The road to rebuilding, one year after the LA wildfires

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

Business, News

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2026

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s been a year since the Eaton and Palisades fires swept through Southern California, taking 31 lives and destroying over 16,000 structures — including the homes of “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio and his neighbors in Altadena. On the show today, David joins Kimberly to talk about the road to rebuilding the community and the complicated, costly task of rebuilding with fire resistant materials.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

"How my Altadena neighbors are rebuilding, one year since the Eaton Fire" from Marketplace
"L.A. wildfires broke record for costliest in the history of the planet" from the San Francisco Chronicle
"These numbers tell the story of the Los Angeles wildfires, one year later" from AP News
"Marketplace’s David Brancaccio on community, loss and rebuilding in Altadena" from Marketplace
"To rebuild homes cheaper, faster and safer, some want new rules" from Marketplace

We love hearing from you. Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or email [email protected].

Transcript

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0:36.4	Hello everyone.
0:37.3	I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.
0:42.3	It has been a year since the Eton and Palisades fires swept through Los Angeles, taking 31 lives and destroying roughly 16,000 structures.
0:53.4	They're two of the costliest fires ever recorded.
0:57.0	Now, my colleague David Brancaccio is one of the many thousands of people who lost their homes in the fires.
1:03.0	And over the past year, he's been documenting LA's recovery as well as his own experience with rebuilding,
1:09.0	and he's here to tell us about it. Welcome back, David.
1:12.8	Great to work with you, Kimberly.
1:15.6	So I was listening to you on Marketplace Morning Report this morning talking about your experience with these fires.
1:21.6	Hope everybody checks out your coverage all week.
1:24.3	But what has it been like for you to report on your own experience as well as your
1:30.4	own community in the aftermath of these fires? I think you've been doing this for many years as well.
1:38.4	I mean, it's much easier to parachute in, understand the story, connect, get your facts straight, and then get out to the warmth of your own home. In this case, there's no home to go back to. I had to be dragged by my editors kicking and screaming toward covering my own experience here. It's uncomfortable. Also, I mean, Kimberly, my situation is not at all the worst. Most, if not all, of my neighbors have it worse. We didn't have pets. We didn't have young children underfoot traumatized by the embers falling on their heads. As it
	...

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