The Brief

When Chad Comey's five-story condo building burned down in the Palisades Fire early last year, all that was left was the parking garage, a brick and stucco wall, and a few charred trees. Comey's street is now full of empty lots stretching up into the green hills.

Comey is a musician and caretaker for his two disabled parents. In the past year, they've moved five times, not wanting to overstay their welcome with friends and family, while looking for a wheelchair-accessible apartment to rent.

" I think we have a right to be angry," Comey says. "I am housed, but I am homeless."

He says some people on social media try to minimize the pain of fire survivors. "People who are trying to reduce our anger do not understand what it feels like to be homeless," he says.

Comey says some social media posts about the fire play to anger and rage, and they don't always contain accurate information. " In today's day and age on social media, one kernel of truth can be spun off into reels and rage bait," he says. "There's a lot of that."

In the aftermath of the Los Angeles fires, misinformation spread almost as fast as the flames. Some of these false narratives on social media, especially about water, have had a direct impact on California policy, legal and water experts tell NPR.

Comey, 32, got most of his news about the fires from traditional news sources like the Los Angeles Times and LAist, and he still relies on those outlets for information about the fires' aftermath. But more than half of Americans get at least some of their news from social media, according to Pew Research.

Thirty-one people died in the fires in the Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods. An area roughly three times the size of Manhattan burned.

False narratives can distract from how best to respond to these kinds of disasters, says Max Boykoff, a University of Colorado Boulder environmental studies professor who studies media and climate change. " These are tactics to muddy the waters of public discussions," he says.

A portion of the Palisades fire burned in the hills of Los Angeles last January. After the fires, misinformation on social media had an impact on state policy.

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Misinformation derails a solution for misinformation

One example of false narratives having an impact was the fate of something called Senate Bill 549, says Julia Stein, deputy director for the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law.

Senate Bill 549 (SB 549), which was first introduced last February, would have done two things. It would have helped local governments get money to build transit-oriented development and low-income housing. And, it would have allowed for the creation of a central hub to manage LA's post-fire recovery. The hub was the recommendation of an independent panel of experts and local leaders.

Last summer, incorrect narratives about the bill spread quickly on social media. A key false narrative was that SB 549 would result in an influx of new, high-density affordable housing in areas impacted by the fires.

Spencer Pratt, a podcaster and former reality TV star who lost his home in the Palisades Fire, made a TikTok video about the bill, which he shared with his more than 2 million followers. In the video, Pratt says he consulted AI chatbots about the legislation. He says that the bill grants "LA County authority to purchase fire destroyed lots for minimal cost and convert them into low income housing."

Pratt also says the bill would "force low-income housing mandates." Pratt's TikTok video received over 286,000 views. Other influencers made videos and posts on X with similar messages.

The bill would not have led to more low-income housing in the Palisades, Stein says. It was designed to finance transit-oriented development for areas within half a mile of "major transit stop" as defined by California law. Those include a rail or bus rapid transit station, or a ferry terminal. The Palisades, a neighborhood near the ocean and in the Santa Monica mountains, is not near a "major transit stop."

"You have injected this narrative that what this bill is trying to do is build dense, affordable housing and big apartment buildings in the Palisades," Stein says. "Even though the bill wouldn't have done those things."

In an emailed statement to NPR, Spencer Pratt wrote, "Pacific Palisades is a multi-generational family town with rich history and character. SB 549 would drastically change the Palisades and other wildfire disaster areas by allowing government to purchase fire damaged lots and bank them for affordable housing. In the aftermath of the greatest tragedy of our lives, we just want the Palisades to be what it once was."

While SB 549 did grant the proposed central hub the ability to purchase fire-affected land at a fair price, the bill imposed no requirement that such land be used for affordable housing.

Pratt's representative, Kyell Thomas, wrote in an email, "AI is not an ongoing source of information for him."

A sign in the Palisades marks a protest a year after the LA fires. There's a widespread lack of trust with state and local agencies amongst many fire survivors.

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Pratt posted his video on TikTok on July 15. On July 16, the bill's author, California state Sen. Ben Allen, paused the bill. Allen's office received hundreds of calls and emails. The office normally receives a few dozen calls for a hot-topic bill.

" I'm all for community engagement and public participation," Stein says, "but, in this case, folks were reacting to information that was factually incorrect."

Allen wrote in an email to NPR, "The absence of good journalism, along with misreads of the bill, allowed false narratives to spin around on the internet, which then impacted AI-generated descriptions of the bill, which people unfortunately turn to for information now. It hampered our ability to have a productive conversation on the matter."

He added, "I have no plans to move SB 549 forward."

The aftermath of the Palisades Fire is seen on an impacted stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway.

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Stein provided academic research to the expert panel that recommended LA make a central recovery hub after the fires, also called the "rebuilding authority." She says the delay in creating this centralized authority because of the pausing of the bill is unfortunate. The central hub was meant to be a "single point of accountability" and information for residents who lost their homes in the fires.

"Right now," Stein says, "folks don't know where to turn."

Better fact-checking is important

There's widespread lack of trust with state and local agencies among many fire survivors, says Jake Levine, whose mom lost her home in the Palisades Fire. Levine, a former climate and energy director at the National Security Council and former adviser to a fire rebuild nonprofit, is running for Congress in a district that includes the Palisades. 

Some of that mistrust may be justified, Levine says. The Los Angeles Times recently published an investigation that found that the Los Angeles Fire Department deleted and revised drafts of a key report after the fires, changing words like "failures" to "primary challenges." The Los Angeles Fire Department did not respond to a request for comment.

"I think one of the reasons why people are looking for information from all sorts of sources is because the normal institutional sources that we rely on have allowed there to be a bit of a vacuum in terms of official and reliable information," Levine says.

Levine hopes that in the future, more state, local and federal government agencies can share information directly with residents about things like air quality after fires, so that residents don't have to rely on nonprofit or commercial apps that sometimes have inaccurate information.

Boykoff says another solution is for news organizations to maintain robust fact-checking. He says as more people use AI to get information, many people are "not really tracking back to what the original sourcing is," Boykoff wrote in an email. "And so, in that new environment, there is much higher potential for mis and disinformation."

Addressing misinformation is particularly important, he says, as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of disasters.
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It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”