LA Fires, Six Months Later

Heal the Bay CEO Tracy Quinn reflects on progress, recovery, and resilience on the six-month anniversary of the Palisades Fire. 

Everyone I’ve talked to in LA has a personal story about their experience on January 7th. My story is a little different than most. It started as one of the best days of my life – kayaking through slushy ice sheets alongside penguins in Antarctica. But the magic ended the minute I stepped back on the boat and saw my phone was flooded with text messages from concerned friends and family. I had intended to spend most of the week on a digital detox. Instead, I spent every waking hour checking the WatchDuty app for news of whether my home in the Palisades was still standing. 

Now, six months after megafires devastated several SoCal communities, with tens of thousands of people still displaced from their homes (including me), we’re beginning to see how the efforts to protect us against the next climate disaster are taking shape.

The LA fires – and the pollution they created – were unprecedented. And unfortunately, there was no existing roadmap for assessing and addressing the pollution impacts of a disaster of this kind and scale on our coast. The work Heal the Bay has done in recent months is an effort to navigate these uncharted waters and forge a new path toward strong comprehensive water safety measures in this new era of climate disaster. 

Here are some of the key efforts Heal the Bay has driven since the fires, the lessons we’ve learned, and our next steps: 

 

Water & Sand Safety Testing:

The fires released chemicals and contaminants from incinerated homes and cars into our waterways. In the days and months since, the team at Heal the Bay has been navigating a maze of unknowns about the threats that water pollution from the fires poses to people and marine life. 

• • What the Data Shows: The data we have shows that LA beach water and sand do contain certain heavy metals and other fire-related chemicals, but these contaminants largely appear to be within safe levels for recreation. 
    • Here’s the most recent overview of our sand testing analysis.
    • Here’s the most recent overview of our water testing analysis.

• Analysis Gaps: We can’t manage what we don’t measure, and we’ve never had (because we’ve never needed) official safety threshold standards for this type of disaster-related pollution. Thankfully, the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP) – a team of scientists and human health professionals, including Heal the Bay scientists – are set to release the first set of recommendations for new risk screening levels to protect against human health impacts from heavy metals and other contaminants in recreational water and sand. These recommendations will also include standardized methodology and sampling practices. 

• A Disaster Recovery Playbook: Once we acquire scientifically sound safety recommendations, we then have to implement them. That means codifying – into law – sampling and analysis protocols, human health thresholds, and requirements for public disclosure of data for government agencies to implement. It also, therefore, means funding this type of comprehensive testing if and when the next disaster strikes. 

• Heal the Bay to Fill the Gap: While these actions will help those impacted by the next disaster, we still need to make sure our beaches are being monitored and the public is being informed in the aftermath of the current disaster. While it appears that the state has stopped funding local water and sand testing, Heal the Bay is working to ensure it has the resources it needs to keep testing going for as long as it takes.

 

Climate Recovery & Resilience for our Waterways:

Shortly after the fires, the independent Blue Ribbon Commission on Climate Action and Fire Safe Recovery was created to design a roadmap to help LA ensure a resilient and sustainable recovery from the fires and make the region better prepared for future climate disasters. The Commission developed a range of recovery and preparation recommendations for efficient and climate-smart rebuilding, equitable recovery, and climate-resilient infrastructure. 

I co-chaired the Water Working Group, focused on how to ensure our waterways and water infrastructure could better withstand the impacts of a climate disaster. These water recommendations include: 

• Protecting Waterways and Infrastructure from Climate-Related Pollution

• • • Implement erosion control measures and nature-based solutions to safeguard watersheds and water infrastructure from post-disaster sedimentation, runoff, and debris flows.
    • Establish buffer zones to help protect communities, reducing potential for secondary harm to waterways.

• Implementing Robust Water Safety Testing Plans

• • • Update state legislation to require water systems to test for a broad array of contaminants before lifting health notices.
    • Improve and implement communication protocols for post-disaster water testing results.

• Ensuring Water Infrastructure is Climate-Resilient

• • • Conduct comprehensive vulnerability assessments of water and sewer infrastructure.
    • Site new systems outside of high-risk areas.
    • Ensure rebuilding along the Pacific Coast Highway properly assesses wastewater treatment and conveyance alternatives to avoid sewage overflow and leakage into the ocean.

• Ensuring Water Infrastructure Maintains Pressure for Firefighting

• • Utilize low impact development (LID) stormwater capture strategies to increase water supply redundancy. 
  • Upgrade systems to meet modern fire flow requirements. 
  • Test flow rates and system capacity under peak demand and emergency conditions.

All of these recommendations require government action at the local, state, and federal level. It will be essential that this guidance is considered by our elected officials as they work to create policies to better prepare LA – and all of California – from the growing threats of climate change.

 

Marine Life & Ocean Recovery: 

As the fires broke out, Santa Monica Bay was already dealing with a domoic acid outbreak, which was creating serious health challenges for marine life. Luckily, the outbreak has subsided for now, allowing Heal the Bay to start assessing the specific impacts of fire pollution on our Santa Monica Bay ecosystem. We’ve approached marine life health monitoring and care in a few ways:

• • Animal Recovery & Reintroduction:
    • Tidewater Gobies: In the aftermath of the fires, our Aquarium Animal Care Team took in 160 federally endangered Northern Tidewater Gobies that were rescued from contaminated waters in Topanga Creek. We’re just one of two facilities authorized by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to house them in response to the fires. For nearly five months, we provided daily care and supported their natural springtime breeding. We were able to release them into their natural habitat in late June, and will be monitoring their reintroduction this summer.
  • Ocean Floor Analysis 
    • Sediment testing: Heal the Bay recently led a team of divers out into the Bay to sample the ocean floor to identify lingering impacts of fire-related contaminants and are awaiting those testing results. Understanding what’s settled on the ocean floor could have important implications on marine health. 
    • Sonar scanning for debris: As part of the ocean floor research trip, we recovered pieces of fire debris from the Bay, raising the question of how much lingering debris remains in our coastal waters. To better understand the scale of debris in our Bay, we’re scheduling a sonar scanning research trip this summer to identify potential debris fields on the ocean floor. 

• Pollution Impacts Assessment on Marine Health

• • Long-Term Impacts to Wildlife: Our first wave of water testing and analysis has focused on human health implications, given the immediate need to protect and inform the public. This summer, we’ll be evolving that work to assess what the water testing results mean for marine life and the potential long-term exposure that fish, marine mammals, and shellfish face.
  • Seafood Consumption Implications: As part of this, we will work to better understand if there could be any long-term safety implications of eating locally-caught seafood.

There’s much we’ve all been unexpectedly forced to learn about recovery and resilience this year. What’s important is that we carry those lessons forward. 

For Heal the Bay, we’ve learned a lot about the impacts, but we’ve also learned there’s still so much we need to understand and implement to better protect our community and coast from climate-related disasters. Despite the fact that all of this work has forced us to redirect financial resources and staff time, we’re committed to driving it and keeping the public informed every step of the way. We’ll forever be proud of the choice we made to protect our community from this climate threat. And we’re committed to ensuring SoCal communities are more resilient and prepared for the next disaster.

 

If this work impacts you, please consider donating to Heal the Bay. Your support powers our critical water quality investigations, helps us protect human health and wildlife, and drives policy solutions for a more resilient future. 

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