numbers are stark: The fires killed 28 people and incinerated more than 16,000 structures. Officials peg the economic damage at $150 billion or more, with insurance companies expecting losses of $30 billion.
pets and remnants of their lives. My wife is a Red Cross volunteer and I can’t stand hearing the tragic stories after she returns from a service call.
columns about the various insurance, land-use, wildfire-prevention and water policies that exacerbated the situation. These are important issues and need to be hashed out, especially as the state and federal governments consider aid packages and regulatory relief to speed up the rebuilding process.
architectural front. Early on, I experienced something of a panic when I read reports that some of LA’s most notable architectural treasures had been destroyed or were threatened. Fortunately, many reports were incorrect.
reported. It noted rumors (thankfully untrue) that the spectacular midcentury Eames house had burned. Pasadena’s Gamble House – the most notable Arts-and-Crafts style home in the nation – reportedly was threatened, but also survived.
claimed the Benedict and Nancy Freedman House, a modernist masterpiece designed by architect Richard Neutra in 1949. Also lost: 21 of 28 of architect Gregory Ain’s Park Planned Homes in Altadena. Also dating to the 1940s, “This was one of the first modernist housing developments in the country,” per US Modernist, conceived “as a groundbreaking social experiment, with affordable prefabricated homes for working families.”
homes. I can only imagine Altadena residents’ sense of loss.
Spanish Revival architecture, which defined the areas most prone to fire and mudslide.
Art Deco home in Ohio, which managed to be historic and futuristic at the same time, as it epitomized a 1930s-era vision of the future.
Buildings matter. That’s one of my beefs with the modern urbanist movement, which seems committed to packing as many people as efficiently as possible into little boxes. Yet it’s hard to convey the sense of joy one can experience from living in a house that was thoughtfully designed. There’s no replacing a burned-down historic treasure. Of course, the loss of anyone’s home or business – architecturally significant or not – is painful.
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Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at [email protected].
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