A long road to rebuilding — and fights over government funding — await L.A. fire victims
The scenes of in Los Angeles have brought a sense of déjà vu for Steve Crowder. Six years ago, similar images of fires ravaging his community of Paradise, California, were plastered across televisions and social media.
“It is Paradise revisited,” said Crowder, the mayor of Paradise. “Sitting here watching the news, these fires in L.A. have hit me the hardest.”
Now, his town could give an indication of what the road to recovery may look like for those in the Los Angeles area joining the growing list of towns and cities devastated by wildfires.
For those communities, recovery has been measured in years, not months. It has required billions of dollars in federal assistance, though federal money doesn’t address every need after a disaster. And putting that money to use comes with unexpected challenges that have gone far deeper than the surface-level destruction.
“My message to any of these towns is, don’t let anybody tell you you can’t come back, because we are proof you can come back. There is light at the end of the tunnel,” Crowder said. “The first time you walk through your town you’re going to think, ‘Oh, there’s no way we can come back from this.’ Well, there is, even though it looks like you’re walking through where a nuclear bomb went off.”
