On this wet Christmas Eve, I’m thinking about the weight of the upcoming anniversary of the Palisades and Eaton fires.
Those fires didn’t just scar hillsides or erase neighborhoods—they marked lives, upended families, and permanently altered people’s sense of safety and belonging in this city.
Remembering them matters not only to honor those who lost homes and loved ones, but because the lessons are still being contested—and, in some cases, quietly rewritten.
We owe the people affected by Palisades and Eaton more than symbolic resolve. We owe them honesty about which policies actually protect people and which ones merely blame homeowners, while calling it progress. We owe them policies grounded in what actually burned—and why.
Again and again, the evidence shows that it was homes igniting nearby homes, critical institutional failures amplifying loss, and land-use decisions placing people in harm’s way — not plants 18 inches from houses — that caused Palisades and Altadena to burn.
That is why I am deeply concerned about the current direction of fire policy. Mandates such as Zone 0, which erase living green plants around existing homes, are being paired with the privatization of fire defense and a push to build more housing in the fire zones — often with the promise of “affordability”— with fewer limits and weaker safeguards while shifting the burden of fire defense onto individual homeowners and future residents.
The people displaced by Palisades and Eaton did not lose everything because there was too much life in the landscape. They lost it because we keep choosing expedience over restraint, density over defensibility, and housing supply math over human safety. Honoring them means refusing to place the next generation—especially lower-income residents—directly in the path of the same forces.
Los Angeles has always welcomed the outsider, the visionary, the refugee, the lost. But welcome must include safety. And safety cannot be built on policies that cherry-pick science, hollow out ecological systems and local control, increase risk, and scapegoat green gardens.
Angelenos need to look after each other. Looking after each other means refusing false choices: housing or safety, people or nature, urgency or wisdom. It means insisting that housing does not come at the price of fire exposure or the quiet destruction of the landscapes that define this place and help keep us sane.
We all deserve power and purpose. For me, that includes the power to question policies that promise protection while undermining the science, our ecological and social foundations and the purpose to build a city that is not just denser, but safer, stronger, fairer, and more honest about what resilience actually requires.
This is why I fight so hard to challenge the industry and agency narratives that fuel misinformation and attack those who push back against the idea that cities can build themselves out of the fire risk by eliminating zoning and local control, stripping protections and green canopy for housing supply.
The path forward demands clarity and courage—especially now, as fire policies are being rushed through in the name of necessity. We owe it to this city of Angels on the edge of the western dream to pause before those decisions remake Los Angeles in ways we can’t undo, and before these anniversaries keep multiplying.
Rehydrate the Land, Reduce the Risk
What if the safest thing you can do for your home in a fire zone isn’t to clear out the plants — but keep the right type of moisture retaining garden?
For too long, we’ve been told that the best way to defend against wildfire is to strip the land bare. But that story ignores science and leaves out the buried history. The most dangerous fires in Los Angeles history didn’t come from "overgrown vegetation.” They came from a century of engineering nature out of the city. Yet for over a century, that’s exactly what we’ve done. And now, we’re burning.
From the draining of wetlands to the paving of creeks to the installation of desiccating technologies like sand drains, Los Angeles has systematically dried out its land—and paid the price in heat, dust, and flame. It’s time to reverse course.
Shady, moisture-holding gardens are inspired not just by fire science, but by history. They restore ecological function, moderate temperatures, and offer a living buffer against embers and heat. These are not just gardens. They are acts of ecological memory and urban repair.
This site is your guide to designing lush, low-water, fire-wise gardens that resist ignition and reconnect us with a living Los Angeles.