“The conditions that night were once in a hundred years… it just happened so quickly that I'm still in shock.” When wildfires ripped through LA, meteorology graduate Edgar McGregor became a local hero. His Facebook weather warnings saved thousands of lives, as official alerts failed to spread fast enough. But not all neighbourhoods burned equally. In Altadena, Steven Scipio lost the house his family had occupied for four generations. “Of course I miss the home and the memories. But it’s the community” that makes the real difference, he says. In the wealthy Palisades, residents hired private firefighters to protect mansions, sparking uproar. As Chief California Fire Marshal Dan Berlant notes, “it’s not about how many firefighters you respond to, it’s really about how hardened a community is or isn’t”. As new tariffs threaten rebuilding efforts, communities are left wondering if they can afford to stay, or survive the next one.