LOS ANGELES — In the year after fire swept through Altadena, man and nature have camouflaged the destruction, to some extent.

The burned husks of thousands of homes have been flattened. Weeks of record rainfall have left empty lots a shimmering green. Parts of Altadena now resemble a rural town, with scattered houses separated by vast swaths of open space canopied by trees that somehow survived the fire.

In Pacific Palisades, too, hills that flames turned brown are now back to green. Everything feels so wet and lush this January that it’s hard to imagine that a fire in the same month, a year ago, could have caused so much misery.

But it did, and 2026 is going to be a pivotal year.

Last year, the focus was on survival — finding temporary places to live, clearing lots, deciding whether to stay or go — while holding government officials accountable. This year will be about building up again, as well as political reckoning.

Government credibility

Many fire survivors are haunted by what-ifs.

If the Los Angeles Fire Department had fully predeployed engines in the Palisades, could homes and lives have been saved? If firefighters hadn’t been ordered to leave a New Year’s Day fire before all the embers were extinguished, would flames have flared up on the same spot amid hurricane-force winds on Jan. 7, 2025?

In Altadena, if government officials had sent out timely evacuation alerts to west Altadena residents, if fire trucks had swarmed the area earlier, would 18 people have died?

The LAFD has promised a host of reforms, including maximum deployments on high-fire-risk days and more thorough mop-ups to better ensure fires are completely out.

Los Angeles County has also vowed a host of improvements, including hiring more personnel to help with emergency alerts.

But time will determine the success of these initiatives. Similar reforms were promised after the massive Woolsey fire in 2018 but never fully implemented.

Both fires raised concerns about the water supply, as hydrants went dry due to overwhelming demand. A year later, there have been no concrete steps to improve the water network, something that would be a costly undertaking. Some smaller-scale ideas have emerged, such as installing cisterns, tapping water from swimming pools, or even turning to mobile pumps and pipes that could quickly route water where it’s needed.

Rebuilding

It took just a few months to remove the debris from the fire zone. The big question for Altadena, Malibu and the Palisades in 2026 is how quickly they can rebuild.

Altadena residents are facing another taxing year of rebuilding, plagued by labor shortages, rising costs and bureaucratic delays. The Los Angeles Times reported last month that L.A. County had issued rebuilding permits for less than one-fifth of the homes destroyed in Altadena.

The county has promised to turbocharge the sluggish pace, enacting a one-step permitting center and waiving some fees. Officials also created preapproved designs for homes that aim to grease the path for residents to speed through the permitting process. The end of the year brought some signs of progress, with the first handful of homes rebuilt in the area.

But residents say they’re losing faith in one of the promises made by county leaders in the early days of the fire: that their town would be quickly rebuilt with the same charm, and, ideally, many of the same residents.

“In the days after the fire, we were promised by our Supervisors a speedy recovery, no permit fees, that our town would be rebuilt with the same character that we lost,” wrote fire victim Shawna Dawson Beer on her Altadena-focused Substack. “Promises were made and many have (been) broken.”

In Pacific Palisades, fire victims are waiting to see whether L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council will waive the permitting fees normally charged to rebuild homes. Bass announced last spring that she wanted to lift those fees for those who lost their homes.

But last month, amid worries about the potential hit to the budget, council members requested more financial information on the initiative.

Within the city of Los Angeles, nearly 5,400 single-family homes were damaged or destroyed by the Palisades fire, according to the mayor’s team. About 250 other structures — duplexes, apartment buildings, condominium complexes — were also destroyed or damaged, those officials said.

Palisades property owners are also looking to see whether Bass and the council can reach a deal to exempt fire victims from Measure ULA, the city’s “mansion tax,” which is levied on most property sales above $5.3 million. For now, it’s still unclear whether such a move would need approval from voters, who passed the measure in 2022.

The city is also slated this year to release a series of reports, prepared by engineering firm AECOM, dealing with infrastructure repairs, fire protection and traffic management during the rebuilding. Beyond that, the Department of Water and Power is laying plans to put its electrical lines underground throughout the Palisades, a process expected to take years.

Politics

The fire quickly created a political crisis for Bass, who was out of the country on a diplomatic mission to Ghana on Jan. 7, 2025. Since then, she has faced criticism over a series of issues surrounding the city’s emergency response, including LAFD deployment, the fact that a key reservoir in Pacific Palisades was empty, and the Fire Department’s failure to put out a New Year’s Day fire that eventually rekindled into the Palisades fire.

Bass ousted then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley in February. She also hired a “recovery czar” who held the post for just 90 days. She is now seeking reelection amid sharp criticism of the city’s handling of the emergency response and the recovery.

Former L.A. schools Superintendent Austin Beutner, who is running against Bass, has attacked the mayor’s performance on the fire, saying she has not accepted responsibility for the city’s failures. Community organizer Rae Huang, who is running from Bass’ left, has offered her own critique, saying the mayor has engaged in too much finger-pointing.

Bass, for her part, said Tuesday that she is using the full extent of her mayoral powers to “restore the Palisades community and return families home as quickly and safely as possible.”

Still unclear is whether real estate developer Rick Caruso — another outspoken critic of Bass on the fire — will launch a second mayoral bid. Bass defeated him in 2022 by a comfortable margin.

SoCal Edison

Although the investigation into the cause of the Eaton fire by state and local fire officials has not yet been released, the evidence points to Southern California Edison power equipment as the cause of the blaze.

Hundreds of lawsuits are now pending against Edison while it continues to urge fire victims to instead settle through its compensation program.

The company expects all settlements and damages to be covered first by a $1 billion insurance policy paid for by customers and the rest by the $21 billion state wildfire fund.

But it remains far from clear when a settlement will come and how much plaintiffs will receive. For many homeowners, the amount could be key in deciding whether to rebuild.

Additionally, state regulators have ordered Edison to assess fire risks on 355 miles of unused transmission lines, including the century-old equipment suspected of igniting the Eaton fire.

A company spokesperson said recently that Edison had already had been reviewing idle lines and planned to respond to the regulators’ requests.

Insurance

Residents whose houses burned or were made uninhabitable in the Eaton and Palisades fires will continue to fight for insurance payments this year, as surveys show about seven in 10 haven’t moved back into their homes.

Some have filed lawsuits against the California Fair Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, accusing it of illegally withholding smoke-damage payments.

State Farm General, California’s largest home insurer, is being investigated by both the state and county over its handling of wildfire claims, even as it seeks an additional $500 million rate hike following its fire losses. Both insurers deny wrongdoing.

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(Times staff writers David Zahniser, Rebecca Ellis, Laurence Darmiento, Richard Verrier, Shelby Grad and Alene Tchekmedyian contributed to this report.)

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