Government red tape means it could take up to 18 months to clear the ash and debris from the charred remains of homes that were burned in the Los Angeles wildfires.
A federal program will pay contractors to haul away the rubble at no cost to residents, but they’ll have to work through layers of bureaucracy — including the Los Angeles County government, the federal Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency — to get it done.
That means that even through the wildfires have finally been contained, devastated Los Angeles homeowners can either pay out of pocket for the costly removal — or potentially wait more than a year before they can finally rebuild, authorities said.
It’s only been a month but if I was them I would just do it myself. I don’t understand people that can’t clean up their own property. In fact if it was my block I would get all my neighbors together and do it.
Clearing rubble is only one part. Insurance settlement may take that long. Will building codes be changed? Architects, design firms, contractors are likely to be swamped with work. Labor and material shortages are expected.
Being ready to begin construction in 18 months could be an impossible goal for many.
Folks up here learned very quickly how rough the recovery was, beyond their total losses, the cleanup was a monstrous job, foundations had been cooked, unusable, no strength, so then the od blueprints became just as useless, if they could be found. The the heavy equipment was in short supple as well as all the truckloads of debris, watching for victims, recoverable… nd then the long road of finding architects to create the replacement, new methods to meet or beat the codes for fire zones, the wait for power, gas, cable, even if they were underground prior to the firestorm they’d also been cooked, so more materials that had to be found… 2-3 years and decisions to stay or move on, avoid the scammers, fake contractors, developers lowballing the values… Then there were the looters, looking for safes, we got my BIL’s out as soon as we had access, had to have it cup open to recover what we could, a big blob of melted plastic, destroyed gemstones, toasted paperwork… No end in sight it seemed, they moved to another town, eventually sold the lot… This was once a two story, $1.2M home… in 2017…
I don’t know any other way to put it. This is a lie.
The problem is not government red tape. The problem is that this is a really big area that will simply take a long time to clean up, red tape or not.
The NY Times tells a very different story. Not surprising, since the NY Post is a highly biased publication and cannot be relied on to tell the unbiased truth.
First, the EPA will clean up the hazardous waste in the rubble. This includes things like lithium batteries, which are now an integral part of our daily lives. This is estimated to take 30 days to be fully complete. But many areas will be done sooner.
Once the EPA is done in an area, then the debris clean up can begin. The Army Corps of Engineers will do this work for free, but homeowners must give permission for them to do so. Smaller lots take 2 to 4 days, larger ones can be 10 days.
The Corps estimates that 80% of lots will be complete within a year. The ones that may take longer are most often the ones where getting permission to do the cleanup is harder.
And while it isn’t said in the article, if it takes just a couple of days to clear smaller lots, that means quite a few lots will be clear and ready to rebuild in only a couple of months.
But the Post makes it sound much worse. The lots taking the longest to clear will be the ones where homeowners are not available to give permission to the Army Corps or to hire their own contractors. That’s not a government red tape problem.
Los Angeles County notes that “Hazardous materials from burned homes must be assessed and removed as overseen by the EPA to avoid health risks to you and your family.”
How do I obtain a household hazardous waste assessment and removal for my property?
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has been assigned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to survey, remove, and dispose of hazardous materials from properties impacted by the fires**. This work is free to residents and is already underway** with assistance from the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) and local agencies.
As the first stage of cleanup, USEPA will remove potentially dangerous everyday products like:
I do that all the time. Our dump has a place to drop it off. But what you are talking about is the Feds and that happens where ever there is a disaster. Just look at North Carolina after the Hurricane. They said it would be staggering what they have to do to build back. But then that is why they call it a disaster.
Since basically everyone has paint, batteries, etc on their property that means that the EPA guys have to inspect your property and remove the waste. That means you can’t “just do it myself”.
I don’t think that is true. They may have to inspect it after you clean it up but anyone can clean up their own property as long as they do it within the rules. Otherwise every time I had a battery to drop off I would have to call the EPA.
The corporations did it to the public, not the citizens. Most ttuff used to be reasonably disposable or recyclable. Now a lot of it is not due to the materials used to make the items AND how (not very) well they are made
And yet (from the LA County link) this sounds pretty restrictive:
Residents should not attempt to remove hazardous fire debris themselves. Post-fire house debris is hazardous because it can contain toxic materials like asbestos, lead, mercury, chemicals from household products, and other heavy metals which are released into the ash and debris when structures burn. These materials pose a risk to health if inhaled or handled improperly.
Planning is underway for Debris Removal Activities in coordination with the County Office of Emergency Management and our State and Federal Partners.
When you have as much building debris as Los Angeles now has you cannot just call up the local dumpster guys to come and get it, nor can the dumps handle high volume on a haphazard basis. Instead, you need to plan and manage the excavation, movement. You know, the sort of thing that governments need to do…
Well, if you want to go legal, there are no “shalls” at all on that webpage by the county. It is a FAQ sheet. I suspect the legalese is found elsewhere.
Bob if you really think that people can not clean their own property I am ok with that. When I was younger I used to believe the world was flat also, then I learned to read.
When there is a single fire in a neighborhood, cleaning up oneself is not too difficult.
When an entire community is destroyed, including the businesses that one might otherwise hire for the cleanup, it is exponentially more difficult.
Even if those businesses where open, they would not have the capacity for the excess demand.
On a related tangent, I watched a segment on the news about a charity that gives away musical instruments. They normally give away 150 a year. They had over 150 requests in just one week - 52x their normal demand. That is the problem these people are facing. Heck, there may not even be landfills in the area that can handle all the waste.
I already have this figured out. You take all the trash down to the port of Los Angeles and put it on a container ship to El Salvador. We tell them that this is all the trash that goes with the criminals. Easy-peasy and California is clean.
