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It Could Take Weeks Before Displaced L.A. Residents Can Go Home

Published

5 months ago

January 16, 2025

It Could Take Weeks Before Displaced L.A. Residents Can Go Home

The tens of thousands of people displaced by the devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area are increasingly anxious to know when they can return home — or to what remains of their properties.

Officials say crews are working to reopen closed areas, snuffing out hot spots and clearing hazardous debris, but no timeline has been announced for lifting the evacuation orders.

Experts have warned that it could take weeks before people can return to the hardest-hit neighborhoods because of the amount of work needed to ensure the safety of residents.

Firefighters are still trying to contain the Palisades and Eaton fires, the biggest ones in the Los Angeles region, a prerequisite to allowing people to return. Both remained largely out of control on Wednesday evening, though their growth had slowed.

Captain Erik Scott of the Los Angeles Fire Department said the timeline for people returning to their neighborhoods can vary. It depends on the extent of the damage, which needs to be mapped and carefully assessed in every impacted community, he added. There is also the threat of hazardous materials, such as asbestos and chemicals.

“We want people to have realistic expectations,” Mr. Scott said.

It took weeks in the aftermath of some previous destructive blazes for people to return. In 2018, the Camp fire destroyed most of Paradise in Northern California and killed 85 people. The final evacuation orders in that town were lifted more than a month after the fire started.

Similarly, after a devastating fire in Lahaina on the island of Maui killed more than 100 people in 2023, it was nearly two months before the first of the thousands of displaced residents could return to their properties.

The suppression of the fire is only one step in the process, according to fire officials. There are yet more safety and infrastructure issues to tackle. Workers need to clear and replace downed power lines, stabilize partially collapsed buildings and remove toxic ash from the ground.

“That’s why the orders are still in place,” said David Acuna, a battalion chief with Cal Fire. “It’s not just about the fire. There are all these other elements to address.”

The grim search for human remains has further complicated efforts to clear neighborhoods. Officials are using cadaver dogs to comb through the thousands of structures damaged or destroyed in the fires to locate remains.

“We have people literally looking for the remains of your neighbors,” Sheriff Robert Luna of Los Angeles County said at a news conference on Monday. “Please be patient with us.”

Even for those whose homes survive, the lifting of evacuation orders does not necessarily mean they can return to live in them right away, warned Michael Wara, a climate policy expert at Stanford University.

“There’s going to be smoke damage,” he said. “There’s going to be the fact that you don’t have utilities.”

In Pacific Palisades, the recovery process was underway in its incinerated downtown. The air buzzed with the sound of jackhammers, bulldozers and tree shredders. Workers cleared debris, pulled down charred utility poles and ground up the skeletal limbs of burned eucalyptus trees.

Ali Sharifi managed to inspect his lower Palisades home on Tuesday. Aside from a burned backyard fence, it was intact. Yet the destruction around it, including charred schools, churches and grocery stores, gave him second thoughts about returning.

“Who wants to live in a ghost town?” Mr. Sharifi said.

Erica Fischer, an associate professor at Oregon State University who studied the aftermath of the Camp fire, said that a fast recovery is not always a good one, especially if it means rebuilding in ways that contributed to the disaster.

Of the ongoing evacuation orders in California, she said, “I know it’s not convenient, and it’s disruptive, but it keeps people out of harm’s way.”

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Video: Inside Trump’s Shifting Stance on Iran

Published

8 hours ago

June 18, 2025

Press Room

Video: Inside Trump’s Shifting Stance on Iran

President Trump spent the first months of his term holding back Israel’s push for an assault on Iran’s nuclear program. With the war underway, he has now expressed support for Israel. Jonathan Swan, a White House reporter for The New York Times, breaks down how the president got to this point.

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Donald Trump plans to delay TikTok ban for a third time

Published

11 hours ago

June 17, 2025

Press Room

Donald Trump plans to delay TikTok ban for a third time

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The White House has said it will allow TikTok to continue operations in the US for another 90 days, extending a deadline for the popular Chinese-owned social media app to divest a stake in the platform to satisfy American law.

“President [Donald] Trump will sign an additional executive order this week to keep TikTok up and running,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday. “As he has said many times, president Trump does not want TikTok to go dark.

“This extension will last 90 days, which the administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure.”

Last year, Congress passed legislation to force ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, to sell the app or face a ban in the US.

Trump has promised to “save” the app and has twice extended the deadline — first from January to April, and then from April to June 19 — after failing to deliver a deal, which requires sign-off from China.

Ahead of the April deadline, the White House was closing in on an agreement that would spin off TikTok from ByteDance and create a US company to receive new investment, diluting the stakes of Chinese investors.

Under the terms of that deal, investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Blackstone, would have owned about half of TikTok’s US business, while large existing investors, including General Atlantic, Susquehanna and KKR, would have held about 30 per cent of the new entity.

The Financial Times has previously reported that the White House had considered other potential outside investors, including rightwing media star Tucker Carlson.

ByteDance told the White House and investors that Beijing was willing to approve the deal, according to one person familiar with the matter. But after Trump announced tariffs on China and other countries on April 2, ByteDance informed the investors that Beijing had rescinded its approval. The White House was waiting for the US-China trade tensions to ease before trying to resurrect the deal, according to the person.

In 2020, during his first term as president, Trump moved to block TikTok, writing in an executive order that its data collection “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information”.

Trump changed his approach to the platform, however, after he used it to reach younger voters in the 2024 election. In May, Trump told NBC that he had “a little warm spot in my heart for TikTok”.

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NAACP won't invite Trump to its national convention, breaking a 116-year tradition

Published

12 hours ago

June 17, 2025

Press Room

NAACP won't invite Trump to its national convention, breaking a 116-year tradition

The NAACP logo is shown during an event at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 2015. The civil rights group has announced it won’t invite President Trump to address its convention, breaking a 116-year tradition of inviting sitting presidents.

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The NAACP announced it will not invite President Trump to its national convention in July. The civil rights organization is breaking from its 116-year tradition of welcoming the sitting U.S. president to the annual event that draws NAACP supporters from around the country.

The group says Trump is the first president it has declined to invite.

NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson made the announcement Monday at a news conference in Charlotte, N.C., where the convention is scheduled to be held. The group also shared a statement from Johnson.

“Donald Trump is attacking our democracy and our civil rights … The president has signed unconstitutional executive orders to oppress voters and undo federal civil rights protections,” Johnson said. “… he continually undermines every pillar of our democracy to make himself more powerful and to personally benefit from the U.S. government.”

The White House responded sharply on Tuesday to the president’s exclusion from the event. Trump declined previous invitations during his first term.

Voters walk into the Oak Creek Town Hall to drop off their ballots on Nov. 5, 2024, in Oak Creek, Colo.

“The NAACP isn’t advancing anything but hate and division, while the President is focused on uniting our country, improving our economy, securing our borders, and establishing peace across the globe,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement to NPR. “This is the same vision for America that a record number of Black Americans supported in the resounding reelection of President Trump.”

The NAACP has welcomed both Democratic and Republican presidents to address the convention over the years. Presidents have historically used their remarks to build stronger ties with the Black community.

President Ronald Reagan addressed the NAACP convention in Denver in 1981 and spoke out against racism and discrimination. President George W. Bush spoke at the convention in Washington, D.C., in 2006 amid criticism of his administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina. The storm disproportionately affected Black residents in New Orleans and the Gulf region. In his remarks, Bush resolved to work with the Black community to recover from the storm. He had declined previous invitations to the event.

The NAACP has filed a number civil rights lawsuits against the administration since Trump’s return to the White House, including a challenge to efforts to cut federal funding to schools that use diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. The organization has also filed suit to block plans to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.

The Trump administration has enacted a series of substantial changes that the NAACP says conflicts with its mission of achieving equity, political rights, and social inclusion for Black Americans and all people of color. The changes include eliminating DEI programs in higher education and across the federal government; removing some Black historical figures from government websites; and restoring the names of military bases that originally honored white supremacists and owners of enslaved people.