Paradise, Calif. burned in 2018. Rebuilding it offers a look at what’s ahead for LA

You get a glimpse of the road ahead for Los Angeles after its wildfires by looking at a town that has already traveled it.

In late 2018, the Camp Fire destroyed about 11,000 homes in Paradise, Calif. and killed 85 people. The mountain town in the Sierra Nevada foothills is still recovering.

One person working on Paradise’s revival is Jenn Goodlin. She grew up there, and six years ago, she was living out of state, as almost her entire hometown burned to the ground.

“I felt so helpless in Colorado. Like, how many Target gift cards can I send, right?” Goodlin said, speaking to NPR’s Morning Edition.

Jen Goodlin, executive director of the Rebuild Paradise Foundation, poses with a mural depicting a sunset from handprints of local children, at Paradise Community Park in November 2024.

Courtesy of Jen Goodlin

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Courtesy of Jen Goodlin

A visit to Paradise later on made it clear to Goodlin that the best way to help Paradise was to move back and build a home.

“Drug my family along, my four children and my husband and said, ‘how about we leave our great life and move to a burnt-down town and live in a trailer for two and a half years?'” she said.

She volunteered, helping people get food or sheds to store their tools. Then she took a job as executive director of the Rebuild Paradise Foundation, which finds money to help with rebuilding.

While most people never have to build a custom home in their lives, suddenly a town of thousands needed funding and knowledge of the basic, bureaucratic hurdles of construction. The foundation would write people checks to pay for surveys, architecture and engineering fees and permit fees.

“Septic was hit heavily, very expensive,” Goodlin said. Without a sewer system, Paradise relies on septic tanks. “We wanted to ease that burden.”

Goodlin said the foundation has a library of floor plans pre-approved by the town and county to help residents break ground more quickly. She said almost 200 new homes have relied on those floor plans.

Many residents run into roadblocks with insurance companies that hesitate to cover homes in the so-called “wildland-urban interface” that is prone to fires. To make homes more resilient and more insurable, the foundation gave residents vouchers for gravel to lay down in the 5 feet surrounding their homes.

The nitty gritty of building and hardening homes has translated to growth. The California Department of Finance, which estimates populations in the state, said Paradise grew from fewer than 5,000 people in 2020 to nearly 11,000 in 2024. That’s still far from a pre-Camp Fire population of more than 26,000 in 2018.

From the ground in Paradise, Goodlin has seen more young families and children in town, noting that the Paradise Unified School District opened a new elementary school last year.

Goodlin’s advice for people in Los Angeles who talk of rebuilding homes is to take it one step at a time. She hopes Paradise’s story can be a survival guide for Altadena and Pacific Palisades.

“We are here. Like, we have gone through it—similar but different,” she said. “How can we help you now? People came to our side as well. But that’s now our job.”

This article was edited by Obed Manuel.