This is an IHeart podcast.

The destruction is nearly incomprehensible unless you see it for yourself.

I found that my house was gone, as well as every house on my block.

How could this have happened?

And where do we go from here? L.A. is rebuilding. There is no doubt about that. Less clear is how.

We know the faster we can rebuild, the faster we can heal.

There are kind of two separate conversations at a high level that I don't think we're having that we could

have in this rush to kind of build things back as they were.

I'm Kate Kagle, host of the new podcast, Rebuilding L.A. from L.A. Times Studios.

We will try to answer some of these questions as we assess the path forward.

Rebuilding L.A. launches June 11th. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. Pushkin.

In Northern California, fires are very common.

This is psychology PhD student, Michelle Hastie Thompson.

And so when I heard that there was a fire, it didn't seem that close.

And so it was nothing that caused me any concern.

It's like, oh, okay, another fire, whatever.

That's what we do here.

But Michelle's calm attitude on that fateful November morning in 2018 wouldn't last.

She was getting her son Broem ready for his usual daycare drop-off when she noticed

that the sky was a bit darker than usual. With her husband already at work on the other side of

town, Michelle called to compare notes and figure out how concerned they should be. You know, do I need to

evacuate? Is this serious? He said, no, I'm on my way to you. You stay there. The fire's on

...