As L.A. rebuilds from the Palisades fire, residents ask: What's the plan?

Yahoo

18-05-2025

Carol Parks, the chief of Los Angeles' Emergency Management Department, sat before a budget committee last year and painted a dire picture.
Although tasked with responding to crises in the nation's most disaster-prone region, her department had received just a tiny fraction of the city's budget and was getting by with a staff of roughly 30.
There was no staffer devoted full-time to disaster recovery, which meant that if an earthquake or major wildfire struck, the city would have to scramble.
But the City Council and Mayor Karen Bass balked at devoting more money to the department.
Seven months later, flames tore through Pacific Palisades and nearby communities, destroying more than 6,000 structures and displacing tens of thousands.
Now, the Emergency Management Department is in charge of coordinating the monumental task of recovery — but with a budget smaller than what the city's Police Department uses in roughly two days.
To supplement the bare-bones emergency management team, Bass turned to an Illinois-based disaster recovery firm, Hagerty Consulting, inking a yearlong contract for up to $10 million. She also brought a former EMD general manager, Jim Featherstone, back from retirement to serve as the de facto recovery chief.
More than four months after the fire, Palisades residents and some of their elected officials are increasingly frustrated, asking: Who is in charge? What have they been doing? How is Hagerty spending its time? And what is the plan to restore the Palisades?
As flames chewed through the Palisades on Jan. 7, EMD assigned a mid-level staffer to take on the recovery. Soon, Featherstone — a former firefighter who once served as interim LAFD chief — arrived at the emergency operations center.
In public, Bass touted civic leader Steve Soboroff as the city's recovery czar, with a controversy over his salary taking center stage for a period.
In practice, Featherstone — a self-described "operator" and "tactical person" — assumed the recovery director role, helping to choreograph a massive, multiagency response.
Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for Bass, disputed that characterization and said the two men had different roles. Featherstone's "role is largely internal to the City," while Soboroff, whose term ended last month, "worked externally with the community along with other engagement teams within the Mayor's Office," Seidl said in an email.
While the city code puts EMD in charge of coordinating disaster recovery, it operates with fewer resources than similar departments in other large California cities. A 2022 audit found that L.A. spent $1.56 per resident on emergency management — far less than Long Beach at $2.26 and San Francisco at $7.59.
With such a small team for a 469-square-mile city, EMD has struggled to staff its emergency operations center in crises, prepare for events like the 2028 Olympics and help residents recover from smaller-scale calamities like building fires, storms and mudslides.
Parks told the City Council in a 2024 memo that her department "lacks the experience and dedicated staff to oversee long-term recovery projects." After recent emergencies, EMD handled recovery duties "on an ad hoc basis," yielding 'delays, postponements and possible denial of disaster relief funds," she wrote.
To boost EMD, Bass in early February tapped Hagerty after hearing proposals from firms including AECOM and IEM. Her reasons for choosing Hagerty were unclear, although the firm had already signed a wildfire recovery contract with L.A. County's emergency management office and had long worked with the state Office of Emergency Services.
It's not unusual for a state or local government to retain a recovery consultant after a disaster, even if it has a recovery arm of its own. Hagerty has routinely been hired to help with hurricane recovery, including managing billions of dollars in funding after Superstorm Sandy in New York in 2012.
Because Bass hired Hagerty under her emergency authority, the city has also solicited bids for a longer-term recovery contract worth $30 million over three years, with Hagerty among the companies vying for it.
Initially, Hagerty spent "a significant amount" of time compensating for the lack of a city recovery team, said Featherstone, who supervises Hagerty's work, at a budget hearing last month.
Read more: Steve Soboroff bows out as L.A. fire recovery czar, with some parting shots
By contrast, L.A. County had a dedicated recovery operation that consultants could plug into — and the muscle memory from recent disasters like the Woolsey fire.
'The structure had to be built out,' Featherstone told council members at the budget hearing. 'Folks were pulled out of their regular day-to-day functions … to start to build out a recovery capability.'
That structure is a series of tactical teams focused on issues including infrastructure, economics, health and housing. Under each umbrella are multiple working groups composed of several city departments working with federal and regional agencies.
Under the infrastructure team, for example, is a debris removal group, a utilities team and a group for hazards such as mudslides, according to a recording of a recovery meeting reviewed by The Times. The housing team, meanwhile, brings together the Department of Building and Safety and the city Planning Department to streamline the permitting process.
Debris removal was one of the first orders of business — so that group was among the first to be organized and has been the "busiest," as one EMD staffer said in a recording of an internal March meeting.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has the primary responsibility for clearing debris from lots, with most expected to be done by Memorial Day and the rest largely due to be finished this summer. The city, with Hagerty, helped explain the debris removal process to residents, including the decision to opt in to the Army Corps cleanup or do it on their own.
With Hagerty's guidance, the Emergency Management Department also created a dashboard showing the progress of debris removal, with real-time maps tracking the status of each lot.
Tracey Phillips, a Hagerty executive, told City Council members in March that her firm was organizing these tactical teams and holding weekly meetings so that 'we can develop a short-term and mid-term operational framework.'
'This is the first step to that: [determining] who the players are, getting them in the room, getting them trained up and developing that operational cadence,' Phillips explained. 'It's already happening — it's just not being reported and it's not kind of coalesced yet.'
As of mid-March, Hagerty had about 22 employees working on Palisades fire recovery, billing the city at hourly rates ranging from $80 to nearly $400 per employee.
City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez is among those who say that some of the money used for Hagerty would have been better spent bolstering the Emergency Management Department's rank and file — as Parks had requested last year.
'I don't understand their purpose. I don't need another contractor,' Rodriguez said in an interview. 'What my city staff needs is staff to do the work.'
Asked whether funding for Hagerty would be better spent on EMD, Seidl, the spokesperson for Bass, said most of the firm's work is reimbursable by the federal government, a point that Featherstone made at a March budget hearing. Featherstone also suggested that Hagerty's guidance could yield more funding in the long run because of the firm's expertise with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Hagerty and Featherstone declined interview requests from The Times. Joseph Riser, a spokesperson for EMD, provided written responses to questions.
EMD was 'very pleased' with Hagerty for building out recovery teams 'where they did not previously exist,' Riser said, noting that the firm has improved coordination and provided "high-level briefings" to City Hall and department general managers, among other duties.
Seidl emphasized that the mayor has taken steps to preserve EMD's budget, "even in difficult budget times like this year." He also touted steps the city has taken to hasten the recovery, like a one-stop permitting and rebuilding center, measures to allow for the re-issuance of permits for homes built in recent years, and restoring water and power in two months compared to the 18 months it took in Paradise after the 2018 Camp fire.
"Despite one of the worst natural disasters in recent history, L.A.'s recovery effort is on track to be the fastest in modern California history," Seidl said.
Some Palisades residents say that Hagerty and EMD — and ultimately, Bass and her team — have done a poor job of communicating what their plan is going forward.
Citing the cornucopia of government agencies involved in the rebuild, City Councilmember Traci Park, whose district includes the Palisades, said, "Sometimes it feels like there are so many people in charge that no one is in charge."
Maryam Zar, who runs the Palisades Recovery Coalition, said that at times, 'we feel like we are doing this ourselves."
Zar and her group have been among the most vocal advocates for a logistics plan governing how thousands of homes will be rebuilt in a community with narrow streets and already-snarled traffic.
The group has circulated ideas that include a concrete plant in the Palisades, short-term housing for construction crews and one-way roads to ease congestion.
Zar said that Hagerty has 'shown up to community meetings, and they have been so unable to deliver any kind of information.'
In an interview, Park said that "for weeks and weeks now," she also has been asking Hagerty and city departments for "a logistics and operations plan" for moving people, vehicles and materials in and out of the Palisades.
Park has visited Lahaina, Hawaii, which was devastated by a wildfire in 2023, and studied other communities rebuilding from fires. She said those areas had consultants who were "very, very engaged" with communities in identifying priorities and solving problems. She wants the city and Hagerty to push forward on a longer-term recovery plan that establishes criteria for fire-safe rebuilding and a timeline for restoring parks, schools, libraries and businesses.
'I know that those things can take significant time to develop. But this is Los Angeles, and this is the Pacific Palisades, and we are not waiting around," she said, adding that she and her constituents were "moving at warp speed."
Riser, the EMD spokesperson, said that traffic and logistics were not handled in a "single, static, formal plan," but that problems were being addressed in coordination with city and state agencies. He also said EMD has brought in traffic experts to "structure this work more effectively."
"Recovery is dynamic and complex and changes daily as debris is cleared, infrastructure is repaired, and reentry phases evolve," Riser said.
Frustration with Hagerty boiled over at an April 10 meeting of the Palisades community council, where Hagerty representative Harrison Newton touted recovery as "a chance to become more resilient to the next disaster.'
Residents could barely contain their fury, criticizing Newton for an abstract presentation that seemed divorced from their real needs around rebuilding, permitting and traffic control.
Read more: As heavy as 100 Eiffel Towers: Monumental L.A. County fire debris removal could finish by June
'It feels extremely generic,' said Lee Ann Daly, who then turned her ire toward City Hall. 'You need to know that we have a trust issue with the people who are paying you. ... We have a trust issue, and it's huge.'
Palisades resident Kimberly Bloom, whose home burned in the fire, pressed Newton to provide a 'concrete example' of Hagerty's work in a prior disaster 'that is not just another layer of bureaucracy, because that's what it feels like at the moment.'
Newton referred residents to Hagerty's website and spoke of how his firm provides 'augmentation support,' prompting residents to interrupt and criticize his use of jargon.
After some back and forth, Newton emphasized that he and his team were trying to accelerate the city's response to the issues raised by residents. Hagerty, he said, was "bringing more people to bear so they're less thinly stretched, and you're achieving work faster."
So far, more than 1,500 parcels in the Palisades have received a final sign-off from L.A. County that they are cleared of debris, paving the way to begin rebuilding.
As of this week, 54 construction permits for 40 addresses have been issued in the Palisades, said Seidl, who noted that hundreds of permit applications are now under review.
The burden will increasingly shift onto city agencies like the Department of Building and Safety to serve thousands of homeowners and businesses seeking plan checks, permits, inspections and certificates of occupancy.
The logistics of whole neighborhoods undertaking simultaneous construction projects on hillside streets, with only a few major arteries in and out, will test the recovery framework that EMD and Hagerty have been working to erect.
In the coming weeks, Bass is expected to name a new chief recovery officer, and her team is "currently interviewing ... qualified candidates," Seidl said. Featherstone, who was initially hired on a 120-day appointment, is now serving as an assistant general manager at EMD, and Parks, the EMD chief, has asked for funding in the coming fiscal year's budget to keep him.
Hagerty could be replaced by a different firm if it loses the competitive bidding process for the multi-year recovery contract. One of the many "deliverables" for that contract is developing a long-term recovery plan.
That type of overarching plan governing the rebuilding — and direct communication about the plan — is what residents and local officials say they have been pleading for.
"We have more debris clearing to do, but we are also breaking ground on new buildings," said Councilmember Park. "If we don't get those plans under control and in place, this is going to turn into 'The Hunger Games' very quickly."
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.