The Palisades Fire, a devastating wildfire that has ravaged the Westside of Los Angeles, has caused immense destruction and loss. My heart goes out to all those impacted by this tragedy.
However, as a trained urban planner who often thinks about the future, I’ve been thinking about what the fires will mean for the future of Santa Monica.
Even as the fire continues to rage, we in the City of Santa Monica must start to move forward with actions that help those families and communities whose lives have been turned upside down by this natural disaster.
Over 5,300 structures were burned in the Pacific Palisades, including homes, markets, and schools. Based on individual circumstances—including nearby family and friends, jobs and educational opportunities, and healthcare needs—some people will leave and never return to the Westside. But many will want to stay on the Westside, including in Santa Monica, which will find itself serving as a refuge from impacts of climate change.
Santa Monica as a Climate Refuge
Santa Monica will likely find itself a refuge for those Westsiders who have been displaced by the Palisades Fire or find future fire risk in their neighborhood unacceptable given the changing climate.
Santa Monica is located in an area that has not been rated for Wildfire Risk by FEMA.
Maps from climate risk company First Street, which provides data to insurance companies, shows some level of risk to residential properties in northern Santa Monica. But the majority of the city is not subject to wildfire risk in their models.
In addition, the Palisades Bluffs mean the majority of the city is safe from sea level rise.
Schools and Education
Several private schools and early education centers in Santa Monica enroll students from beyond the city’s borders, including the Pacific Palisades. Displaced families who have lost their local communities will be able to find some community in their children’s schools. Many of these families will want to locate in Santa Monica to be close to that community.
Other families who have enrolled their students in public schools that have been impacted by the fires may decide to move to Santa Monica and enroll their students in our public schools. The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District includes families who have been displaced by the fire (mostly in Malibu) and the school board should seek emergency funding from the State of California to ready facilities and hire teachers as needed to accommodate an increase in enrollment.
LAUSD has already relocated its two public elementary schools to Brentwood Science Magnet and Paul Revere Middle School will relocate to University High. Other private schools from the Pacific Palisades, such as Seven Arrows Elementary, are already seeking to relocate to Santa Monica. However, Santa Monica’s zoning laws requires schools and licensed early childcare centers to secure a conditional use permit, a time-consuming, costly political process that would make it impossible to quickly accommodate displaced services from the Pacific Palisades.
The board chair of Seven Arrows, GoodRX co-founder Scott Marlette, went to the Santa Monica City Council on Friday, January 10th to ask for an emergency conditional use permit to accommodate their relocated school. According to Marlette, multiple other schools from the Pacific Palisades are also looking to relocate to Santa Monica and will require similar leniency from the city’s rigid zoning laws in order to relocate into existing, vacant buildings. The City Council granted that leniency on Friday with an emergency order to allow schools to locate in non-residential areas without a conditional use permit, and additional waivers for businesses that have been impacted by the fires. These will be the first of several emergency orders needed to accommodate our neighbors from the Pacific Palisades and assist them in returning to some sense of normalcy.
Housing Market
There’s been some debate from local pundits about Santa Monica’s vacancy rate, which increased during COVID as some renters left town. Santa Monica has, at most, about 3,000 homes and apartments available for rent at any given time, a figure that likely includes short-term rentals.
Santa Monica always needed more housing, but this extra demand will mean rental rate increases that will push against California’s price gouging laws. In the short run, the City government can enforce short-term rental regulations to ensure a greater supply of properties are rented for 30+ days for people who have relocated. In the long run, the city will be able to complete construction of over 4,000 entitled but not-yet built housing units before our neighbors in the Pacific Palisades are able to rebuild.
Hazardous waste hauling on Pacific Coast Highway and 10 Freeway
The Palisades fire has produced millions of tons of debris that must be disposed of before Pacific Palisades can rebuild.
While the most expedient disposal method is dumping it into the ocean, the toxicity and environmental protection concerns will likely mean that the waste is hauled via the established truck routes on Pacific Coast Highway and the 10 Freeway.
This will likely mean dozens of trucks per hour carrying ash and debris that includes hazardous waste. Lead is also present in older paints (pre-1978), plumbing, and some electronic waste. Common household hazardous wastes can also become toxics. Polymers in crystalline solar panels can create toxic substances if combust incompletely, though the destruction from the fire appears absolute in most cases.
Burned electric vehicles leave heavy metal residues from cobalt, nickel, manganese that are released into the air and may be present in the ash left behind. Combustion may also lead to hydrofluoric acid
Santa Monica will need to work with regional authorities to consider the impacts of this increase in the volume of heavy duty trucks that may be hauling some mixture of hazardous wastes. Keeping PCH and the 10 freeway safer and less congested than in the past seem like high priorities.
Evacuation Corridors and Post-Wildfire Debris Flows
Unfortunately a hillside wildfire is the first disaster of a one-two punch that is followed by post-wildfire debris flows during the first heavy rain after a wildfire. Fires change the soil in a way that makes it much more prone to mudslides, as shown in this NWS graphic:
Emergency management officials will prepare for this risk in the City of Los Angeles, which will likely include evacuations of canyons that have had upper areas burn. Rustic Canyon, Santa Monica Canyon, and Sullivan Canyon will be particularly vulnerable. The City of Santa Monica will need to develop advanced plans to accommodate evacuations that may include prohibition of parking on some north-south routes, like 26th Street and Centinela Ave., and Big Blue Buses shuttles to move people who cannot evacuate in cars.
We’ve all seen the power of the Watch Duty App, with its frequent updates and interactive maps, and compared it to the information coming from the government. It underscores the public safety importance of city and county communications, and adequate staffing and technology for the emergency operations center.
Author’s Note: I used Gemini 2.0 Experimental Advanced, a large language AI model, for research for this article.
