In September, protesters in the Philippines began taking to the streets, accusing the government of misusing billions of dollars meant for flood-control efforts.

The country of islands in Southeast Asia is one of the most climate-vulnerable nations in the world and has undertaken almost 10,000 flood-control projects in the past few years.

In some ways, the protests echoed concerns raised by demonstrators and representatives from affected countries each year at United Nations climate summits: Climate funds meant to serve the public good must reach the people most affected by climate disasters.

Why We Wrote This

Countries around the globe are spending trillions of dollars to address climate issues. The money doesn’t always reach the places that need it most, meaning some people remain vulnerable to increasingly intense storms.

As world leaders gather for this year’s COP30 in Belém, Brazil, from Nov. 10 to 21, public anger in the Philippines raises larger questions about the global issue of who pays for climate response and resilience, who benefits, and how much money is being siphoned off through mismanagement or corruption. 

What were the protests about?

Previous demonstrations at COP – the annual meeting of governments that are part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – have called on wealthy nations to compensate developing countries that bear the brunt of emissions they did not cause. 

There is opposition to climate spending: Research led by Stanford University shows that the number of countries with at least one “counter climate change organization” — such as a think tank, research institute, or foundation — has more than doubled in the past 35 years. The report’s author says the economic interests of the energy and agricultural sectors are helping to shape the movement.

Anderson Coelho/Reuters

Yet countries globally have committed to spending trillions to mitigate the effects of climate change.

In the Philippines, tens of thousands of people demonstrated during the week of Sept. 21, triggered by the Department of Finance’s report that corruption related to flood relief projects resulted in the loss of up to 118.5 billion Philippine pesos ($2 billion) from 2023-25. Lawmakers and officials allegedly pocketed money in exchange for contracts, while hundreds of projects intended to protect the country from flooding were never built.

Jefferson Chua, a campaigner at Greenpeace Southeast Asia, says many in the Philippines suspected corruption even before the finance department report.

“Sometimes, it’s even a running joke here that when money goes to these kinds of public projects, we all know a significant portion of that goes to the pockets of these politicians,” Mr. Chua says.

He notes a saying in the Philippines: “The Filipino spirit is waterproof.” But there is evidence of more intense and frequent storms in Southeast Asia, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A tropical storm in late October killed seven people and forced more than 22,000 people to evacuate. 

Most of the protests stopped soon after they started, when a typhoon – a weather event that causes significant flooding – hit the country Sept. 22. More protests were expected, The Philippine Star reported.

How much money is earmarked for addressing climate change?

It’s complicated, partly because it can be hard to figure out what counts as climate finance.

The UNFCCC’s definition runs almost 100 words, covering everything from cutting emissions to “enhancing resilience of human and ecological systems” and implementing the goals of the Paris Agreement to cut emissions by 43% worldwide by 2030.

About 55 countries and jurisdictions say they have or are developing climate finance tracking systems. But it can still be difficult to decipher what is climate funding and what is not.

For example, grants that help build and maintain public transportation may not explicitly be labeled as such even though they could help bring down greenhouse gas emissions from cars.

A recent UNFCCC report says global spending reached an annual average of $1.3 trillion in 2021-22, the most recent data available. That includes money going toward areas such as sustainable transport, clean energy systems, and buildings and infrastructure.

This figure includes the newly established Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, headquartered in the Philippines. A COP resolution created it to help low-income countries most vulnerable to and impacted by climate change pay for damage caused by climate-related natural disasters. Twenty-seven countries have pledged $768 million. Payments to affected countries haven’t started.

How much of climate funding is misused? 

Brice Böhmer, the climate and environment director at Transparency International, helped develop the Climate and Corruption Atlas. He says it can be hard to distinguish between mismanagement and corruption.

“Even if it’s actually corruption, it’s very hard to prove that,” Mr. Böhmer says. “Because it’s more about the intention behind the mismanagement.”

Instances of climate corruption go beyond the Philippines. In 2021, an energy company agreed to a $230 million penalty in a settlement with federal prosecutors, who charged the company in connection with a bribery scheme to advance legislation that included a $1 billion bailout for two power plants in Ohio, NPR reported. In Germany in 2023, the deputy minister of the environment was ousted after he named the best man at his wedding as chair of the national energy agency’s management board, according to Reuters.

Mr. Böhmer says a major barrier to documenting corruption is gaining access to information in countries where people who voice concerns fear retaliation by the government. He says it is important to have complaint mechanisms and protections for those who raise questions.

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“For example, environmental defenders and whistleblowers who are bringing those cases to our knowledge are doing a job that is good for all of us,” he says. “And they are usually targeted and punished, whereas the ones that should be prosecuted are the ones doing the act of corruption.”

In the Philippines, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has established an independent commission to investigate the disappearance of funds. The country’s interior secretary estimated that around 200 people could be indicted by an anti-graft court for government officials.

In September, protesters in the Philippines began taking to the streets, accusing the government of misusing billions of dollars meant for flood-control efforts.

The country of islands in Southeast Asia is one of the most climate-vulnerable nations in the world and has undertaken almost 10,000 flood-control projects in the past few years.

In some ways, the protests echoed concerns raised by demonstrators and representatives from affected countries each year at United Nations climate summits: Climate funds meant to serve the public good must reach the people most affected by climate disasters.

Why We Wrote This

Countries around the globe are spending trillions of dollars to address climate issues. The money doesn’t always reach the places that need it most, meaning some people remain vulnerable to increasingly intense storms.

As world leaders gather for this year’s COP30 in Belém, Brazil, from Nov. 10 to 21, public anger in the Philippines raises larger questions about the global issue of who pays for climate response and resilience, who benefits, and how much money is being siphoned off through mismanagement or corruption. 

What were the protests about?

Previous demonstrations at COP – the annual meeting of governments that are part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – have called on wealthy nations to compensate developing countries that bear the brunt of emissions they did not cause. 

There is opposition to climate spending: Research led by Stanford University shows that the number of countries with at least one “counter climate change organization” — such as a think tank, research institute, or foundation — has more than doubled in the past 35 years. The report’s author says the economic interests of the energy and agricultural sectors are helping to shape the movement.

Anderson Coelho/Reuters

Yet countries globally have committed to spending trillions to mitigate the effects of climate change.

In the Philippines, tens of thousands of people demonstrated during the week of Sept. 21, triggered by the Department of Finance’s report that corruption related to flood relief projects resulted in the loss of up to 118.5 billion Philippine pesos ($2 billion) from 2023-25. Lawmakers and officials allegedly pocketed money in exchange for contracts, while hundreds of projects intended to protect the country from flooding were never built.

Jefferson Chua, a campaigner at Greenpeace Southeast Asia, says many in the Philippines suspected corruption even before the finance department report.

“Sometimes, it’s even a running joke here that when money goes to these kinds of public projects, we all know a significant portion of that goes to the pockets of these politicians,” Mr. Chua says.

He notes a saying in the Philippines: “The Filipino spirit is waterproof.” But there is evidence of more intense and frequent storms in Southeast Asia, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A tropical storm in late October killed seven people and forced more than 22,000 people to evacuate. 

Most of the protests stopped soon after they started, when a typhoon – a weather event that causes significant flooding – hit the country Sept. 22. More protests were expected, The Philippine Star reported.

How much money is earmarked for addressing climate change?

It’s complicated, partly because it can be hard to figure out what counts as climate finance.

The UNFCCC’s definition runs almost 100 words, covering everything from cutting emissions to “enhancing resilience of human and ecological systems” and implementing the goals of the Paris Agreement to cut emissions by 43% worldwide by 2030.

About 55 countries and jurisdictions say they have or are developing climate finance tracking systems. But it can still be difficult to decipher what is climate funding and what is not.

For example, grants that help build and maintain public transportation may not explicitly be labeled as such even though they could help bring down greenhouse gas emissions from cars.

A recent UNFCCC report says global spending reached an annual average of $1.3 trillion in 2021-22, the most recent data available. That includes money going toward areas such as sustainable transport, clean energy systems, and buildings and infrastructure.

This figure includes the newly established Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, headquartered in the Philippines. A COP resolution created it to help low-income countries most vulnerable to and impacted by climate change pay for damage caused by climate-related natural disasters. Twenty-seven countries have pledged $768 million. Payments to affected countries haven’t started.

How much of climate funding is misused? 

Brice Böhmer, the climate and environment director at Transparency International, helped develop the Climate and Corruption Atlas. He says it can be hard to distinguish between mismanagement and corruption.

“Even if it’s actually corruption, it’s very hard to prove that,” Mr. Böhmer says. “Because it’s more about the intention behind the mismanagement.”

Instances of climate corruption go beyond the Philippines. In 2021, an energy company agreed to a $230 million penalty in a settlement with federal prosecutors, who charged the company in connection with a bribery scheme to advance legislation that included a $1 billion bailout for two power plants in Ohio, NPR reported. In Germany in 2023, the deputy minister of the environment was ousted after he named the best man at his wedding as chair of the national energy agency’s management board, according to Reuters.

Mr. Böhmer says a major barrier to documenting corruption is gaining access to information in countries where people who voice concerns fear retaliation by the government. He says it is important to have complaint mechanisms and protections for those who raise questions.

Deepen your worldview

with Monitor Highlights.

Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads.

“For example, environmental defenders and whistleblowers who are bringing those cases to our knowledge are doing a job that is good for all of us,” he says. “And they are usually targeted and punished, whereas the ones that should be prosecuted are the ones doing the act of corruption.”

In the Philippines, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has established an independent commission to investigate the disappearance of funds. The country’s interior secretary estimated that around 200 people could be indicted by an anti-graft court for government officials.

The women on stage line up and bow to applause, celebrating a moment of triumph. These dancers from Westside School of Ballet have completed their summer showcase, eight months after dozens of families at the school lost their homes in the Los Angeles wildfires.

Connie Bell glides out to center stage with the rest of her cohort, beaming with joy and relief. She stands with perfect posture, her hair pulled into a neat bun, wearing a forest green leotard and matching mesh skirt that floats when she moves.

Ms. Bell has been dancing her way through heartache. In December, her husband died after a long illness. A month later, the Palisades fire incinerated their Malibu home. She and Ed had been together for 45 years and raised a family in that little house at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

Why We Wrote This

The LA wildfires forced thousands into sometimes overwhelming decisions on how to rebuild their lives. For 10 months, Connie Bell has shared her journey with us. Widowed a month before fire destroyed her home, she is embracing possibilities both exhilarating and daunting.

Now, as she puts it, she is back where she was as a young adult. That was the last time she was on her own, with no place she called home, no family or career to drive her decisions, with limited resources and unlimited choices.

Ali Martin/The Christian Science Monitor

The stakes are high, financially and emotionally. The loss of the house comes with deep sadness; rebuilding may be out of reach.

Thousands of people, like Ms. Bell, have been confronting the same decisions: sell or build; forge a new life or try to reclaim the old. The Pasadena and Altadena wildfires caused unprecedented loss in the Los Angeles area: more than 16,000 structures destroyed, three-fourths of which were homes.

Recovery is slowly getting underway across the county. Of about 4,500 applications, fewer than 1,500 building permits for fire-gutted sites have been issued by LA County and cities impacted by the fires: Los Angeles, Malibu, and Pasadena.

The labyrinth of housing, permits, government benefits, and insurance payouts is daunting. But for some, the destruction has also created a clearing – an opportunity to reevaluate and reset. Ms. Bell is taking it.

She has discovered that heartbreak and joy can coexist. Even when a person is grieving, she says, “there also are times to laugh and be alive and have joy. Those things don’t go away.”

Ali Martin/The Christian Science Monitor

January: “Just Connie”

On January 7, with hurricane-force winds driving fire toward the coast and smoke blacking out the sky, Ms. Bell grabbed just a few things: Sirus the family parrot, enough clothing for an overnight stay, and her ballet slippers.

She had lived most of her life in the small oceanside city, where wildfires and evacuations come with the landscape. “I didn’t really feel like I was in any danger, but I just felt like staying wasn’t the right thing for me to do,” she says.

Nearly 250,000 people were under evacuation orders that night, including Ms. Bell, who took refuge with her daughter and son-in-law in LA. By morning, everything was gone: clothes, furniture, photos, mementos – all the evidence of her family's life together perched on the edge of the sea.

With everything upended, she found structure and purpose in the ballet studio. Two days into the fires, Ms. Bell was back in class.

Ballet, she says, “sort of saved me.”

Ali Martin/The Christian Science Monitor

She has been dancing since childhood, through college, then professionally and as a ballet teacher. Today, she takes adult classes at Westside, in Santa Monica.

“In that room, she is just Connie,” says Charlie Hodges, her instructor. Being happy and complete in the studio, he adds, showed her that she could be those things elsewhere.

February: Home for now

A few weeks after the fires were contained, Ms. Bell has moved into a condominium that her daughter owns in Santa Monica. She is staying there with Sirus and a bulldog named Otis who made his way into Ms. Bell’s care after his owner died unexpectedly. She and the dog relate to each other, she says.

What she lacks in stability, she makes up for with resolve. Ms. Bell is ready to embrace a new chapter and sell her property. She is not alone. In the first six months after the fires, a surge of lots hit the market: more than 170 were sold in Altadena, compared with six in the first half of 2024. In the Palisades, it was 94; one the year before.

Ms. Bell’s reasons for selling are mostly financial. In this part of California, where property values and cost of living are among the highest in the country, she could make enough from the empty lot to retire in modest comfort.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

And the thought of rebuilding without Ed feels like too much. Of the house, she says, “I just don’t have any more room for that.”

The days are stacked with checklists, phone calls, and paperwork. Her lot needs to be cleared of debris, and there are codes and filing deadlines to piece together. The trust for her estate burned, so she needs to track that down.

Amid those tasks, there is also delight: Allegra, her daughter, is having a child soon – Ms. Bell’s first grandchild.

She is creating her plan by focusing on what she loves. “I’m refreshing myself,” she says, “and I hope that I can be happy. I want to be happy.”

March: Sunshine and rainbows and realism

In late March, Ms. Bell is still waiting for a sofa to be delivered – the missing piece in a living area that’s starting to feel like home with a fluffy white rug, round metal coffee table, and Otis sprawled on the floor. Sirus squawks from his large cage.

She is balancing familiar habits – like ballet – with the newness of recovery. Her resources are limited, but not her persistence.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

“There’s confidence that whatever she gets hit with, she’s gonna have the strength and the intelligence, the creativity to prevail,” says Beth Friedman, a longtime friend.

Built in 1946 on an iconic stretch of California waterfront, the house she shared with her husband was a far cry from the celebrity mansions that Malibu is known for today. The income she made as an Airbnb superhost helped pay the costs that come with waking up to ocean waves and dolphins.

Ed and Connie bought the house in 2002, when their two children were not yet teenagers. For a time, the four of them shared its one bedroom, their beds lined up side-by-side like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, says son Colborn.

The close quarters inside were offset by an expanse of sun and ocean outside. The house hovered over sand on support beams lapped by the ocean tide. It was, Colborn says, “a perfect place.”

Protecting it was a priority. Ms. Bell is properly insured, unlike thousands of homeowners who have been caught in the state’s insurance crisis. Between 40% and 80% of homes lost in the wildfires are underinsured, according to a state agency. The largest insurers have been pulling out of California for the last few years due to increasing environmental risks and the rising costs of rebuilding. Many homeowners have been forced onto the state’s FAIR plan, a syndicate of companies required to offer fire policies to homeowners left behind by the traditional marketplace. Those policies are more expensive and offer limited coverage.

Courtesy of Connie Bell

Ms. Bell’s insurance covers three years’ worth of living expenses, plus a payout for the 800-square-foot house. Selling the lot comes with security and retirement. Rebuilding – which could net her more if she sold later – would take everything she has plus some. It would also take years of managing building codes and construction details.

Yet selling comes with unknowns. What will the glut of lots do to the value of her land? The longer it sits, the more her imagination fills in the property, edging out the financial realities of rebuilding.

Before the ruins are cleared, she returns to the place that framed her life and loves for 23 years.

Ms. Bell finds poetry in the wreckage, pointing out the warped roofing panels that look like handkerchiefs and the mangled antique iron bed frame draped like a piece of lace.

Tragedy has not corrupted her view – a mix of New York realism learned from her parents, says her son, and the 1960s California hippie culture she grew up in.

“Things go on and things must continue,” says Colborn. But also, for her, “everything is kind of sunshine and rainbows. She has a multiplicity to her that is in contrast, but at the same time I think is useful.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

April and May: A new vision

By mid-May, her cream-colored couch is finally in place, along with end tables and a lamp. A TV hangs on the wall. Ms. Bell, Otis, and Sirus are starting to have a routine.

When grief creeps in, she focuses on what was not lost: “My husband feels like love now,” she says. “And my family and my community. Those things no one will ever take from you.”

Spring has brought some setbacks: Her neighbors’ properties have been cleared by the Army Corps of Engineers. She hired a private contractor, but the person disappeared. Worse than the $1,000 she lost is the hit to her confidence. She appealed to the county but missed the deadline to sign back up for the Corps. She didn’t know who to trust, she says, and she didn’t trust herself.

Despite that, she doesn’t languish in distress. “It’s not like I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s just been a little bit harder getting there than it should have been,” she says.

That churning fuels more what-ifs: Late-night musings are giving shape to a new vision.

In place of an empty lot, Ms. Bell imagines building a jewel box on the water’s edge. She is in touch with an architect who specializes in buildings made of glass. The lot is too small for a family home, she says, so she’ll make it a work of art – maybe to sell, maybe not.

Her children do not agree about her change of heart. Allegra thinks she should “sell the lot as soon as possible, invest the money, and live my life,” says Ms. Bell.

Colborn, on the other hand, has pushed for a rebuild. Not only would the house create a legacy for their family, he says, but he believes the project would help his mom “realize a new lease on life.”

It already has. Ms. Bell is exploring plans and permits, which she believes will add to the property’s value. It is a business decision as well as a creative one, she says, even if she is not quite sure how she’ll pay for it. Art, in step with logic.

Courtesy of Mary Ruble

August and everything after: Joy in the art of it

In early August, Ms. Bell sits quietly in the garden at a Santa Monica bakery.

She and her fellow dancers wrapped their ballet showcase two days earlier. The weeks of practice deepened their camaraderie, she says, just as she had hoped. Now, she feels “wonderfully and creatively liberated.”

Her teacher, Mr. Hodges, sees someone recovering with grace and grit. “She’s not trying to recreate the life she had, but she’s trying to respond to that and build a life that’s next.”

What’s next, now, is rebuilding. Geologists and structural engineers will help Ms. Bell and some neighbors build foundations on the beach. Architects will deliver plans for her new home.

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There is joy in the art of it, and an expectation that whatever she chooses will be right for her and for the property, “and so that’s all a beautiful thing.”

“I feel like there’s so many wonderful things to live and be and do,” she says.

Every stuffed animal has a place in 9-year-old Cecily Wallinger’s new bedroom. There are the ones she carried with her when her family evacuated before a wildfire tore through their neighborhood of Altadena, on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Others have been donated since. Foxes outnumber the plush cats and dogs and unicorns, and all are arranged in a neat semicircle. Some have hiding spaces, too.

“If you look at my bed, you can tell what my favorite animal is,” she says, giving a tour of what she describes as her “fun” but “temporary” home.

Her parents, Bridgette Campbell and Christopher Wallinger, moved with her to this Pasadena apartment after they realized their Spanish-style house, nestled on the corner of Olive Avenue and Harriet Street, was among the more than 9,400 structures destroyed in January’s Eaton blaze. They planned to stay here as they rebuilt in their beloved neighborhood.

Why We Wrote This

Nine months after the Eaton Fire, an Altadena family navigates the red tape that is hampering recovery for those who lost it all in the blaze. How much of their daughter’s childhood will be spent in limbo? The third in our series from Olive Avenue showing the long road after a natural disaster. Read Parts 1 and 2.

But these days, Ms. Campbell and Mr. Wallinger wonder what “temporary” really means.

“We’re really in such a holding pattern,” Ms. Campbell says.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

They are among the thousands of fire survivors thrust into a waiting game complicated by institutional hang-ups.

Some are waiting for insurance payouts that seem frustratingly slow to arrive. Others are waiting for design and permit approvals to begin rebuilding. Others are just waiting, not entirely sure what to do nine months after the Eaton Fire scorched their neighborhood.

Since January, the Monitor has been following the residents of one block of Altadena’s Olive Avenue, observing through their eyes a long recovery process usually overshadowed by a relentless news cycle. What does it mean to survive – and even thrive – after a disaster? After the initial shock and heartbreak, after the first phases of cleanup, how does a community move forward in the face of institutional roadblocks?

Cecily recently started another school year. Her parents wonder how old she will be by the time their new house is rebuilt in Altadena. Will she even want to go back after experiencing an urban lifestyle near downtown Pasadena? Will she remember the old neighborhood? And what will they tell her if, even after planning and saving and committing to rebuild, the finances of disaster recovery simply make that path impossible?

Do the numbers add up?

Ms. Campbell is a high school theater teacher. Mr. Wallinger is an actor. Their work is rooted in words, but lately, they have been mired in numbers.

It started with the couple learning they would receive roughly $525,000 from their insurer, USAA, to rebuild their house. That set in motion a series of budget decisions. Could they squeeze in a second bathroom? Yes. Could they afford the hardwood floors and Spanish tile roof that gave their original home its character? No.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Next came calculations related to the construction process. First, Los Angeles County must sign off on their design plans. Then they can submit building permits for the new house.

As of the end of September, permits for 257 single-family homes in the Eaton fire zone had been issued, according to a Los Angeles County dashboard. It’s averaging 75 business days for the county to issue permits for new residential units.

Given those constraints, the couple estimate it could be February or later before construction can begin on their new house. Their contractor, meanwhile, says it could take 12 to 18 months to complete the project because of inspections needed along the way. And therein lies a financial conundrum.

“We’re being told it could be two years until we’re able to move back into our house, and our [additional living expenses]” – insurance coverage that pays for temporary relocation – “runs out in a year,” Mr. Wallinger said in September. “We don’t know how we’re going to pay our mortgage and our rent.”

The mortgage for their fire-razed home is $4,700 a month. Rent for their two-bedroom Pasadena apartment is $3,700. They are also still shelling out $100 a month for homeowners’ insurance on a house that no longer exists in a bid to maintain coverage going forward. Without mortgage forbearance or some other kind of financial relief, the couple say it will be too much to bear.

When their apartment lease ends in February, it will be decision time. Downsize to a one-bedroom apartment? Temporarily move in with relatives? Live in an RV on their property?

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Six in 10 people displaced from the Eaton and Palisades fires say they will have no remaining temporary housing coverage within a year, according to a June survey commissioned by the nonprofit Department of Angels, which formed in the aftermath of the wildfires to assist with recovery. That survey also found that the majority of insured survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fires say delays, denials, and underpayments are hampering their ability to recover.

At the end of August, members of a group dubbed the Eaton Fire Survivor Network gathered with state lawmakers to raise awareness about the insurance-related speed bumps hampering recovery.

“Every delayed payment, every denial of what is owed in someone’s policy, is not just paperwork to us – it’s a family forced to wait in limbo,” said Valerie Knapp, chair of the Altadena Town Council, during the press conference. Her family is among those who lost their home in the blaze. “It’s children who cannot go home. It’s elders living in temporary housing month after month with no end in sight and no promise of continued payment.”

State Farm officials said, as of mid-September, the insurer has paid more than $4.6 billion and received over 13,000 claims related to the January wildfires in the LA area.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

“When we do receive a complaint, we take it seriously and our team works to resolve the issue with our customer,” the company said in a statement. “We would ask any customer with a question or concern to reach out to us directly so we can address it.”

“For Sale” signs sprout

Ms. Campbell and Mr. Wallinger consider themselves fortunate to know their expected insurance settlement. But peering into the future is a cautionary exercise.

The “For Sale” signs dotting parcels throughout Altadena foretell at least a degree of change. Two lots being sold border Ms. Campbell and Mr. Wallinger’s property. As they envision their rebuilt home, they are bracing themselves for the surrounding environment to look and feel different, too.

“When we were out there measuring the land before we said yes to the [design] plans, we were like, ‘OK, imagine a McMansion here, a triplex there,” Ms. Campbell says.

It won’t be the same neighborhood where Cecily rode her bike or played on a swing set with friends. The blaze wiped out what her parents describe as a 1980s-esque childhood, where neighborhood friends were just a door knock away. She could be 11 years or older by the time they can move back – and that’s assuming their plans stay relatively on track.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

In the meantime, a puppy named Ruby has helped their fourth-grade daughter cope. But nine months post-fire, Cecily still often falls asleep in her parents’ bed at night.

“I miss the trees,” Cecily says of her former Altadena home. “I miss all the …” Her voice trails off.

“What do I miss about it?” she says before pausing again. Then she sums it up in three words: “I miss everything.”

So do her parents. They have been clinging to an “Altadena strong” mentality, but doubt creeps in as they mull their financial horizon.

“It’s not even a thought of, ‘I would rather not go through this,’” Mr. Wallinger says of rebuilding. “There’s the possibility we will not be able to.”

Back home, at last

Farther south on Olive Avenue, at least one family has returned.

Daniel Quiroz and Joann Flores were among the displaced when the Monitor met them in late May. But by midsummer, the couple moved back into their fire-damaged house with their toddler, Darla.

It’s the same house, except with new floors and furnishings after heavy smoke and ash blanketed the interior. The couple also converted a portion of their garage into living space for Mr. Quiroz’s mother and sister, whose house on a parallel street burned down.

They’re navigating a dual reality – settled back in their own home while interacting with family and friends facing the prospect of rebuilding. Mr. Quiroz has been contacting architects for his mother and measuring her property.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

It’s a quieter Altadena right now. But Mr. Quiroz expects a brighter future.

“This neighborhood is going to boom,” he says. “Ten years.”

They’re grateful to be among the lucky ones already back.

“A lot of people can’t say the same,” Ms. Flores says. “But we’re so glad to be home.”

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For those who remain displaced, there is joy in seeing small progress. Ms. Campbell and Mr. Wallinger visit their Altadena property every four to six weeks. On one such recent trip, Ms. Campbell points to a twiggy plant in jubilation. It’s steps away from the stump of what used to be a towering 70-foot pine tree.

Could it be a replacement breaking through the ground? Maybe.

For most of her life, Thea Maria Carlson did not like fire. Even though she had studied earth systems at Stanford University and knew, intellectually, that burning had an environmental purpose in her home of California, she still wanted nothing to do with it.

In 2015, the Valley Fire consumed a path toward her home in the rugged hills of Sonoma County, destroying small towns along the way. After firefighters extinguished that blaze – before it reached her part of the oak- and redwood-dappled Mayacamas Mountains – her neighbors began talking about how to prepare for the next wildfire. Some suggested they should burn the land themselves to mitigate any future blaze.

Ms. Carlson was unsure.

Why We Wrote This

California has spent decades trying to extinguish fires. But residents here are embracing the long-held Indigenous practice of coming together to intentionally burn land – to reduce the power of wildfires, help the ecosystem, and to transform fear into healing.

She knew that intentional fires were nothing new here; Indigenous people in California burned land for generations, until they were harshly persecuted by the state for doing so. Ranchers and other rural landowners have also long used fire as a way of stewarding their properties. But Ms. Carlson was hesitant to set fire to the land where she lived.

Stephanie Hanes/The Christian Science Monitor

Fellow members of Monan’s Rill, a Quaker-founded intentional community, however, wanted to try it. They eventually agreed to hold what are called prescribed burns on two small portions of their 414 acres – with guidance from a growing coalition of scientists, land managers, and fire officials in the area who believed this practice was important for wildfire resilience and the environment.

These experts pointed out that plants and animals here evolved alongside fire and needed it to thrive. Generations of fire suppression – the philosophy of extinguishing any and all flames to protect people and property – had led to an unhealthy environment, they argued, one that had such a buildup of vegetative fuel that natural wildfires were becoming unnaturally supersized. All but two of the state’s largest wildfires between 1950 and 2023 took place since 2000, according to California government statistics; 10 of those were in 2020 and 2021. And those numbers do not include this year’s devastating Eaton and Palisades fires, which tore through Los Angeles County.

Ms. Carlson did not participate in those first prescribed burns. She watched the smoke from a distance, but was too afraid of fire to get close to the action.

She didn’t realize that this would be the beginning of a transformation: for her, for the land, and for her community. It would only be later, after the devastation and renewal that regularly come with fire, that she would step fully into a sweeping change that is happening across California as more people embrace the need to burn.

Over the past eight years, the number of citizen groups that come together to steward land through fire has increased from one in the state to around 30. Called prescribed burn associations, these groups have seen the number of volunteers skyrocket. New state legislation is making it easier for neighbors to join together and burn, and other laws are starting to allow tribal members to reclaim their traditional use of fire.

As a result, residents are turning one of California’s most disruptive challenges into one of its most powerful sources of connection, care, and love.

Ian Nelson/File

California’s long opposition to “controlled burns,” a long-standing Indigenous practice

For people who study fire, it is clear that California’s wildfires today are different from what they once were. The fire season is starting earlier and lasting longer, which some scientists have connected to human-caused atmospheric warming. But crucially, many researchers say, is the changing nature of the blazes. They are hotter and more destructive, and destroy trees and landscapes that once would have survived natural flames.

Fire officials began noticing these shifts as early as the 1980s.

For most of the 20th century, there had been unusually low wildfire activity in the western United States. Deadly wildfires across the northern Rocky Mountains in 1910 had ushered in a policy of “full suppression” firefighting, with new federal-state coordination. The Forest Service argued that even light burning by property owners was damaging for trees and landscapes. In other words, all fire was considered bad, something to be extinguished.

That included fires set by Indigenous people.

For generations, local tribes had burned both as a religious practice and to tend the ecosystem, explains Bill Tripp, director of natural resources and environmental policy for the Karuk Tribe in Northern California.

“It is part of our ways of knowing and doing and learning that using fire in the right ways is part of our responsibility to the natural systems that we depend on,” Mr. Tripp says. Ceremonies incorporating fire took place throughout the year and served unique environmental purposes: attracting deer across a particular waterway, clearing one sort of plant so others could grow, prompting salmon up a river.

Stephanie Hanes/The Christian Science Monitor

In 1911, federal law created new prohibitions on these cultural burns. California had a long history of persecuting Native people. The same law in 1850 that allowed for the enslavement of tribe members and the forced separation of children from their families also prohibited their burns. In 1918, Forest Service officials suggested any Native person found setting a fire should be shot.

By the end of the 20th century, though, some researchers were starting to question this full suppression policy. Researchers had found that some fire was necessary for local species – giant sequoias, for instance – to germinate.

In the 1960s, some officials suggested that a few “controlled burns” might help mitigate wildfire damage. By the 1990s, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, which are responsible for fire policy within the nearly half of California that is owned by the federal government, were conducting some burns.

The Bureau of Land Management was in charge of one such fire in early July 1999, outside the town of Lewiston, California.

About 250 miles north of San Francisco, the bureau intended to clear brushland ahead of the state’s driest summer month. But as the winds picked up that day, the fire jumped across its control line. Eventually raging across 2,000 acres, the blaze damaged the historic mining town, burning two dozen homes, and quickly stopped the burgeoning effort to intentionally burn forestland.

Firefighting organizations doubled down on suppression, recalls Fred Peterson, a longtime volunteer firefighter and vineyard owner who lives in the mountains overlooking Sonoma County’s picturesque Dry Creek Valley. “The goal was to put it out,” he says.

But then, Sonoma County went through a series of years that many people here simply describe as “apocalyptic.”

It would prompt Mr. Peterson, like Ms. Carlson, to change his relationship with both fire and the land he loves.

Stephanie Hanes/The Christian Science Monitor

A skeptic of controlled burns becomes a believer

There used to be an expected pattern to the fire year in Sonoma County, Mr. Peterson says.

In a hot, dry summer, the flames might begin in late August. They might get more intense in September, or even October. If the dry Diablo winds swept in from the east, he would expect to be on call with the other firefighters of the Geyserville Fire Protection District to respond to blazes sweeping down from the surrounding hills. They prayed for the rainy season to come by late October, so that by November and through the winter and spring, the hills were green and the land relatively fire safe.

But in September 2016, the Sawmill Fire consumed 1,500 acres near the Geysers Geothermal Field, which Mr. Peterson can see across the valley from his house. Smoke sank into the valley. The next year, in October, the Tubbs Fire rushed on hurricane-level winds into the nearby city of Santa Rosa, destroying thousands of homes and killing 22 people. It was declared the most destructive wildfire in California’s history – but only until a year later, when the Camp Fire, north of Ms. Carlson and Mr. Peterson in Butte County, destroyed the town of Paradise, leaving 85 people dead.

Ms. Carlson remembers going to her mother’s house for dinner during this time. When she saw a thin ribbon of smoke curling from a candle, she felt a sense of panic.

Around this same time, the Nuns Fire also burned through Sonoma and Napa counties, destroying some 1,300 structures and killing three people. It swept through the Bouverie Preserve southeast of Santa Rosa.

But there, something stood out.

Two years earlier, the nonprofit Audubon Canyon Ranch had hired a fire ecologist named Sasha Berleman to help organize a prescribed burn at the Bouverie preserve, which it owns.

After years of planning, that burn took place in May 2017, just months before the Nuns Fire. It one of the first prescribed burns done in the region not organized and led by state or federal fire officials.

A native Californian, Dr. Berleman remembers being terrified of the fires that would roll through the increasingly populated hills around her hometown of Temecula, in the southern part of the state. She despaired of the way those hills had transformed from wildlands where she would play into miles of subdivisions; she worried about other ways humans were taxing her state’s environment.

Courtesy of Northern Sonoma County Fire Chief Marshall Turbeville/File

It was only after hearing a talk by a local member of the Pechanga tribe, who described the ways human-set fires could help the landscape, that she started to shift her perspective – both about fire and about the way people could exist in California.

“It sparked an interest in me,” she recalls. “Not only can this process that I was terrified of as a little kid be one of rejuvenation for the land; I’m hearing for the first time that humans have a role in tending the landscape.”

When she surveyed the preserve after firefighters contained the Nuns Fire, she was stunned to see how clearly the theories of her research manifested on the ground.

The fire, she says, had “left these beautiful, intact ecosystems where we had burned. And it had really dramatic, intense fire behavior everywhere else on the preserve – like, right across the line. And it just became this incredible story and talking point and ray of hope.”

She convinced her boss to let her start a fire research and training academy, called Fire Forward, for citizens and local fire officials who wanted to facilitate more intentional burning on the community level. She gave the presentation that convinced Ms. Carlson’s neighbors to burn. She also worked with the chief of the Northern Sonoma County Fire Protection District, Marshall Turbeville, on ways to coordinate and convince residents that intentional burning could be safer than waiting for a wildfire.

For Mr. Turbeville, the approach made sense. He had been fully part of the fire suppression approach when he started work with state and local fire departments in the 1990s. But he had come to believe that firefighters were facing an impossible battle. He and his colleagues were putting out all the fires that were possible to extinguish. But that left fires that couldn’t be stopped, and those burned ever more fiercely.

Fire, he recognized, was a natural process. And stopping that process, he said, was like damming a river – a human intervention that had environmental consequences well beyond what was intended. People were terrified of fire because they only saw the big, scary flames on the news, he believed. But that’s not what a burn needed to be. It was the difference between a flood washing away homes and a trickling creek.

Ian Nelson/File

One can’t “control” a fire – Mr. Turbeville didn’t like the term “controlled burn.” But with respect, and care, people could work with fire.

Still, he recognized that prescribed burning was expensive and, under the control of state or federal departments, could be highly regulated. It took years to secure environmental and safety permits to burn on state or federal land, and then it was tricky to find the window where clean air requirements, weather conditions, and personnel availability aligned.

So he was receptive when Dr. Berleman proposed an increase in prescribed burn associations in Sonoma County, where trained citizen “burn bosses” could manage the fire.

These sorts of groups operate across the U.S., with a particularly long history in the Southeast. But until 2017, there were none in California.

“All of my mentors and community from the prescribed fire world told me I was crazy when I started saying that I was going to make prescribed fire a thing in the North Bay Area,” Dr. Berleman says. “You’re surrounded by multimillion-dollar homes. The populations are high. There are roads and infrastructure everywhere. Everyone was telling me, ‘That’s not the place to be trying to get burns on the ground.’”

But given the ferocity of the wildfires in Sonoma County, Mr. Turbeville thought people in his region might be open to this new approach. “There are more and more people who understand the environmental consequences of not allowing a natural process to occur,” he says.

Mr. Peterson was one of them.

The chief had called him shortly after the Tubbs Fire subsided. Mr. Peterson listened as the chief described his feelings of helplessness watching home after home in suburban Santa Rosa explode into flames.

“He says, ‘We can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting different results,’” Mr. Peterson recalls. “I’d never given consideration to prescribed burning. But he finally said, ‘Look, we can either burn it on our terms, or it’s gonna burn on its own time, on its own terms.’”

Between the end of 2019 and the middle of 2020, the two men worked together with Ms. Berleman to organize neighbors near Mr. Peterson’s home on Bradford Mountain to burn 30 acres in 3- to 10-acre units. They cut control lines and cleared foliage away from the bases of large trees and power poles. And then, with a combination of volunteers from the community and firefighters, they torched the earth and watched the low, crawling flames consume the underbrush.

That same year, however, fire came for Ms. Carlson’s home.

Courtesy of Northern Sonoma County Fire Chief Marshall Turbeville/File

How prescribed burns increase resilience against wildfire

The official cause of the Glass Fire, which started near a Napa County vineyard on Sept. 27, 2020, is still a mystery. But how it spread is not. Dry conditions and heavy winds swept the fire into Sonoma County, burning tens of thousands of acres as it traveled.

At Monan’s Rill, community members debated whether to evacuate. Ms. Carlson argued that they should leave. Eventually, with Dr. Berleman’s advice, they all did.

The fire swept through the mountains, consuming towering redwoods and gnarled oak trees, and up the steep hills toward Monan’s Rill. It burned 12 out of the 13 homes there – all but Ms. Carlson’s, which was set apart from the others. It destroyed communal structures, as well.

Days later, Ms. Carlson remembers trying to absorb a land charred black and in ruins. She and her neighbors started talking about whether they should even return given its fire risk. They had been dramatically underinsured, she says, and needed to rebuild homes from scratch. It felt daunting.

And then, someone showed her a photo of an area of Monan’s Rill that was still verdant and green, untouched by the wildfire: the land that they had burned intentionally a few years earlier.

It had, she recalls, a profound effect.

“I was like, OK, I think I want to move back to the land. But if I do, I need to learn how to use intentional fire. Because, obviously, that’s what the land needs to be healthy, and it’s what we need to keep the community safe.”

She signed up for a basic firefighting course and started training to pass the physical fitness tests, which included walking 3 miles in less than 45 minutes, carrying 45 pounds. She checked out books about the history of fire on the landscape, researched scientific articles, and listened to podcasts and webinars. And she walked the land.

“There were a lot of places I never walked because they were so thick with brush. But then, when all the brush burned, that first year, you could walk all over the whole 414 acres. And so, it was getting to know the land and seeing the resurrection of the land – this completely black landscape and the green coming back, what things just looked dead but were actually still alive.”

She read the works of an academic named Lenya Quinn-Davidson. A professor at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, Dr. Quinn-Davidson had started the state’s first prescribed burn association in Humboldt County in 2017. She was convinced of the importance of intentional – or “good” – fire. And she had concluded that it would be more effective to mobilize the private landowners who held more than 13 million acres in the state than to fight federal bureaucracy to allow for more burning on federal lands, she explained to interviewers. She also turned her attention to the policies facilitating this effort – and found a newly receptive audience in the California Legislature.

In 2021, California lawmakers passed a bill that changed liability rules to encourage more citizen prescribed burns, essentially creating a burn boss certification process. The next year, they established a claims fund to pay for damages connected to prescribed fires. And the state began to work with Indigenous tribes to restore their ability to conduct “cultural burns” outside of state certification processes.

“We have been experiencing a massive paradigm shift with regard to how the state of California conducts business related to all things wildfire resilience,” says Allison Jolley, director of The Regional Forest and Fire Capacity Program at The Watershed Research and Training Center in Hayfork, California, an organization central to the “beneficial fire” effort in the state.

In 2023, the University of California’s Blodgett Forest Research Station published a 20-year study giving more evidence that prescribed fire significantly increases resilience against wildfire.

And the next year, the Point Fire ignited in Sonoma County, blazing across the mountains – straight toward Mr. Peterson’s home.

Stephanie Hanes/The Christian Science Monitor

“There are neighbors helping neighbors.”

What happened with the Point Fire is similar to what happened after other prescribed burns. Firefighters stationed themselves at Mr. Peterson’s home. They set up positions along the fire lines and roads. And largely because of the area they had burned and cleared four years earlier, they were able to stop the blaze before it did significant damage to Mr. Peterson’s Bradford Mountain community.

Others in Sonoma County noticed this impact, says Mr. Turbeville. And residents in neighboring communities started organizing to set their own fires.

Prescribed burning is not one and done, Mr. Peterson cautions. Even since the Point Fire, flammable brush has grown around the oak trees. Part of living in California is constantly tending the land with fire in mind, he says.

But this effort has a growing number of helpers. Whenever Ms. Carlson, who is now one of dozens of California state certified burn bosses, posts online that she is planning a prescribed burn, she has more people offering to volunteer than she can use. Many drive up from San Francisco or surrounding urban areas, she says. Others live elsewhere in Sonoma County. All are hoping to do something positive for the land.

“Most people in the Bay Area are eager to lean in and experience a sense of healing around reconnecting with fire in a different, positive way, and then also building community around that,” says Dr. Berleman. “Everyone in the community who’s coming out had experienced these traumatic wildfires, and now they have this team of folks they are building relationships with, who are leaning into healing that relationship with fire.”

Spencer Klinefelter, program coordinator for the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association, says he sees similar interest south of Ms. Carlson and Mr. Peterson. He works around Santa Cruz and sees college students, retirees, old-time ranchers, and even families volunteering together.

On one recent burn, he says, multigenerational ranching families on their all-terrain vehicles worked alongside environmentalist college students and professors, and then with volunteers from the local fire department, all while local tribal members sang traditional prayers to begin the burn.

“There’s a great collective sense that we’re sharing this work,” he says. “It’s been pretty powerful. There’s the traumatic side when people experience wildfire – and there’s the healing side where people come and experience [fire] this way.”

Even Lewiston, the Northern California town that burned in 1999, is considering prescribed burning again.

Miller Bailey, co-director of fire management for The Watershed Research and Training Center, has been talking with landowners there, as part of his work embedding with communities to talk about burning, its benefits, and how to mitigate its risks.

People know that “fire lives on this landscape, and it is coming now,” he says. “So, the landowners, and the folks that are coming to our communities, they are really bought in. And they’re saying, ‘Yes, I want to use this.’”

When they do, he says, the experience goes well beyond expectations. “People are coming together,” he says. “There are neighbors helping neighbors. There’s so much passion. It’s incredible.”

There is still much California needs to do to restore its relationship with this natural force, say those involved with this new approach. But more people are recognizing that if fire destroys, it can also regenerate and rejuvenate, says Ms. Carlson.

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On a recent day she walked along the 22 acres of Monan’s Rill that were intentionally burned this summer under her leadership. She had created the burn plan, had studied the ecology, had organized the volunteers and then, carefully, guided the group in igniting the flames.

She points to a spot of charred earth. There, a bright green tuft of grass is growing, healthily, in the August sunlight.