The Community Recovery Lab™ reached a clear conclusion: wildfire resilience in Pacific Palisades must be pursued at the neighborhood scale, not solely property by property. Participants supported establishing a shared baseline of evidence-based mitigation measures that goes beyond minimum code requirements, while recognizing that achieving that standard will require financing, reliable information, insurer recognition, reasonable implementation pathways, and action beyond individual property lines.
Across two full-day sessions, Palisadians considered specific wildfire mitigation measures, their costs and feasibility, and the different circumstances of rebuilding and standing homes. Participants did not agree on every measure or how each should be implemented. But meaningful areas of convergence emerged—and with them, a path toward greater community-wide resilience.
A Community Recovery Lab is a civic assembly: a representative group of Palisadians selected at random from a larger pool of volunteers. Participants learned about the issue together, asked questions of experts, and worked toward recommendations of their own.
Palisadians were invited to volunteer for the Community Recovery Lab. PRC assembled a pool reflecting a range of neighborhoods and recovery circumstances, including renters and homeowners, residents whose homes were destroyed and those whose homes remained standing, families with and without children at home, and people facing different levels of financial stress. Residents were randomly selected and invited with those characteristics in mind. Twenty selected Palisadians who confirmed their availability took part in the two-day Lab.
Participants met for two full-day sessions at Palisades Recovery Coalition headquarters. A resource team of subject-matter experts prepared background materials, laid out options and answered participants’ questions.
Participants combined what they learned from the experts with their own lived experience as Palisadians, deliberated in structured sessions, and arrived at the recommendations reported here. Facilitators guided the conversations; participants controlled the process.
They come from the deliberations of a representative group of randomly selected residents, and are being shared with the community and with local, county and state officials. The list of the experts who presented, and the materials participants read, appear below.
The Community Recovery Lab™ found broad support for:
Establishing a shared community baseline of evidence-based home-hardening and defensible-space measures that goes beyond minimum code requirements.
Bringing standing homes toward greater resilience over time, through education, incentives, financing, technical assistance and reasonable implementation periods.
Creating clear community standards so that one property’s failure to mitigate identifiable hazards does not undermine investments made by surrounding properties.
Securing meaningful insurance recognition for verified mitigation through underwriting, availability and premium incentives.
Protecting and managing the mature tree canopy while reducing hazardous fuels, combustible pathways and structure-to-structure fire risk.
Making resilience financially achievable through grants, low- or zero-interest loans, tax incentives and other financing mechanisms.
Participants showed substantial willingness to undertake practical measures that reduce ember intrusion, combustible pathways and structure-to-structure ignition.
A community baseline should include measures such as:
How to read the marks
* Direct match: the measure aligns with a current requirement for new, rebuilt or altered buildings in an applicable Fire Hazard Severity Zone.
† Partial or different: current rules address part of the measure, apply only in specified circumstances or allow alternatives that are less prescriptive than the recommendation or IBHS Enhanced standard.
No mark: the measure is not currently a general code requirement across Pacific Palisades.Requirements vary by parcel, project scope and permit date. Standing properties also remain subject to LAFD vegetation and brush-clearance rules. Code status checked September 2026; confirm project-specific requirements with LADBS and LAFD. LADBS Fire Hazard Severity Zone checklist · LAFD clearance requirements
Current code is a substantial baseline, but it is not the same as IBHS Enhanced. The code often permits several tested or ignition-resistant assemblies; IBHS Enhanced generally selects a narrower, more protective specification.
Zone Zero is not marked. California’s five-foot ember-resistant-zone regulations remain in final state review and are not yet a generally enforceable requirement. The participant recommendation therefore remains an additional community standard, not a statement of current code.
The significance of the Lab’s convergence is not that every participant endorsed every measure identically. Rather, participants demonstrated considerable willingness to undertake meaningful mitigation when measures were credible, feasible, fairly implemented and supported by the larger system.
Practical fit, collective action and clear rules appeared alongside financial concerns in the Day 1 coding.
Bars show passages carrying each condition code, not people, votes or the importance of a concern. Codes can overlap. Day 1 only; AI-assisted coding has not been independently validated.
One of the clearest findings was that rebuilding and standing homes require different implementation pathways.
↔
For standing homes, the pathway should be:
educate and encourage → provide financing and incentives → establish reasonable timelines → progressively increase community-wide participation.
Government must provide the infrastructure and public-land management without which our community cannot be safe—including reliable water and hydrants, hazardous-fuel management, emergency access, resilient utilities, clear standards and appropriate enforcement.
Insurers should meaningfully recognize verified mitigation through underwriting, availability and premium incentives. Government, lenders and philanthropy should help make mitigation achievable through grants, affordable loans, tax incentives and other financing mechanisms.
Perhaps the most consequential finding of the Lab was this:
That leads to a broader principle:
Community resilience requires reciprocal responsibility.
Residents cannot reasonably be asked to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars hardening private property while public vegetation remains unmanaged, hydrant reliability is uncertain, water capacity is inadequate, or insurers refuse to recognize mitigation.
At the same time, public investment cannot fully protect a neighborhood if private properties continue to provide pathways for ember intrusion and structure-to-structure ignition.
The compact is straightforward:
Residents reduce risk on private property.
Each has responsibilities—and each should be able to expect measurable commitments from the others.
Participants identified several practical tools for moving from aspiration to implementation:
Create one trusted source for evidence-based resilience guidance, informed by credible independent technical expertise.
These unresolved questions should be treated as areas for continued work, not measures the community rejected.
Among money-related code assignments, funding sources took a larger share during Day 2’s implementation discussion.
Percentages divide each financial code count by all financial code assignments that day. Day 1 considered measures; Day 2 focused on implementation. This comparison does not establish that cost concerns were resolved. AI-assisted coding has not been independently validated.
Across both sessions, participants heard from people working in wildfire policy, science, philanthropy, research, and local resilience efforts.
Jay Balagna, California Policy Advisor, MegafirePolicy context and community resilience
Jeff Heys, Wildfire Crisis Manager, U.S. Forest ServiceReducing wildfire risk
Laura Blaul, Senior Wildfire Fellow, IBHSResilience measures
Nancy Sussman, Vice President, Fire Safe PalisadesOpportunities and challenges for community resilience
Jonathan Markiles, President, Sunset Mesa HOALocal experience with resilience
So Yung Choi, RAND Graduate SchoolPalisades Mitigation Assessment web tool
Jay Balagna, California Policy Advisor, MegafirePolicy context and community resilience
Alexis Pelosi, Strategic Advisor, The Resiliency CompanyPhilanthropy and resilience
Yana Valachovic, Forest Director & County Director, Fire Network–Community Resiliency, UC Agriculture & Natural ResourcesMechanisms for community wildfire resilience
Beth Preminger, Palisadian, Fire Safe PalisadesLocal experience
Dustin Bramell, Palisadian; Co-Founder, PillarCase Study: Adapt; local experience and private-sector finance
Participants received background reading and resources on wildfire risk, home hardening, neighborhood resilience, construction costs, and mitigation tools to inform their discussions across both sessions.
Property owners should harden homes, reduce ember and combustible pathways, responsibly manage vegetation and participate in a shared community standard of resilience.
Palisades Mitigation Assessment
Interactive web tool
A New Paradigm for Protecting Homes from Disastrous Fires
Ingfei Chen · The New Yorker · PDF opens in a new tab
Wildfire-Resistant Construction Costs
Headwaters Economics
The Community Recovery Lab™ revealed a community prepared to pursue meaningful change—but asking that resilience measures be credible, achievable, equitable and part of a larger system that works.
The path forward is not simply to harden individual homes. It is to establish a shared community baseline, pursue enhanced resilience where feasible, and build the public, financial and institutional commitments necessary to make those investments meaningful across the neighborhood.
The goal is to reduce wildfire risk across Pacific Palisades as a whole while preserving the qualities that make it a community people want to return to, rebuild and protect.
