LA Wildfires Burn Black Middle Class Housing Towns, ‘Reconstruction Fear’ Community Collapse

LA Wildfires Burn Black Middle Class Housing Towns, ‘Reconstruction Fear’ Community Collapse

While the LA wildfires focused Korean media on the loss of celebrity luxury homes, the total destruction of typical black middle class housing complexes and rental housing towns has increased ‘redevelopment project fears’ and wealthy areas are hiring private firefighters, showing signs of community collapse.
Altadena, a racially and economically diverse community that escaped racially segregated living conditions, is a rare land of opportunity for black Americans to reach the middle class without discriminatory practices that deny them access to credit, and they have maintained their homes within their families and helped others prosper, and the current homeownership rate among blacks is 81.5%, almost double the national rate. “A drive through the charred neighborhoods around Altadena shows that wildfires have gutted a remarkable haven for black families escaping discriminatory housing practices elsewhere,” the AP reported on the 13th. “Some now fear that the most destructive fire in California history has changed it forever, and that recovery and rebuilding could be out of reach for many, and that the pressures of gentrification could grow again.” In Altadena, in the Eaton fire zone northeast of Pasadena, residents were left with all the necessities and equipment they depended on to make a living, and their insurance was weak. The AP cited community leaders who said they were concerned that the fires would lead to gentrification, with black church members, who make up half of the congregation, paying the price. “We’re seeing a lot of families who will probably have to leave the area because rebuilding in Altadena is too expensive for them,” they said. Gentrification, which refers to the redevelopment of underdeveloped areas since the American West, is a typical land economy (rental economy) in which high-end housing and large cultural and commercial facilities are built in areas where low-income people and small businesses are the mainstays, and developers drive out the original residents due to high costs and gentrify the landscape and social infrastructure. Korea intensively introduced this and created conglomerates, laying the foundation for a high-growth system.

Altadena is a typical example of the rise from the emerging workers to the middle class in the United States, a community of 42,000 people with a mix of small bungalows and slightly larger houses, and includes working-class families, artists, and families of entertainment industry workers.
Census data show that about 58% of residents are non-white, with a quarter being Hispanic and nearly a fifth being black. The AP reports that during the American financial expansion, Altadena was a rare land of opportunity for black Americans to escape the trap of credit and reach the middle class without the discriminatory practices that denied them access to credit during the civil rights era, and as a result, they were able to stay in their families and help others prosper, and today, black homeownership rates are 81.5 percent, nearly double the national rate. “The fire has irrevocably changed the landscape for these families,” Victoria Knapp, president of the Altadena City Council, told the AP. “Someone is going to buy it and develop it, and who knows what’s on it? And it’s going to change the character of Altadena. People with less resources are going to be disproportionately hurt.”

Monument Street, which runs through the heart of Pacific Palisades, is a stark contrast to the community’s response to the fire that has engulfed the area.
On one side, lots where multimillion-dollar homes once stood are now a charred heap of ash and rubble.
On the other, an open-air shopping mall that includes Chanel, men’s clothing retailer Buck Mason and a high-end sushi restaurant remains largely intact.
“Despite the fact that the stores were closed on the 10th, Palisades Village is still open,” the New York Times reported. “You could hear it over speakers around the mall known as Palisades Village, and a large water truck stood guard, ready to take action if the fire threatened the rows of stores again,” the Times reported on the 12th. “As the fire reached its peak on the night of the 7th and into the morning of the 8th, Rick Caruso, the billionaire developer who owns Palisades Village, was consulting with security staff while he deployed several private firefighters from Arizona to save the shopping center,” the Times reported on the 12th.

The Times continued, “Efforts to save nearby homes in the area where Caruso had operated private firefighting were unsuccessful,” and “Early on the morning of the 8th, when hydrants in the area were dry or losing pressure, Mr. Caruso called in his private water truck for help.”
“A two-person private firefighting crew with a small vehicle costs $3,000 a day, while a larger team of 20 firefighters in four fire trucks can be used for a single day,” the Times reported. “It can run up to $10,000,” the Times reported.

Hiring private firefighters, the Times reported, “isn’t as easy as posting on social media,” and “most won’t work directly with homeowners.”

“About 45 percent of all firefighters working in the United States today are private employees,” Deborah Miley, executive director of the National Wildfire Suppression Association, a representative organization of more than 300 private firefighting organizations, told the Times. “The vast majority of them work as government contractors fighting wildfires, supplementing local firefighting teams when needed.”
Private firefighter contracts are mostly hired by insurance companies trying to prevent major losses, and AIG, Chubb and USAA are among the major insurers that offer homeowners insurance that includes wildfire protection.
Private firefighting is a practice known as fire suppression that is carried out before a wildfire reaches a building when a private firefighting team arrives. “That includes clearing vegetation, spraying fire retardants and sealing vents with fire-retardant tape days and hours before the flames arrive,” the Times reported. “When we see these groups come in, we don’t think of them as assets; we think of them as liabilities,” Brian Rice, president of the California Professional Firefighters, which represents 35,000 firefighters, told the Times. He continued, “Most private firefighters are trained to work in deep forests, but what we’re seeing in Los Angeles right now is urban firefighting,” he said. “We’re going from neighborhood to neighborhood, and private contractors aren’t trained or equipped to operate in this environment.”
The fire, which started on July 7 just north of downtown Los Angeles, has burned more than 12,000 buildings as of July 12.
The AP said, “The cause of the largest fire has not been determined, and early estimates suggest it could be the costliest wildfire in the United States.”
Reuters reported on July 12, “According to preliminary estimates from private forecaster AccuWeather, the damage and economic losses so far are between $135 billion and $150 billion.”

The LA wildfires also involved firefighters from neighboring Mexico, as well as more than 1,000 inmates from California prisons. “A total of 950 inmate firefighters were dispatched to block fire lines and remove fuel to slow the spread of the fire,” the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement Tuesday.