As Southern California deals with the devastation caused by the fires, attention remains focused on how they will begin to clean up.
Rebuilding cannot begin until the debris has been cleaned up, a process that survivors of the North Bay wildfires are familiar with.
The devastating 2017 Tubbs Fire killed 22 people and destroyed over 5,000 structures.
Jeff Okrepkie, who has since been elected to the Santa Rosa City Council, lives in one of those structures in Coffey Park.
“With any major tragedy, loss, or trauma, there is no getting over it. “It’s the ability to move on and not let it affect you,” Okrepkie explained. “And in times like this, it comes back.”
Okrepkie knows firsthand that the road to recovery for those in Southern California will be long, and he believes that cleaning up the debris can be a significant step toward healing.
“Driving through the neighborhoods, not even just being at your own property, but driving through them, you will see bikes twisted and mangled and melted car rims and all this stuff,” he told me.
“So getting that stuff removed is helpful for the recovery process because it’s sort of, moving on to the next step and putting that portion behind you.”
Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order directing prompt action to clear debris.
Tomorrow, the @EPA's HAZMAT crews will start cleaning debris from neighborhoods devastated by the Los Angeles firestorms.
Once teams complete the removal of explosive and highly toxic materials, residents will be one step closer on the road to recovery. pic.twitter.com/yzBTdR3wPK
— Governor Newsom (@CAgovernor) January 16, 2025
Yana Garcia, California’s Secretary of Environmental Protection, spoke with ABC7 from a burn scar in Altadena Wednesday.
“Today, we met with U.S. EPA who has been mission-tasked to start phase one of debris removal,” Garcia told the crowd.
“That includes removing hazardous waste, things like batteries, propane tanks and other volatile material that needs to be safely removed in order for the remaining debris to be removed from the properties that have been damaged or destroyed from the fires and allow rebuilding to take place.”
California has gone through this process too many times.
Mark Ghilarducci, the former director of the California Office of Emergency Services from 2013 to 2022, commented on what happens to the debris.
“Typically, some end up in existing landfills, while others are recycled. I know that some of the concrete from the foundations and others that we’ve removed has been crushed and reused as roadbed for future projects. “Metals and steels are recycled and reused as building materials or other items,” he explained.
“The trees that are cut down will be repurposed into lumber for rebuilding, sold, or recycled for various purposes. There are many different places where this stuff could go, but ultimately, some of it ends up in landfills.
Okrepkie stated that taking some of the recovery into their own hands, such as forming block captains with one or two people speaking for each area, was a critical component of his community’s success.
He hopes that what his community has gone through can serve as a road map for their recovery.
“You need somebody to lean on and that’s one of the things when we came together with our block captain system, is we were working together as individuals with a shared trauma that knew what we were going through,” he told me.
As for when the debris in Southern California will be cleaned up, Garcia stated that in previous fires, the first phase took a couple of months, but she is hesitant to provide an estimate in Southern California until they have a better understanding of the volume of waste.
