With fire cleanup complete, concerns over speed vs. safety

Some residents fear job was rushed and will cost them later

- By Tony Briscoe, Noah Haggerty and Sandhya Kambhampati

ALLEN J. SCHABEN Los Angeles Times

REBUILDING is underway in Altadena after an astonishing eight-month federal cleanup after the fires.

The devastation left in the wake of January's Eaton and Palisades fires was unimaginable.

The firestorms engulfed 59 square miles of Southern California — more than twice the size of Manhattan — transforming entire city blocks in Altadena and Pacific Palisades into corridors of ashes, twisted metal and skeletal trees.

Federal disaster officials rapidly deployed thousands of workers to gather up the wreckage across the burn scars. Armed with shovels and heavy construction equipment, crews quickly collected fire debris from rugged cliffsides, dusky shorelines and sprawling burnt-out neighborhoods. In a matter of months, they transformed the heaps of charred rubble into mostly vacant matchbox lots, ready for rebuilding.

Recently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported that it had finished clearing roughly 2.6 million tons of wreckage from nearly 9,700 properties, an astonishing eight-month federal cleanup that has been extolled as the largest and fastest in modern American history. Private contractors removed fire debris from an additional 2,100 parcels.

ROBERT GAUTHIER Los Angeles Times

JANA KARIBYNA inspects a lamp in her Altadena home's yard after January's Eaton fire. The federal cleanup cleared 9,673 properties after the L.A. County fires.

However, many experts worry that the rapid pace of federal cleanup resulted in sloppy work, time-saving measures and lax oversight that may ultimately cost homeowners.