In L.A.’s Fire Zone, Factory-built Houses Are Meeting The Moment

Source: Fast Company, Adele Peters
Photo: David Esquivel/UCLA

Nearly 10 months after the Eaton wildfire, the rebuild process is slowly getting underway. Now, residents are turning to prefab to build their houses faster, more cheaply, and largely in factories.

At 3:20 a.m. on January 8, Steve Gibson and his wife were jolted awake by a phone call: the Eaton fire was approaching their home in Altadena, California, and they had to evacuate.

“We left in about 15 minutes,” Gibson says. “So we only took our passports, our insurance papers, three pairs of underwear, and our little dog, Cantinflas.” They thought that they’d be able to come back within a few hours. But they soon learned that their house—and their entire block—had been destroyed.

They spent the next few weeks moving from short-term rental to short-term rental, and finally moved into an apartment, though they knew that insurance would only cover the cost temporarily. Then they faced the next challenge: what would it take to rebuild their home?

More than 10 months after the L.A. fires, the rebuilding process in the fire zone is painfully slow. In Altadena, where more than 5,000 houses burned in the Eaton fire, only a few hundred are currently being rebuilt. (Only one, an ADU, has been completed as of mid-November.) But some—including Gibson’s—are moving faster than others because homeowners have turned to prefab construction.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91445960/prefab-housing-rebuild-effort-altadena