On Jan. 7 2025, the LA wildfires started. Those wildfires killed 31 people and destroyed about 13,000 residential properties in Malibu, Palisades and other areas in LA. A year has now passed since the wildfires, and yet fewer than a dozen homes have been fully rebuilt. By Dec. 2025, construction had started on about 370 homes in the Palisades area and about 511 in the Eaton fire area.
In Jan. 2026, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to speed up the reconstruction process. Trump stated that the order would “cut through bureaucratic red tape.” Meaning that the homeowners would be able to rebuild without having to go through many permit requirements, allowing builders to self-certify that their homes meet the safety standards and speed up or bypass environmental and historic preservation laws that slow the rebuilding process.
LA Mayor Karen Bass called Trump’s order a “political stunt”, and said that Trump should stop interfering with local building permits and should be speeding up FEMA reimbursements, the money that the federal government owes the city and survivors, force insurance companies to pay people for their losses so that they are able to afford the reconstruction of their homes, and other things to help the people. Basically saying that it isn’t gonna fix the other issues that stop them from being able to rebuild their homes. So Bass thinks it’s useless.
Joy Chen, a representative of thousands of fire survivors, stated that help with the permits would be nice, but it isn’t the main issue, and the number one issue is the money. Many survivors cannot get full insurance payouts, and therefore can’t cover the costs to rebuild.
California Governor Gavin Newsom mocked the order by saying an executive order to rebuild Mars would be just as useful., Newsom thinks that the federal government doesn’t have the power to issue local building permits, and said that he wants Trump to approve $33.9 billion in disaster aid instead.
While this order aims to speed up the reconstruction, its effectiveness for the survivors is uncertain, as many homeowners haven’t even started rebuilding their homes, and many report that financial challenges continue to slow the recovery. The outcome will depend on whether additional support becomes available and whether the order actually leads to meaningful changes.
