Legally protected nesting birds delayed fire cleanup on 200-plus burned properties
But just minutes after a giant excavator toppled our two brick chimneys, a muscle-bound foreman called a halt to the work with a shrill whistle. Workers huddled. Supervisors phoned. One of them pronounced: Work clearing our 77-year-old ranch house must stop.
The Army Corps of Engineers wanted to make sure that asbestos in our house's foundation had all been cleared away. That was confirmed within a day or two. All the hazardous material had been bagged and trucked off.
But still we waited. Weeks passed without much of an update.
It wasn't until June that I learned the main reason for the delay. On a garbled voicemail, I could make out only that it had something to do with 'habitat' and 'stress.' When I made my way to Carbon Canyon, I found a tiny sign posted at the end of our driveway. 'Nesting Bird Buffer,' it read. 'Restricted area. DO NOT ENTER.'
Debris cleanup crews keep a lookout for family treasures, mature trees and even the graves of buried pets. They checked all those boxes in the home, where I grew up with my parents, brother and sister and myriad dogs. But I had not realized their work plans also paid special attention to wild birds.
An Army Corps contractor explained that they were following the requirements of the Migratory Bird Act of 1918, signed by President Wilson, to stop a massive kill-off of birds beneficial to humankind. The law prohibits 'taking' without a permit not only birds but their nests and eggs too.
Environmental observers had fanned out across the burn zones to make sure the cleanup attended to the rules.
Our property was one of 216 in the burn zones (80 in the Palisades and Malibu and 136 in Altadena) where cleanups were put at least briefly on hold to try to protect nesting birds and their young.
In cases when the homeowners could not afford to wait, bird observers would turn into bird movers. A total of 181 fire rescue birds (including bushtits, acorn wookpeckers and red-shouldered hawks) were recently still in the care of the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach.
The work hiatus at our place began after a contractor spotted a pair of mourning doves on our hillside. The doves cleared out in a few days, but then observers spotted at least two pairs of hooded orioles, building nests high up in our heavily scorched palm trees.
Of course it was the orioles!
Each spring of my semirural eastern Malibu childhood, the orioles would take center stage. While other critters tended to wear the muted colors of the chaparral-choked hillsides, the orioles flew in from their wintering grounds in Mexico sporting a much more rakish look. The females wore elegant yellow feathers, while the males sported bright orange 'hoods' and midnight-black wings.
The birds' startling colors seized our attention. And their family life held it. They returned each year to banana trees right beside our swimming pool. On the underside of the banana fronds, they'd weave straw and pine needles into tear-drop-shaped baskets. Nests so finely crafted they could have hung in a gallery.
Then, and now, they also constitute a crucial link in the food chain, especially notable for keeping the insect population in check.
I hadn't thought about these old neighbors for years, though I visited the old house frequently, until my mom's death about a year ago.
Now, they'd delayed us, and others, in getting on with whatever comes next. The response has been more open than you'd expect.
'I lost my home and would happily delay for the short amount of time it would take for these eggs to hatch,' Kelly Jackson, whose home burned down in the Eaton fire, said on social media. She wasn't alone.
Most of us around the fire zones have come to realize that it will take much more than concrete, Sheetrock and double-pane windows to restore our communities.
In our stretch of the sagebrush, it might take the brilliant, plucky orioles. They are among the grittiest survivors, a reminder of what endures.
Kristen Breck says, 'Stinson Beach!!'
Jaime Del Carpio says, 'Crystal Cove.'
Email us at essentialcalifornia@latimes.com, and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.
Today's photo is from Times contributor Ron De Angelis at the workshop of master refinisher Aaron Moore who shares his tips on the 'lost art' of refinishing.
Jim Rainey, staff writerDiamy Wang, homepage internIzzy Nunes, audience internHugo Martin, assistant editor for Fast BreakKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew Campa, Sunday writerKarim Doumar, head of newsletters
How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
LA fires charred homes into piles of metal and concrete. By recycling them, they're given new life
ALTADENA, Calif. (AP) — Candace Frazee recently walked through the burnt remains of The Bunny Museum, searching for anything that could be salvaged before workers cleared the land. The Eaton Fire in Southern California in January scorched more than 60,000 bunny objects and memorabilia, leaving behind mounds of ash, steel and concrete littered across the landscape. Giant bunny statues that once greeted guests were left just wiry, hollow skeletons. Her home in the back was also gone. Yet amid the debris, there are valuable materials being redeemed: Metal, concrete and some trees are being recycled and given new life. 'It's fantastic. It's absolutely fantastic,' said Frazee of recycling the materials, who co-founded the museum with her husband. 'That's the right thing to do.' After the Palisades and Eaton fires scorched entire neighborhoods, the Army Corps of Engineers set up operations to recycle concrete and metal from mostly fire-damaged homes. Metal is compacted and concrete is crushed, then trucked to recycling facilities before re-entering the supply chain for future uses. And some trees and shrubs are processed and sold. 'A lot of this material can be reused in future construction, and that's just good for the environment,' said Col. Sonny Avichal, an Army Corps commander for the Eaton Fire. 'And so there is definitely this notion of, you know, a lot of the stuff that we're able to recover will actually come back and help rebuild Altadena.' The agency said these operations have sped up recovery efforts, reduced waste going to landfills and helped lower the number of trucks on the road, but they've also sparked some worries. Residents have raised concerns that the work produces or kick up particles into the air. The Army Corps maintains they're ensuring operations are safe by monitoring air quality and continually watering the sites to minimize dust. Steel is an 'infinitely recyclable' material A large dump truck filled with wiry and garbled steel arrived at an Altadena golf course that had been partially burned. The metal pulled from fire-destroyed properties was compacted here before being trucked to a recycling facility where it can be melted, cast and resold. A steel beam can become a steel beam again, or be morphed into a car door or roof panel. Across the globe, the steel industry represents an estimated 8% of planet-warming emissions, and just 1 to 2 % in the U.S. — the fourth largest steel producer. And according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, a trade association, recycled steel doesn't lose its quality. Annually, some 60 to 80 million tons of steel scrap are recycled into new products in North America. Every refrigerator that's recycled reduces 215 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, according to the group's estimates. 'Steel is infinitely recyclable,' said Adina Renee Adler, executive director of the Global Steel Climate Council, an industry group working to reduce carbon emissions. 'It is, in fact, the most recycled material out of everything that we have.' Adler hopes people who lost homes to the fires will feel a glimmer of hope knowing some of those materials will be given new life. That could be for somebody else, somewhere else, or to build their own homes anew. The concrete that arrived to these sites is pulverized into large concrete chunks piled 10 feet (3.05 meters) high into inch-and-a-half and 3 inch pieces before being trucked to local construction materials companies. In its new form, concrete can be used to elevate ground in construction sites, for example, or provide a base layer before pavement is applied, or be used to create concrete again. Making concrete is responsible for roughly 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions and 2% in the U.S., most of which come from producing and processing its predecessor, cement. That's because coal and other fossil fuels, which emit greenhouse gases when burned, are the main energy sources for making cement, and the actual chemical reaction that occurs when producing it also releases planet-warming emissions, said Ben Skinner, a manager on the cement and concrete team with RMI, a group working to accelerate the clean energy transition. But recycling concrete doesn't substantially lower its carbon footprint, he added. It does, however, have 'great environmental impacts' because it reduces the extraction of new raw materials when it's turned into aggregate — stuff like sand or gravel used to make concrete — while still producing high quality material. It also keeps waste from going to landfills. Some trees could also be used in rebuilding Large trees were knocked onto homes and parkways from the same powerful winds that sent fires out of control, and the infernos scorched canopies. Trees that fell into ash get sent to landfills. Others that are still standing and pose a safety risk are cut down. Some logs are sent to local mills to be manufactured into lumber that can be used in the rebuilding process. Others are mulched to become soil amendment, the name for organic matter added to soil to improve its quality, then sold to companies and farmers, said Matthew Long, senior program manager for Environmental Chemical Corporation, the contractor running the operations. Long has done fire recovery work for nearly a decade — including in Hawaii after the Lahaina fires and other California blazes in 2017 and 2018. 'It's really rewarding work,' he said. 'You're interacting with someone who lost everything daily and helping them move to the next step of recovery.' ___
Hamilton Spectator
2 days ago
- Hamilton Spectator
LA fires charred homes into piles of metal and concrete. By recycling them, they're given new life
ALTADENA, Calif. (AP) — Candace Frazee recently walked through the burnt remains of The Bunny Museum, searching for anything that could be salvaged before workers cleared the land. The Eaton Fire in Southern California in January scorched more than 60,000 bunny objects and memorabilia, leaving behind mounds of ash, steel and concrete littered across the landscape. Giant bunny statues that once greeted guests were left just wiry, hollow skeletons. Her home in the back was also gone. Yet amid the debris, there are valuable materials being redeemed: Metal, concrete and some trees are being recycled and given new life. 'It's fantastic. It's absolutely fantastic,' said Frazee of recycling the materials, who co-founded the museum with her husband. 'That's the right thing to do.' After the Palisades and Eaton fires scorched entire neighborhoods, the Army Corps of Engineers set up operations to recycle concrete and metal from mostly fire-damaged homes. Metal is compacted and concrete is crushed, then trucked to recycling facilities before re-entering the supply chain for future uses. And some trees and shrubs are processed and sold. 'A lot of this material can be reused in future construction, and that's just good for the environment,' said Col. Sonny Avichal, an Army Corps commander for the Eaton Fire. 'And so there is definitely this notion of, you know, a lot of the stuff that we're able to recover will actually come back and help rebuild Altadena.' The agency said these operations have sped up recovery efforts, reduced waste going to landfills and helped lower the number of trucks on the road, but they've also sparked some worries. Residents have raised concerns that the work produces or kick up particles into the air. The Army Corps maintains they're ensuring operations are safe by monitoring air quality and continually watering the sites to minimize dust. Steel is an 'infinitely recyclable' material A large dump truck filled with wiry and garbled steel arrived at an Altadena golf course that had been partially burned. The metal pulled from fire-destroyed properties was compacted here before being trucked to a recycling facility where it can be melted, cast and resold. A steel beam can become a steel beam again, or be morphed into a car door or roof panel. Across the globe, the steel industry represents an estimated 8% of planet-warming emissions, and just 1 to 2 % in the U.S. — the fourth largest steel producer. And according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, a trade association, recycled steel doesn't lose its quality. Annually, some 60 to 80 million tons of steel scrap are recycled into new products in North America. Every refrigerator that's recycled reduces 215 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, according to the group's estimates. 'Steel is infinitely recyclable,' said Adina Renee Adler, executive director of the Global Steel Climate Council, an industry group working to reduce carbon emissions. 'It is, in fact, the most recycled material out of everything that we have.' Adler hopes people who lost homes to the fires will feel a glimmer of hope knowing some of those materials will be given new life. That could be for somebody else, somewhere else, or to build their own homes anew. Recycling concrete has environmental perks The concrete that arrived to these sites is pulverized into large concrete chunks piled 10 feet (3.05 meters) high into inch-and-a-half and 3 inch pieces before being trucked to local construction materials companies. In its new form, concrete can be used to elevate ground in construction sites, for example, or provide a base layer before pavement is applied, or be used to create concrete again. Making concrete is responsible for roughly 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions and 2% in the U.S., most of which come from producing and processing its predecessor, cement . That's because coal and other fossil fuels, which emit greenhouse gases when burned, are the main energy sources for making cement , and the actual chemical reaction that occurs when producing it also releases planet-warming emissions, said Ben Skinner, a manager on the cement and concrete team with RMI, a group working to accelerate the clean energy transition. But recycling concrete doesn't substantially lower its carbon footprint, he added. It does, however, have 'great environmental impacts' because it reduces the extraction of new raw materials when it's turned into aggregate — stuff like sand or gravel used to make concrete — while still producing high quality material. It also keeps waste from going to landfills. Some trees could also be used in rebuilding Large trees were knocked onto homes and parkways from the same powerful winds that sent fires out of control, and the infernos scorched canopies. Trees that fell into ash get sent to landfills. Others that are still standing and pose a safety risk are cut down. Some logs are sent to local mills to be manufactured into lumber that can be used in the rebuilding process. Others are mulched to become soil amendment, the name for organic matter added to soil to improve its quality, then sold to companies and farmers, said Matthew Long, senior program manager for Environmental Chemical Corporation, the contractor running the operations. Long has done fire recovery work for nearly a decade — including in Hawaii after the Lahaina fires and other California blazes in 2017 and 2018. 'It's really rewarding work,' he said. 'You're interacting with someone who lost everything daily and helping them move to the next step of recovery.' ___ The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP's environmental coverage, visit .
Associated Press
2 days ago
- Associated Press
LA fires charred homes into piles of metal and concrete. By recycling them, they're given new life
ALTADENA, Calif. (AP) — Candace Frazee recently walked through the burnt remains of The Bunny Museum, searching for anything that could be salvaged before workers cleared the land. The Eaton Fire in Southern California in January scorched more than 60,000 bunny objects and memorabilia, leaving behind mounds of ash, steel and concrete littered across the landscape. Giant bunny statues that once greeted guests were left just wiry, hollow skeletons. Her home in the back was also gone. Yet amid the debris, there are valuable materials being redeemed: Metal, concrete and some trees are being recycled and given new life. 'It's fantastic. It's absolutely fantastic,' said Frazee of recycling the materials, who co-founded the museum with her husband. 'That's the right thing to do.' After the Palisades and Eaton fires scorched entire neighborhoods, the Army Corps of Engineers set up operations to recycle concrete and metal from mostly fire-damaged homes. Metal is compacted and concrete is crushed, then trucked to recycling facilities before re-entering the supply chain for future uses. And some trees and shrubs are processed and sold. 'A lot of this material can be reused in future construction, and that's just good for the environment,' said Col. Sonny Avichal, an Army Corps commander for the Eaton Fire. 'And so there is definitely this notion of, you know, a lot of the stuff that we're able to recover will actually come back and help rebuild Altadena.' The agency said these operations have sped up recovery efforts, reduced waste going to landfills and helped lower the number of trucks on the road, but they've also sparked some worries. Residents have raised concerns that the work produces or kick up particles into the air. The Army Corps maintains they're ensuring operations are safe by monitoring air quality and continually watering the sites to minimize dust. Steel is an 'infinitely recyclable' material A large dump truck filled with wiry and garbled steel arrived at an Altadena golf course that had been partially burned. The metal pulled from fire-destroyed properties was compacted here before being trucked to a recycling facility where it can be melted, cast and resold. A steel beam can become a steel beam again, or be morphed into a car door or roof panel. Across the globe, the steel industry represents an estimated 8% of planet-warming emissions, and just 1 to 2 % in the U.S. — the fourth largest steel producer. And according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, a trade association, recycled steel doesn't lose its quality. Annually, some 60 to 80 million tons of steel scrap are recycled into new products in North America. Every refrigerator that's recycled reduces 215 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, according to the group's estimates. 'Steel is infinitely recyclable,' said Adina Renee Adler, executive director of the Global Steel Climate Council, an industry group working to reduce carbon emissions. 'It is, in fact, the most recycled material out of everything that we have.' Adler hopes people who lost homes to the fires will feel a glimmer of hope knowing some of those materials will be given new life. That could be for somebody else, somewhere else, or to build their own homes anew. Recycling concrete has environmental perks The concrete that arrived to these sites is pulverized into large concrete chunks piled 10 feet (3.05 meters) high into inch-and-a-half and 3 inch pieces before being trucked to local construction materials companies. In its new form, concrete can be used to elevate ground in construction sites, for example, or provide a base layer before pavement is applied, or be used to create concrete again. Making concrete is responsible for roughly 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions and 2% in the U.S., most of which come from producing and processing its predecessor, cement. That's because coal and other fossil fuels, which emit greenhouse gases when burned, are the main energy sources for making cement, and the actual chemical reaction that occurs when producing it also releases planet-warming emissions, said Ben Skinner, a manager on the cement and concrete team with RMI, a group working to accelerate the clean energy transition. But recycling concrete doesn't substantially lower its carbon footprint, he added. It does, however, have 'great environmental impacts' because it reduces the extraction of new raw materials when it's turned into aggregate — stuff like sand or gravel used to make concrete — while still producing high quality material. It also keeps waste from going to landfills. Some trees could also be used in rebuilding Large trees were knocked onto homes and parkways from the same powerful winds that sent fires out of control, and the infernos scorched canopies. Trees that fell into ash get sent to landfills. Others that are still standing and pose a safety risk are cut down. Some logs are sent to local mills to be manufactured into lumber that can be used in the rebuilding process. Others are mulched to become soil amendment, the name for organic matter added to soil to improve its quality, then sold to companies and farmers, said Matthew Long, senior program manager for Environmental Chemical Corporation, the contractor running the operations. Long has done fire recovery work for nearly a decade — including in Hawaii after the Lahaina fires and other California blazes in 2017 and 2018. 'It's really rewarding work,' he said. 'You're interacting with someone who lost everything daily and helping them move to the next step of recovery.' ___ The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP's environmental coverage, visit
