Contact:
Mary Anne Byrd
Communications Director
803-669-4216
mbyrd@ibhs.org
Connie Bryant Breedlove
Managing Director, Communications
404-786-5275
cbreedlove@ibhs.org
LOS ANGELES/RICHBURG, SC, April 8, 2025 – The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) today released Resilient Rebuilding: A Path Forward for Los Angeles, a blueprint for rebuilding a more survivable and insurable Los Angeles after the devastating Eaton and Palisades Fires. IBHS calls on local leaders to take regulatory action to ensure critical structural and defensible space requirements and specific mitigation actions needed to make the next generation of Los Angeles homes and communities more wildfire resilient are taken during this historic rebuilding.
“We are at a critical point for rebuilding in Los Angeles – one where the survivability and insurability of the next generation of LA’s homes and communities is decided,” says Roy Wright, CEO of IBHS and a member of the LA County Blue Ribbon Commission on Climate Action & Fire Safe Recovery. “Research-based fire mitigation actions can meaningfully reduce the risk of wildfire now and in the future.”
Offering a play-by-play sequence of actions, IBHS addresses the exact wildfire mitigation actions and critical retrofits to strengthen survivability and insurability for homes and communities. The paper provides specific regulatory actions to make these recommendations a reality. IBHS calls on Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles to:
- Extend Chapter 7A requirements and develop a Zone 0 standard for the entire Eaton Fire footprint. (Zone 0 is the zero-to-five-foot area immediately surrounding a structure that must be free of vegetation and any combustible items.)
- Develop and apply a Zone 0 standard to the Palisades Fire footprint. · Enhance Chapter 7A requirements with additional mitigation actions as required by the IBHS Wildfire Prepared Plus standard.
- Enact local defensible space requirements addressing Zone 0 across all at-risk communities within Los Angeles.
- Use setbacks to maximize the spacing between structures to the greatest extent possible.
- Use local planning and financial resources to establish and maintain fuel breaks along the periphery of communities in highest hazard zones.
- Develop plans to retrofit all surviving homes with baseline wildfire protections, through requirements, incentives and financial support.
Resilient Rebuilding: A Path Forward for Los Angeles and additional IBHS wildfire research, including recent reports on the LA County fires, are available at ibhs.org/lawildfires.
About the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS)
The IBHS mission is to conduct objective, scientific research to identify and promote effective actions that strengthen homes, businesses and communities against natural disasters and other causes of loss. Learn more at ibhs.org.
