The Los Angeles wildfires devastated the city. Here's what happened next

It’s been a year of recovery and reckoning in Los Angeles since the unprecedented wildfires erupted in the parched southern California hillsides and spread into the surrounding suburbs with shocking ferocity, killing 31 people. Subscribe ► https://www.youtube.com/user/theguardian?sub_confirmation=1 While rebuilding efforts are underway, progress has been slow. Thousands of displaced Angelenos remain in limbo. Meanwhile, city officials, researchers, non-profits and new community groups combed through the horrors to puzzle together what went wrong, after the firestorm overwhelmed municipal water systems and outpaced elite firefighting crews, while evacuations slowed to a crawl along winding roads. As the issues that defined the disaster and its recovery come into sharper focus, given the lack of coordination from federal agencies hollowed out by the Trump administration, the steep financial cost of rebuilding and the ever-growing threat of the climate crisis, one urgent question looms: what can be done to stop another from striking in the future? The senior climate reporter and extreme weather correspondent for Guardian US, Gabrielle Canon, visited the worst-hit areas a year after the wildfire hit. Watch to find out more about what the affected areas look like now, and follow the link to hear the stories of three LA wildfire victims on how they survived the horror - and what came next ► https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/jan/07/los-angeles-wildfire-victims-surviving-the-horror #losangeleswildfires #lawildfires #californiawildfires #wildfires #climatecrisis #climatechange