At their peak, the devastating wildfires that ignited around Los Angeles in January forced upward of 200,000 people to evacuate and torched more than 16,000 homes, offices, and shops. The total economic losses may reach as high as $275 billion. Now the blazes are fully contained and have mostly died down. As Angelenos grapple with their losses, the disaster has turned into an excuse for some to litigate their grievances with the state: President Donald Trump said that federal aid to California should be conditioned on policy changes like voter ID laws. He also ordered a reservoir that isnt connected to Southern Californias water supply to dump 2.2 billion gallons of water.There were indeed decisions that did make the fires more destructive than they needed to be. Wildfires are a natural part of the landscape in Southern California, but as more people move into vulnerable areas, the risk of sparking a fire and the scale of the ensuing destruction grow. And as average temperatures rise due to climate change, the Golden State is likely to experience more of the weather sequences that created the fuel for the recent wildfires. With thousands of people searching for housing, theres immense pressure to rebuild fast. The state has relaxed permitting rules to speed up reconstruction. But putting everything back exactly where it was will only recreate the conditions that led to these intense infernoes in the first place, or worse.We have not built for the hazards we face now, said Megan Mullin, faculty director of the Luskin Center for Innovation at the University of California Los Angeles. The kinds of destructive, life-taking, enormous property-damaging fires that we have seen over the last six or eight years actually are pretty new. But how exactly should the city rebuild? For communities like Pacific Palisades and Altadena that suffered the most intense destruction, the recovery now presents an opportunity to make them more resilient to future fires. The to-do list is long and some of the items are politically contentious and expensive. But, according to water, engineering, and policy experts I spoke to, these approaches are the best shot at surviving wildfires in a warming world. Here are the top items that should be on LAs post-fire to-do list, according to experts:Communities need a coherent fire strategyIt may not be the first thing that comes to mind in the wake of the blazes, but getting people to work with their neighbors to reduce fire risk is essential. The entirety of fire preparation and response engages with every aspect of how we govern our communities, Mullin said.The recent wildfires revealed that residents cant go it alone when it comes to major infernos. The most well-designed home built with fire-resistant materials held to the latest building codes can still ignite if every other house on the block is burning. And even if a home does stay standing, it will likely still lose water, power, and road access in the aftermath, rendering it unlivable for some time. So neighborhoods and municipalities need to form funded, accountable groups whose job it is to reduce fire risk, whether thats mapping out high-risk properties, renting goats to chew back flammable vegetation, building in fire breaks and green spaces between houses, maintaining fire hydrants, and enforcing building regulations. Pick building sites carefully and harden themThe next step is to think about how homes are built and whether they should be there at all. In some places where vegetation is too fire-prone or access is difficult for firefighters its not going to make sense to rebuild since the fire risk is too high. In particular, properties need to pull back from the wildland-urban interface, where structures encroach into flammable wilderness. But that does mean the makeup of some communities wont look the same as they did before. I dont believe everyone is coming back, said Lucio Soibelman, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Southern California. The buildings that do get built back have to be held to higher standards. We cannot rebuild the same things, Soibelman said. The steps to make homes resilient to fires is its own long to-do list: installing meshes on vents to block embers, fire-resistant siding, cutting vegetation back five feet from structures, breaking flammable connections between buildings like wooden fencing, and fire-resistant utility poles. These codes also have to be enforced on existing homes, which means some homeowners will have to undertake expensive retrofits or face penalties. Give insurers more flexibilityInsurance is a critical tool for providing the funds to rebuild, but private insurance companies have been leaving California in recent years, citing mounting wildfire threats and regulations that limit how much they can price that risk into their rates. The ones that remain are now facing whats likely to be the most expensive fire disaster in history, with low-end estimates of tens of billions in insured claims. For homeowners whove been dropped by private companies, their last option is the states FAIR Plan, the insurer of last resort. But this program is poised to run out of its cash reserves. To stabilize the market, insurance companies want more leeway to raise their rates in line with the risks they face now, as well as the growing damages they expect in the future. California has begun to make these changes, allowing insurers to use forward-looking catastrophe models. The challenge is that means homeowners will face higher housing costs, and some may choose to drop their insurance coverage, leaving them to rebuild out of pocket when the next fire ignites.Rising insurance premiums can serve as a disincentive for building in vulnerable areas. On the other hand, if insurers account for hardening tactics in individual homes and in communities, they could reward these measures with discounts. Start chipping away at the states housing crisisThe conditions that led to so many homes in the path of danger didnt emerge overnight and will take years to resolve, but the work has to start now. The real big picture is our housing crisis and what to do about that, said Bradley Franklin, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. Weve effectively stumbled into creating a set of incentives for people to keep expanding real estate development into the wildland-urban interface.Decades of density restrictions and rising property values have left many Californians with few living options beyond sprawling into fire-prone regions. The costly reconstruction after the fires is likely to widen the already-stark class divides in Los Angeles. Solving this will require making it cheaper and easier to build more homes in safer areas. That means relaxing zoning regulations and speeding up the permitting process. California will also have to adapt to the changing climate and reduce its contribution to the problem. Higher temperatures means more moisture gets sucked out of the ecosystems and creates drier environments, which are more prone to fires, Franklin said. The Southern California wildfires erupted after a year of extreme weather dialed up. The region started 2024 with unprecedented flooding, followed by record-breaking heat in the summer and the driest start to winter ever witnessed. It led to a huge bloom of fast-growing chaparral, grasses, and shrubs that dried out in the heat and served as fuel for blazes. This whiplash between extremes is likely to become more common. Then the region was whipped by some of the strongest Santa Ana winds ever measured, with gusts up to 100 miles per hour.Curbing this threat will require clearing brush, thinning forests, and controlled burns, depending on the landscape. The state also needs to better conserve its scarce water. That can involve building new storage facilities, managing consumption with more efficient appliances, and phasing out irrigation of thirsty crops to feed cattle. Solving these long-running problems will also require resolving squabbles between businesses, private owners, state managers, and the federal government, who are all inclined to foist the responsibility and the bill for these measures onto someone else. It will take leadership and political risks to drive down the wildfire threat, but its not clear that will has manifested just yet.See More: