Rebuild:LA

Send us Fan Mail On the first of September, the new Rebuild:LA will premiere. We’re entering into the scary world of video and will be bringing you the next crop of leaders, visionaries, and doers who are helping to Rebuild LA. Until then, we’re queuing up our most popular episodes and updating them where we can. So welcome to our first encore episode. The Hard Truth About Zone Zero first aired on...

Send us Fan Mail TreePeople has been around for more than 50 years and has planted millions of trees. The non-profit dedicated to maintaining and growing our forests, parks, and even street tree populations, sees trees as not only integral but necessary parts of our infrastructure. And they’re trying to get the rebuilding effort in Los Angeles to recognize the importance of what they call green in...

Send us Fan Mail There are state, county, regional, and city programs offering rebates, incentives, and planning assistance if you've been affected by the Los Angeles Wildfires and are considering building an electric home. We talk with three representatives from three different programs this week, in the second part of our two-part series on electrifying your home. Host Cameron Barrett welco...

Send us Fan Mail Are you rebuilding? Renovating? Adding on? Rethinking your living space? Have you thought about going all-electric? That’s what we’re talking about this week and next with three experts -  Patrice Hicks from RISE Homes, Erin Keller from the California Electric Homes Project, and Enayet Miah from Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power. They have the expertise…and perhaps the mo...

Send us Fan Mail We're getting our next two-part episode ready for you. It will drop at 1:00 am Pacific Time on June 16 and is the first in a two-part series on electrifying the rebuild in the Palisades and Altadena. We'll have three experts who will outline the substantial incentives available to those interested in de-gasifying their new homes. Don't miss it! Support the show

Send us Fan Mail The Palisades Fire created an ecological disaster as only a widespread urban conflagration can. But it also created a blank canvas and an opportunity, according to Sara Marti, the Communications Director of Resilient Palisades. The eco-centric non-profit began in 2019, offering free help in a wide array of environmentally friendly initiatives from clearing invasive species to elec...

Send us Fan Mail $2 million dollars. That’s what the California Board of Insurance (CBI) fined State Farm after spending 11 months looking into its illegal practices after the Eaton and Palisades Fires. They only had to investigate a fraction of the complaints against the insurance giant to see a clear practice of illegal delay and denial of claims made by fire survivors. And while $2 million doll...

Send us Fan Mail The second part of our two-part series with investigative reporter Liam Dillon has us looking forward. Dillon’s stories in the Los Angeles Times and POLITICO have examined the devastation left by the last 8 years of mega-fires in California. Dillon has looked at the Tubbs Fire that laid waste to Santa Rosa, and the Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise, among many others....

Send us Fan Mail 38%. That’s the surprisingly small percentage of residents who have rebuilt after wildfires in California since 2017. Recent building permit requests and housing starts in Pacific Palisades and Altadena are even smaller in number. What many elected officials promised would be the fastest recovery on record after the January 2025 Firestorm has not materialized. Why? That’s what hos...

Send us Fan Mail Last week on Rebuild:LA, host Cameron Barrett welcomed LA’s Deputy Mayor of Infrastructure and Climate Resilience, Randall Winston, to the show. The conversation was mostly about the first part of his title - infrastructure. What was LA doing to repair the Palisades and ensure it could withstand the ongoing threat from wildfires? This week, it’s about the second half of his title...

Send us Fan Mail On April 22, 2026, LA Mayor Karen Bass and LA County Supervisor Kathryn Barger traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Their purpose? To find out when long-promised federal disaster recovery funds would arrive to help Los Angeles rebuild. Without those dollars, LA can’t repair the roads in the Palisades, underground electrical power lin...

Send us Fan Mail Community. It’s a hard thing to define, and even harder to quantify. When the Palisades Fire swept through Los Angeles and Malibu, people didn’t just lose their homes, their schools, churches, and synagogues, their coffee shops, restaurants, and grocery stores. Perhaps most importantly, they lost each other - they lost community. Host Cameron Barrett speaks with Juliet Curry, the...

Send us Fan Mail 15 months after the Palisades Fire, the Los Angeles City Fire Department is still under a microscope regarding their response times, emergency notifications to residents, and pre-deployment decisions. But that's not stopping them from taking an active role in helping residents get permits and permissions to rebuild. The fire department is integral in the process, and with mor...

Send us Fan Mail In this day of increasing climate disasters, it might be time to start thinking outside the wood frame box when it comes to building homes in the Wildland Urban Interface. At least that’s what Gary Hendren from S.A.M. House is hoping people will do when they’re ready to rebuild their homes in Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and Malibu. On this week’s episode, host Cameron Barrett tal...

Send us Fan Mail It was more than a year ago (Episodes 019 and 020) when we first met Jon Brown and heard his story of escape and survival. Jon and his wife built their dream home in the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates, better known as the Palisades Bowl, and were living their dream. They were just steps from the Pacific Ocean, their young children attended the perfect elementary school, and...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode, host Cameron Barrett talks to the award-winning actress and tireless neighborhood leader, Kelly Lynch. She’s been working since not long after the January 2025 firestorms to make her neighborhood an NFPA Firewise USA site. She’s the president of The Oaks Neighborhood Association in the Hollywood Hills, which is spread out along narrow, twisty roads, filled...

Send us Fan Mail In the second episode exploring MySafe:LA's collaboration with the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, we continue our conversation with MySafe:LA Executive Director David Barrett about the power of music to strengthen a community and help its people heal. We also finish up our interview with Lennon Bus co-creator Brian Rothschild. Turns out the Lennon Bus isn't new at hel...

Send us Fan Mail This week is the first in a two-part episode on our new collaboration with the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. In our work to help the communities impacted by the Palisades and Eaton Fires recover and rebuild, we reached out to the Lennon Bus nonprofit because of their past work with kids affected by disasters. We wanted to create an initiative to help children affected by the f...

Send us Fan Mail On this week's Rebuild:LA, host Cameron Barrett discusses the state of mental health among fire survivors with Shari Sinwelski, the Vice President of Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services.  14 months after the January Firestorms, as many as 8 out of 10 fire survivors are reporting struggling with their mental health. How can you do a mental health check in? Is it time for you to...

Send us Fan Mail To mark the first anniversary of the Palisades Fire, the Palisades Recovery Coalition (PRC) gathered with neighbors and community leaders at the famous Eames House, a mid-century architectural landmark in the Palisades that was spared by the January 2025 Firestorms. At the event, PRC presented nearly a year of qualitative research done in all seven distinct neighborhoods in Pacifi...

Send us Fan Mail In Part II of our coverage of the Eaton Fire Survivors' Network (EFSN) press conference marking the first anniversary of the January 2025 Firestorms, EFSN's Executive Director, Joy Chen, brings state politicians to the podium to discuss the work they're doing to provide relief to fire survivors. A slew of legislation has been passed or is currently under considerati...

Send us Fan Mail We're back! Welcome to Season 4 and Episode 61! We couldn't think of a better way to mark the first anniversary of the Eaton Fire and look forward to the next year of rebuilding Los Angeles than to reintroduce you to the Eaton Fire Survivors' Network (EFSN) and its amazing Executive Director, Joy Chen. On the first anniversary, Chen arranged a press conference where...

Send us Fan Mail Rebuild:LA is marking the 60th episode and announcing a brief hiatus, before we begin our third season and bring you more stories of the efforts to recover and rebuild in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena. We'll return on February 3, when we bring you an update on the extraordinary work being done by the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, including the status of their efforts to...

Send us Fan Mail With Us, an immersive art exhibit in the Arts District of downtown Los Angeles, has opened, and it is a compelling experience for anyone who visits. Extreme Weather Survivors and the Department of Angels collaborated to produce the installation, which brings together video, still photography, original art pieces, and the compelling survivors’ soundscape you’ll hear in this episode...

Send us Fan Mail In this, the second part of our special two-part holiday edition of Rebuild:LA, host Cameron Barrett sits down with an Eaton Fire survivor and the president of an organization that lent him a hand. Both guests happen to be Los Angeles Fire Department Captains. In part I released last week, Captain Jerry Puga told the story of turning his back on his burning home, knowing he couldn...