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Wildfire victims want to rebuild with natural materials. Some say L.A. County is making it onerous
After Ana Gallego's son shot her in the leg outside her ranch-style home in Altadena, law enforcement plowed through three walls with two small tanks and threw tear gas canisters in every window in the hopes of flushing out the suspect. The 2012 skirmish ended in his suicide.
Gallegos, now 74, survived, but the recovery process was long. It took about five years for her leg to heal, and to remodel her 1,700-square-foot house.
Then, in January this year, the Eaton fire took the house again. It was not insured.
Early on Jan. 8, Gallegos' son-in-law, Luis Hernandez, drove up to the house they evacuated in the wee hours and broke the news: Everything was gone. He began crying.
'If it's going to be rebuilt, I would like it to be rebuilt in a way that matches nature and has good energy,' Gallegos recalled telling architect Aaron Olko. 'Because I want to live in peace from here on, if it's possible.'
Olko's team mentioned the possibility of rebuilding using earthen blocks in a presentation. The idea resonated, reminding her of monasteries she'd once visited on a trip to France.
Her 45-year-old daughter, Ehrica Hernandez — who also lived in the Altadena home — pointed to a pragmatic factor: 'It doesn't catch fire.'
But the family's rebuilding plan hit a snag. Due to 'regulatory hurdles,' Olko said in a late June email, they opted for traditional light wood frame construction.
In the wake of the Eaton fire — which decimated at least 6,000 single-family homes, condos and other dwellings — interest in building with natural materials has spiked. Proponents of building with materials derived from sources like clay, straw and hemp say they're fire-resistant, carbon-friendly and nontoxic when scorched. It's an alluring promise for Los Angeles residents who lost their homes and want to rebuild in a way that avoids future calamity and lowers their home's contributions to greenhouse gases that can fuel more wildfires.
Los Angeles County officials have echoed enthusiasm about the potential for such materials, and encouraged residents to bring their ideas to the county department that oversees building and safety.
However, some architects and engineers say the process for getting approval to build with earthen and so-called bio-based materials is too uncertain to recommend to clients without significant time and money to gamble with.
Architect Ben Loescher and engineer Anthony Dente felt discouraged following a May 13 meeting that included officials from the Los Angeles County Public Works Department, which is among the departments that permits new construction in unincorporated areas of the county.
Loescher co-founded Adobeisnotsoftware, which seeks to advance adobe construction in California through education and advocacy. Dente runs Berkeley-based Verdant Structural Engineers, which specializes in sustainable projects using both conventional and natural materials.
Loescher and Dente had hoped to discuss the possibility of rebuilding homes in the Altadena area with earthen materials that aren't clearly adopted in the state residential building code. That includes adobe and cob, a material made from clay, sand and straw.
The Public Works Department says it will consider projects with out-of-the-ordinary building materials — as long as they comply with any code requirements including energy efficiency, fire resistance and lateral forces.
'We are not opposed at all to using alternate building materials,' said Luis Ramirez, a deputy director at the Public Works Department. 'We just want to make sure that it is done in a way that is safe and that will ensure that life and safety aren't compromised by the use of materials that may not have been tested properly for that specific use.'
According to Loescher and Dente, county officials told them at the May meeting that the department lacked the resources to review proposals using such materials unless they came backed by expensive reports — which include testing and evaluation — typically done for mass-manufactured products. The requirement would make the rebuilds nearly impossible, they said.
Lisette Guzman, a spokesperson for the Public Works Department, later told The Times that it would also accept testing and evaluation from accredited universities. She denied that a lack of funding was stymying the approval process.
Guzman's statements appeared to contradict what Loescher and Dente were told.
When they reached out for an explanation, Erik Rodriguez, a senior civil engineer with the department, wrote in a June 11 email that his communication during the May meeting 'could have been clearer.'
'We'd be happy to meet to discuss your alternative material submission,' he wrote.
It was a surprising, but welcome, turn of events for Loescher and Dente.
For now, however, the path is 'still too nebulous to recommend for anyone but someone who has the ability to take some risks around time and cost,' Loescher said in an email.
Until they work out exactly what tests and methodology are required, 'there's a good chance that they'll ask for something that hasn't been done (even if we don't think it is germane),' he said, adding that such a disagreement can be difficult and costly to address by the time it arises.
Amid the devastation wrought by the Eaton fire — and the Palisades fire on the other side of the county — there's a sense that there might be an opportunity to build back in a way that accounts for modern realities: rising temperatures, fierce wildfires and technological advancements.
L.A. County's building officials have a reputation for caution, but policymakers have signaled a willingness to explore trying something new.
Anish Saraiya, director of Altadena's recovery for Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger's office, said in late May that the supervisor's goal is to give people options — though, he noted, the use of earthen materials so far had not been discussed in a substantive way.
'People who choose to utilize standard wood frame construction, fantastic. If you want to do modular, great,' he said. As for earthen materials, 'I think [Barger] would definitely support efforts to try to bring optionality to this community that's trying to rebuild and rebuild with an eye to resilience.'
He said Barger was open to revisiting best practices, but deferred to the Public Works and Fire departments as the leading experts on fire resilience and home hardening.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district includes coastal communities impacted by the Palisades fire, convened a blue ribbon commission to provide recommendations on how to rebuild with challenges posed by climate change in mind. Among the actions the commission calls for in a report released June 20 is the creation of a new local authority to oversee the rebuilding of fire-destroyed neighborhoods.
'I am open to all proposals that help fire-impacted communities rebuild quickly, safely and resiliently,' Horvath said in a statement. 'Earthen materials and other innovative, fire-resistant approaches may offer promising paths toward sustainability and long-term resilience.'
Horvath and Barger in January co-authored a successful motion calling for the creation of a rebuilding resource guide with a focus on resiliency, which touts the fire-resistant benefits of using certain natural materials for siding and insulation.
County officials have urged residents interested in using earthen or other natural materials to go to the one-stop permitting centers it has opened in the aftermath of the fires, or reach out to the Public Works Department directly for assistance. But the underlying process for reviewing and approving rebuilds using alternative materials has not changed following the fires.
What residents who want to rebuild with materials like adobe are left with is, largely, confusion.
On a warm day in late May, Marialyce Pedersen — a sustainable materials management professional who has been advocating for building with nature-based materials for more than two decades — was trying to decide on what would eventually rise from the rubble of what was once her three-bedroom, nearly century-old home in Altadena.
Pedersen broke down her options while sitting on a pinkish firepit and curved bench made from cob. The firepit that incorporated clay dug from the Altadena foothills and straw from a local feed store is one of the few elements of the home that survived the Eaton blaze.
Pedersen had connected with Loescher, the architect, and was getting fired up about the possibility of rebuilding with adobe. Then he conveyed the not-so-promising signals he got from L.A. County.
'I was like, 'OK, I want to do something pioneering and innovative and amazing, but I also really do need to rebuild my house.'' Pedersen said, 'And I can't be messing around with something.'
She changed course and will now be going with a construction method known as straw bale, which typically entails stacking bales of straw to form walls that are coated with plaster. When densely packed, straw has proven resistant to flames — depriving fire of oxygen needed to thrive. Some liken it to a thick phone book.
Unlike materials like cob, straw bale is adopted in the California residential building code. That means using it doesn't trigger the need for the alternative approval process.
Dente's Verdant Structural Engineers was involved with getting straw bale approved as a building material and — along with advocates like Loescher — is pushing for the adoption of more nature-based materials into the code.
The issue is urgency. Dente believes a fully updated code is likely 20 years — and millions of dollars in materials testing — away.
'Which we are doing and don't want to shy away from, but we're in a climate crisis right now,' he said.
Bumps in the road have already emerged. California earlier this year rejected citizen-led proposals to adopt cob, hemp-lime and light straw clay in its code, and recently rejected a petition to reconsider.
That's why he and Loescher are focused on navigating Los Angeles County's process for considering alternative materials. If they crack it, it could offer a pathway now.
Ben Stapleton — an appointee on Horvath's blue ribbon commission and executive director of U.S. Green Building Council California, a nonprofit that promotes sustainable building practices — pointed to a statistic that buildings represent nearly 40% of greenhouse gas emissions globally.
Earthen and other natural materials emit relatively less greenhouse gases over their lifecycle, from extraction and transportation to assembly and disposal. Some, such as hempcrete — made by mixing the inner woody core of the hemp plant and a lime-based binder — are carbon sinks. They improve a home's insulation and energy efficiency, he added.
Still, the commission did not recommend widespread use of the materials in post-fire rebuilding.
'There's a lot of strong arguments for using these materials,' Stapleton said. 'I just don't think the market is ready to deliver homes [constructed with these materials] at scale, especially in a situation like this.' He believes there first needs to be increased education among architects, engineers and permitting officials about them.
The relative lack of familiarity with the materials could add challenges or slow down the rebuilding process, he suggested — which would be problematic given the urgency and dramatic scope of the effort.
Karen Bagnard's late-1940s stucco home was incinerated — along with a lifetime of artwork she created, which featured mermaids and other fantastical beings — by the Eaton fire. Her two daughters, who are leading the rebuild, initially seemed firm in their preference for a home made of conventional materials.
Bagnard, 80, wasn't convinced. Natural building seemed wise to her. Shrinking one's carbon footprint made sense. And then there were the potential ills of a conventional approach, like fumes spewed by laminate flooring.
But she figured her daughters (and grandson) would live in the home for longer than her. She was torn but inclined to follow their wishes.
Last Sunday, though, the family took a second tour of an adobe home in South Pasadena. It appeared to sway Bagnard's kids' hearts. On Monday, Bagnard emailed to say it looked like her family would be moving forward with adobe after all.
