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AFTER THE FIRE - Hi. I’m Sara. I did lose my home and so did my parents. Before the fire, I was the “social media girl” at Resilient Palisades. I loved posting about plant-based street food, reusable bags, teaching kids to compost and how we can all agree that gas leaf blowers are the absolute worst.
Now I’m the “Communications Director,” sitting with experts talking about clean energy, electrification, wildfire recovery, and bioremediation… and ok yes, posting about how artificial turf is the absolute worst.
I’ve had to learn a lot of technical stuff very fast as someone who, like many of you, did not come into this with an engineering degree. And even from that vantage point, here’s the truth:
Los Angeles has an extraordinary opportunity, and right now we are missing it.
The fires that tore through our city did more than destroy homes. They pushed families into chaos while they tried to keep their children in school and hold their lives together. They forced people who never asked to become experts into long, confusing conversations about insurance, permitting, contractors, and rebuilding. What the fires did not do was erase the desire to fight for their future.
This is where other communities that have lived through this trauma have already shown what works. Boulder County, Colorado lived through the Marshall Fire in 2021. More than a thousand homes burned in a single afternoon. At first, there was confusion and heated pushback over energy codes and rebuilding costs.
But Boulder County did something remarkable. They listened to fire survivors, clarified the choices, and built a program that helped people rebuild homes that were safer, healthier, and far more resilient than what they had before.
The program was called Rebuilding Better. It was voluntary, simple, and built around a truth Boulder County Deputy Director Zac Swank repeated to us this week: people choose healthier, safer homes when the path is clear and the financial burden is not placed entirely on their shoulders.
Their approach used performance tiers. I’d spare you the full alphabet soup of certifications, but I should include them: IECC 2021, ENERGY STAR 3.2, Zero Energy Ready Homes, ENERGY STAR NextGen all-electric, and Passive House.
Adding a space here so you can recover. There were five tiers, in case you couldn’t tell.
We do not need that many. Boulder created a long menu because that fit their political moment and their code structure. Based on Zac’s guidance and on what has worked nationally, Resilient Palisades is proposing two tiers for Los Angeles: a Zero Energy Ready pathway and a NextGen all electric pathway. These tiers are simple, affordable, realistic and proven to improve indoor air quality, comfort and resilience without overwhelming families.
In Boulder’s system, each tier came with strong incentives that closed the cost gap between a traditional rebuild and a high-performance one. Unlike LA, Colorado sized their incentives to match the real cost of upgrades.
The results were extraordinary. Seventy percent of eligible households voluntarily participated in the higher tiers. Many chose all-electric because the incentives made it possible. Eight families even built to Passive House standards, offering the best indoor air quality and lowest energy use of any design available. For families who had been traumatized, under-insured, and overwhelmed, these homes created a sense of safety that couldn’t be measured in dollars alone.
Los Angeles does not have anything like this.
We have good programs:
These programs are real. They are meaningful. They matter for the families who can access them. They are not nothing, and they represent sincere effort.
But they were never designed to work together as one whole home pathway. Instead, they are scattered. A rebate for a heat pump water heater here. A panel upgrade rebate there. A tax credit for a stove or a solar array. A different program for batteries. You need a spreadsheet and a clear head to navigate them, and fire survivors do not have that luxury.
People are designing their homes right now. Zac explained that in Boulder, design decisions began around six months after the fire and permit submissions surged between months nine and eleven. This is exactly where Los Angeles is today. Families are making decisions based on partial information and assumptions that are not always accurate.
The differences between our regions are real. Boulder had a different natural gas price structure. Their baseline codes were different. Their state government and utility were aligned and moved quickly. Los Angeles has more agencies, larger geography, far more homes affected, and a slower permitting process. Because of that, our incentives must be clearer, simpler, and more comprehensive than Boulder’s. Not less.
Zac described the turning point in Boulder’s recovery: when the conversation shifted away from abstract climate goals and toward comfort, clean air, wildfire smoke protection, and long-term affordability. Survivors did not choose all-electric homes for political reasons. They chose them because those homes were safer for their families.
Angelenos want the same thing. Homes that match the climate we live in now. Homes that protect us from heat, smoke, and grid instability. Homes where kids breathe clean air. Solar and battery systems that keep the lights on during outages. These are not luxuries. They are basic needs.
Right now, we are asking families to carry the full cost of that safer future alone. Boulder proved it does not have to be this way.
We need LADWP, the Mayor’s Office, the City Council, the California Energy Commission, and the agencies behind TECH Clean California and CalEHP to align their incentives into a single whole-home structure. Two tiers. Zero Energy Ready and NextGen all-electric. One clear path. Not a scattered checklist.
We need incentives sized to real upgrade costs. We need a structure that can launch quickly. Boulder built theirs in three months. Los Angeles can move that fast too, if we choose to. And we need retroactive eligibility for the families who are already rebuilding all-electric. Colorado did this for survivors of a previous wildfire. Los Angeles can do the same.
If we get this right, we can rebuild fire-impacted neighborhoods into national models of resilience. If we get it wrong, we will lock in another generation of homes vulnerable to heat, smoke, and grid failure.
We have one chance to rebuild. We have one chance to protect families instead of repeating past mistakes. Los Angeles owes it to every fire survivor to take that chance.
(Sara G. Marti is a Los Angeles–based communications director focused on climate resilience, wildfire recovery, and community advocacy. She leads communications strategy for Resilient Palisades and collaborates with partners across the region.)
