soffer said. “It was 2 or 2.5 million dollars worth of damage to my property. I’m not talking about a full-blown mansion here that I built. I mean, I built a 2,200 square-foot barn.”
Soffer said he blames the city for the seeming lack of concern they have for misplaced residents.
“Karen Bass could not care less,” Soffer said. “She comes and eats in Malibu like nothing is wrong and you know people were screaming at her when she was having dinner here like four or five months ago. The only thing they care about is taking your tax money.”
Lynn also said she felt completely left alone by the city.
“Our personal experience has just been more that we’re on our own,” Lynn said. “We’re just trying to sort through and read up as much as we can and get as much information as we can because we’re the ones leading our own ship.”
Lynn said her friend has still not been granted a permit to rebuild her roof, the only part of her home destroyed by the fires.
“Even that process for her has been a nightmare,” Lynn said. “She can’t go back to her house. She’s also been living in an apartment.”
Foreign investors purchased over $65 million worth of burned lots and real estate along the Malibu coastline, according to Realtor.com. Among them were the Mowbray brothers from New Zealand, which the article confirmed had purchased nine large lots and made their fortune manufacturing toys in China.
Several residents said they felt blindsided by the city, and difficulty in obtaining permits led some to give up and sell their homes.
“I get calls — no joke — like 10 calls a day asking if we will sell our property,” Lynn said. “I go up to the property all the time. Sounds cheesy, but I have like little birds that I rescued in the backyard and they came back after the fire. Every time I’m there someone drives by and says ‘you know if you’re looking to sell’ and you’re like ‘go away.’”
Food that Lynn left for birds rests on her burned property. She visits often to check on them and what is left of her property. Photo courtesy of Adrienne Lynn
Planning For the Future
Soffer said he suggests the city starts doing controlled burns to prevent future catastrophic damage.
“What saved my area in Point Dume from this Palisades Fire advancing more than it did was the first Franklin Fire that happened,” Soffer said. “It wasn’t a controlled burn because it was an out of control fire, but it did the same thing. It stopped at that fire line because there was nothing left to burn.”
Soffer also said keeping the shrubbery maintained can prevent fires from becoming out of control.
“They created the worst environmental disaster ever,” Soffer said. “It compounded and then burned to the ground and they take no accountability for it.”
The charred remains of Malibu homes lie along PCH after the Palisades Fire. Some homeowners said their properties were completely unrecognizable. Photo courtesy of Brent Flaaten
Residents said they have not received any city funding to rebuild, and the only money they have been given is from their respective insurance companies. Lynn said real estate agents in the area continually relisted apartments and other properties at higher prices, knowing desperate residents would be willing to pay.
“They would take the listing off the market, then they would relist it for a percentage higher, then we put it back on the market,” Lynn said. “And they would just keep doing that so that it would just go up and up and up and up. So they were just overcharging for these rentals and, you know, and getting away with it basically.”
Homeowners said the cost to rebuild or pay off original mortgages and property taxes, is overwhelming.
“They don’t understand that not everybody who lives in Malibu are these millionaires,” Lynn said. “There’s a lot of people that have inherited houses, or were told they were having insurance that would match today’s rebuild policies. And then realizing once they lost their house, they’re short by like a million dollars. You just have this gigantic overhang of bills, you know, that you’re going to be stuck paying for for the rest of your life.”
The people of Malibu and the Palisades have vocalized their overall dissatisfaction with the city’s response. Several comments made by residents on a recent Malibu Times Instagram Post expressed homeowners’ distress. One reads: “Seven months later and one permit? The California Way.”
Soffer said he feels the city officials’ lack of help to residents is going to greatly delay the rebuilding process.
“Rest assured, it’s going to be ten years easily before it starts to look normal again without vacant lots and stuff,” Soffer said. “And there’s still wreckage when you drive on PCH toward Los Angeles.”
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Contact Kaiya Treash via email: kaiya.treash@pepperdine.edu
