Once the Fires Are Out, California Must Remove Tons of Dangerous Debris

Clearing the toxic remnants of burned buildings around Los Angeles will require a complex and expensive mobilization. California has been there before.

When the flames in Los Angeles County are finally extinguished, the region will face the costly, time-consuming and heart-wrenching task of hauling away tons of toxic rubble. Given the scale of devastation in and around America’s second-largest city, that cleanup could become one of the country’s most complex debris removal efforts ever.

In each of the thousands of ash piles where homes once stood, there are remnants of lives upended. But the photo albums and football cards and family heirlooms are intermixed with a noxious cocktail of asbestos, gasoline and lead, a reality that will make cleanup extremely complicated.

“We kind of treat each of these properties as its own hazardous waste cleanup site,” said Cory Koger, a debris expert with the Army Corps of Engineers who has responded to several major wildfires, including the fire that destroyed much of Lahaina, Hawaii, in 2023.

The immediate focus in Southern California is putting out the wind-fueled fires that have burned for days, destroying thousands of structures, scorching thousands of acres and killing at least 11 people. But once the threat has passed, attention will more fully shift to dealing with debris fields in hard-hit areas like Altadena and Pacific Palisades, where homes that stood for decades burned down in minutes and where the charred remains of Jeeps and Cadillacs line the streets.

“Recovery planning really begins as soon as the fire starts,” said Jenn Hogan, the deputy director for disaster debris recovery operations at CalRecycle, a state agency that focuses on waste management and climate. “Once the fire is contained, you’ll start seeing a lot of those recovery resources hit the ground.”