Firefighters work the scene as an apartment building burns during the Eaton fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles county, California on January 8, 2025.
The fires in Los Angeles are almost out. Residents are starting to trickle back into their burned-out neighborhoods. When they get to their houses, they face a series of almost impossible questions: Do we want to live here amongst all this destruction? And if we do, how do we even start?
Today, we meet a father and son from Altadena who are confronting those choices. We pass through the National Guard checkpoints and enter the burn zone, where we see for ourselves all the challenges waiting for residents who want to rebuild. And we talk with an insurance adjuster about how the industry tries to value people’s homes — and all of their possessions — after they have been reduced to rubble.
For more on the California wildfires, check out our newsletter. We spoke with an economist who survived Oakland’s wildfires in 1991 and has big ideas for how to rescue California from its insurance doom spiral.
This episode of Planet Money was hosted by Sarah Gonzalez and Nick Fountain. It was produced by James Sneed and edited by Keith Romer. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Neil Tevault with help from Gilly Moon. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.
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Music: SourceAudio – “Background Bodies,” “Swamp,” and “Deluxe.”
