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.
Copyright 2026 NPR

In the days immediately after last January’s Los Angeles firestorm, state lawmakers and civic leaders promised to turbocharge the rebuilding effort. For California, where the permitting and construction of homes is infamously slow and costly, the scale of destruction stood as a singular challenge.

A year later, the charred homes, the melted appliances and the toxic ash have mostly been removed, the dirt beneath scraped and then carted away. Many of the residents whose houses were spared have returned. Permits for reconstruction have been filed, architects and contractors hired. Battles with insurance companies, utilities and banks persist, vacant lots and blackened trees abound, but look around and — here and there — you’ll find new construction.

As of this week, more than 2,600 residential permits have been issued between the Palisades and Altadena — roughly one for every five of the nearly 13,000 homes lost. Another 3,340 are under review.

For many displaced and traumatized homeowners, that represents an intolerably slow return to what was. But by historic standards, the Los Angeles recovery has been on the speedy side so far.

In a press release commemorating the first anniversary of the disaster, Gov. Gavin Newsom lauded the permitting figures as “historic.”

Last year local governments — the City and County of Los Angeles, as well as Malibu and Pasadena — issued permits for single-family homes and accessory dwelling units “three times faster” than they were in the five years leading up to the fire, the administration noted.

Rebuilding after disaster is almost always a grueling, slow process. Of the more than 22,500 homes destroyed in five of California’s most destructive fires between 2017 and 2020, fewer than four-in-ten had been rebuilt by 2025, a Los Angeles Times analysis from late last summer found.

A year after major fires ripped through Maui, Paradise, Redding and the outskirts of Boulder, Colo., 2%, 3%, 15% and 30% of the destroyed homes, respectively, had been permitted for reconstruction, according to a separate Urban Institute analysis.

Based on the pace of permitting, Los Angeles’ reconstruction is on a relatively fast track. But freshly-pulled permits aren’t completed homes.

“People can pull permits, but you know, if they don't have their costs sorted out — we've had folks abandon their plans,” said Devang Shah with Genesis Builders, which is selling pre-approved, fixed-priced rebuilds in Altadena. Using permits as a metric of progress may be premature, he said.

Some of the speedy progress that Los Angeles has seen may be due to regulatory changes imposed by fiat in the aftermath of the fire. In early 2025, both Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass mandated speedier permitting of like-for-like rebuilds — construction that stuck to the rough dimensions and design specification of the home that was there before. Los Angeles county rolled out a self-certification building plan approval pilot program for certain simple projects. Newsom waived building code requirements intended to ease the cost of reconstruction.

“We’ve got planning approvals in three days that would have normally taken three months,” said Tim Vordtriede, an architect who also lost his home in Altadena. The county has “done a remarkable job at making things as efficient and streamlined as a bureaucratic entity can.”

In the weeks after the fire, Vordtriede co-founded the Altadena Collective, a network of designers and architects that provides discounted design services, permitting advice and contractor recommendations to local survivors. He and his co-founders Chris Driscoll and Chris Corbett have also launched a nonprofit called Collective OR that is meant to represent inexperienced and anxious homeowners in negotiations with builders and architects.

The pace of reconstruction may simply benefit from the fact that it’s taking place in Los Angeles County: A mammoth economic hub flush with financial resources and political connections.

“We have access to a really good supply chain, there’s a lot of capital, there’s a lot of infrastructure,“ said Ben Stapleton, director of U.S. Green Building Council California.

That’s in contrast to a town like Paradise.

Since the majority of homes were destroyed in the 2018 Camp Fire, fewer than one-in-five have since been rebuilt, said Colette Curtis, the Butte County town’s recovery and economic development director.

She cautioned against comparing the pace of rebuilding efforts across communities struck by disaster.

“It's impossible to say, ‘they were here by this date so we should also be there,’” she said. “The data set is just too variable.”

Paradise, a remote town with relatively low income, lacked the local services and philanthropic draw of places like Lahaina and the Palisades, she said. But lower land values and the fact that displaced homeowners haven’t had to compete with investors setting aside new units for tourist rentals was a net positive.

Another thing that may give Los Angeles a leg up: It’s a region that’s also heavy on expertise.

At around the same time that Vordtriede was setting up the Altadena Collective, nearby architect couple Cynthia Sigler and Alex Athenson launched the Foothill Catalog, a packet of ready-made architectural and structural plans that have been pre-approved by L.A. County.

With roughly 15 projects either under construction or gearing up to break ground, Athenson said the pre-approval process can shave at least 10% off the total development cost of a custom single-family home.

That’s in part by trimming the approval process. But that's also because prior to the fire, a "custom single-family home" in ALtadena was a luxury product.

The local industry is “set up to serve that client who is building their dream home from scratch, with a very large if not unlimited budget,” said Athenson. Long-time homeowners displaced by fire, many of them on fixed incomes, represent a very different kind of buyer.

As builders, designers and policymakers scramble to rebuild in faster, cheaper and more fire-resilient ways, they may stumble upon a solution that could be of use long after the last home is rebuilt in Altadena, he added.

“Ultimately, we're providing a system for more efficient, affordable housing development,” said Athenson. “I'm excited about proving it in Altadena, and then seeing where it goes beyond.”

So far the county has approved more than two dozen of the catalog’s plans. Athenson said they are now discussing rolling out a similar batch for the Palisades with the City of Los Angeles.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

A high-profile defense attorney for Nick Reiner, who is accused of killing his famous parents in their Brentwood home, has stepped down from the case and arraignment has been pushed to next month.

Reiner, 32, was expected to be arraigned Wednesday morning in Los Angeles County Superior Court in connection with the deaths of his parents, Hollywood legend Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner, last month.

Instead, Nick Reiner’s lawyer, Alan Jackson, revealed to Judge Theresa McGonigle that he was withdrawing from the case.

"Circumstances beyond our control, but more importantly, circumstances beyond Nick’s control have dictated that sadly it's made it impossible for us to continue our representation of Nick,” Jackson told reporters after Reiner's brief court appearance.

The attorney said he is "legally and ethically" prohibited from explaining why he would no longer represent Reiner.

“We know the legal process will reveal the true facts of the circumstances surrounding this case,” Jackson continued. "We’ve investigated this matter top to bottom and front to back.“

He also said, "pursuant to the law in California, Nick Reiner is not guilty of murder,” and, “We wish him the very best.”

The L.A. County Public Defender’s Office will to take over Reiner’s defense.

“This is a challenging time for the entire legal process,” said L.A. County Public Defender Ricardo Garcia. “We ask for your patience, your understanding as we navigate this process through the legal system”

Nick Reiner has admitted in the past to struggles with drug addiction and mental illness. It remains unclear how much of that will factor into the case.

Deputy Public Defender Kimberly Greene, who will represent Reiner in court, said she had only spoken to her client briefly Wednesday morning.

“We’ve had no contact with the family," she said outside court. "I don’t think they were aware this was going on until this morning.”

Reiner, the youngest of the famous couple’s four children, two counts of murder and special-circumstance allegations — multiple murders and use of a deadly weapon — that would make him eligible for the death penalty if convicted.

District Attorney Nathan Hochman has said his office has not yet determined whether it would seek death or life without the possibility of parole. Such decisions are usually made after a preliminary hearing where a judge hears evidence from prosecutors.

Hochman has said he would consider the family’s wishes when making his decision.

On Wednesday, he told reporters the charges would lead to conviction.

“We are fully confident that a jury will convict Nick Reiner beyond a reasonable doubt of the brutal murders of his parents,” he said.

Rob Reiner, 78, and Michele Singer Reiner, 68, were found dead Dec. 14 after police were called to their home on South Chadbourne Avenue.

Detectives with the Police Department’s elite Robbery Homicide Division, Homicide Special Section began an investigation and identified Reiner as the suspect, according to police.

The younger Reiner was located and arrested near Exposition Park close to USC at approximately 9:15 p.m., according to police. He remains in jail on a no-bail status.

His arraignment in now set for Feb. 23.