The Woolsey Fire Was the Warning, but Failure to Act on Lessons Learned Made Palisades Pay the Price

(Editor’s note: this story first appeared in the Westside Current on April 17 and is reprinted with permission.)

By JAMIE PAIGE

Woolsey Fire (2018): A Catastrophe Exposes Systemic Gaps

When the Woolsey Fire ignited on November 8, 2018, it quickly became an “epic” wildfire that overwhelmed the region’s emergency response institutions​. In its first critical hours, the fight was hampered by communication breakdowns and a scarcity of air support, equipment and firefighters​.

Multiple major blazes were burning across California that day – including the Hill Fire in Ventura County and the Camp Fire in Paradise – stretching resources thin. As a result, Woolsey’s incident commanders found their urgent calls for help going unanswered.

“Resources were frequently requested for the Woolsey Fire, and those requests went unfulfilled in the first 21.5 hours of the incident,” a county after-action report found​. In fact, over half of all engine requests in the first two days went unfilled, a 53% shortfall in mutual aid that “partly explains why Malibu residents may have felt abandoned” during the fire​.

Interagency coordination issues compounded the problem. The Woolsey Fire ignited on the Los Angeles–Ventura county line, in an area covered by a joint protection agreement between Ventura County, L.A. County, and Los Angeles City fire departments. In practice, that agreement faltered: Ventura County, already battling the Hill Fire nearby, sent only a skeleton crew to Woolsey, and L.A. County Fire initially held most of its engines back at the county line waiting for the blaze to cross into its jurisdiction​. Los Angeles City (LAFD) crews jumped in aggressively on the L.A. city side, but a fully unified command was slow to materialize. Front-line firefighters later complained of a lack of water, communication and direction from incident leaders as the fast-moving inferno raged across 97,000 acres​.

We made it out, but barely missed the explosion of embers pushed by hurricane-type winds. There were no firefighters, no police—just chaos. It felt like a war zone. The fire was everywhere, and the confusion and fear were overwhelming.”

Some fire companies in the field reported low water pressure from hydrants and scrambled to find water sources as flames encroached; one dramatic photo captured a firefighter desperately gesturing for “more water pressure” along Pacific Coast Highway as a house burned​.

It was a stark indication that even the basic infrastructure needed to fight the fire was strained to the breaking point.

Evacuation Failures

Evacuation procedures during the Woolsey Fire proved equally chaotic. The blaze forced nearly 300,000 people, yet Los Angeles County’s emergency management system was unprepared to handle such a massive operation.

“The Woolsey Fire was one of the most stressful and terrifying experiences of our lives,” said Frank Trejo, a father of three who lives on Malibou Lake. “We watched in disbelief as the flames pushed south from the 118 Freeway, eventually crossing the 101, tearing toward Paramount Ranch, and racing to Malibou Lake. The fear was amplified by the complete uncertainty—no one knew when to evacuate or which direction was even safe.”

Trejo said he and his family began packing their cars before midnight. Though they couldn’t yet see flames from the lake, they watched the fire’s advance unfold on television.

“By 2 a.m., we heard a mandatory evacuation order,” he said. “We evacuated, and the fire had already overrun Paramount Ranch and was consuming both sides of Cornell Road. We made it out, but barely missed the explosion of embers pushed by hurricane-type winds. There were no firefighters, no police—just chaos. It felt like a war zone. The fire was everywhere, and the confusion and fear were overwhelming.”

“There were no emergency auto calls to cell phones, no sirens and no bullhorns warning us to leave. If it hadn’t been for my husband listening to the radio, my son and I might have been in the house when the fire reached our neighborhood.”

According to the official after-action review, sheriff’s deputies in the field “did not have accurate information for evacuating residents,” and many communities lacked pre-planned evacuation routes.

“My neighbors informed me that they were evacuated around 3:00 a.m. on the 8th, but my family never received that notice,” said Meghan Gallagher, a resident of Cornell. “My husband and I started our day as usual, with him leaving for work while I stayed home to get our 13-year-old son ready for school. At around 7:45 a.m., I received an automated call from my son’s school, stating that they were closing for the day due to possible unhealthy air quality from a nearby fire.”

Shortly afterward, her husband called from the Malibu area, where he had heard on the radio that the fire had jumped the freeway. He urged her to begin packing important items in case an evacuation became necessary. Then, the power went out.

“As I began loading the car, I noticed a fire truck driving down Mulholland [Highway] with some firefighters walking on foot,” she said. “They informed me that the area had been evacuated and that I should leave immediately. I explained that we had not been notified and assured them I was leaving right away.”

Gallagher, her son, four dogs, two cats, and what few belongings they could gather—missing many important family papers and photos—piled into the car. But when she tried to open the gate with the automatic remote, it didn’t work due to the power outage.

“I didn’t know how to open it manually, so I called out to the firefighters for help,” she said. “Two of them ran back to my house, jumped over an 8-foot wall, and used bolt cutters to manually cut the gate’s chain and push it open. They instructed me to head to the right, as the fire was approaching Cornell and Mulholland.”

Gallagher described the evacuation process as “chaotic, disorganized and poorly orchestrated.”

“There were no emergency auto calls to cell phones, no sirens and no bullhorns warning us to leave,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for my husband listening to the radio, my son and I might have been in the house when the fire reached our neighborhood.”

Beyond her community, the same failures played out across the region. Except for one pre-existing evacuation plan for Topanga Canyon, officials lacked detailed knowledge of which roads could handle mass traffic.

There was “no plan for how to convert Pacific Coast Highway into a one-way road,” according to the review, forcing a single California Highway Patrol officer to improvise traffic flow on the fly.

That led to severe bottlenecks as residents tried to flee down the coast.

Communication also broke down. Authorities relied heavily on social media updates, assuming word would spread organically, but “had no unified strategy for notifications” and defaulted to fragmented communication between agencies.

“The assumption that everyone is digitally connected 24/7… is still a faulty assumption,” noted one emergency alert expert, emphasizing that effective evacuation orders must be delivered consistently across all available channels—social media, television, radio, and wireless emergency alerts—to reach the broadest audience.

During Woolsey, that didn’t happen. Many residents, like the Gallaghers, reported confusion, lack of guidance, and uncertainty about whether it was safe to leave—or to return.

Further controversy emerged around political interference. In the aftermath, the Los Angeles Fire Department revealed that numerous calls from politicians and well-connected individuals demanding protection for specific homes distracted fire commanders at the height of the Woolsey battle.

“A significant number of requests by political figures to check on specific addresses… distracted [the] Department leadership from priority objectives,” LAFD’s own after-action report noted bluntly​. Senior officers cautioned that such VIP requests, while common in wealthy communities, must not derail incident command.

During Woolsey, however, precious time and resources were diverted to respond to these inquiries, an illustration of how improper influence and lack of clear protocol can hamper emergency response.

In sum, the Woolsey inferno – which destroyed over 1,600 structures and claimed three lives – exposed critical weaknesses: strained mutual aid and interagency coordination, inadequate water infrastructure under extreme conditions, flawed evacuation planning, poor public communication, and even lapses in command focus.

Officials vowed that the tragedy would serve as a wake-up call.

Dozens of reforms were recommended in the county’s 203-page post-action report to address these failures. As one section warned, residents could not assume that fire agencies would always be able to save them, especially when multiple disasters strike at once​. The true test would be whether Los Angeles County and its partner agencies would act decisively on Woolsey’s hard lessons – or risk repeating them.

Slow Progress and Warnings Unheeded (2019–2023)

In the year following Woolsey, Los Angeles County leaders did initiate changes. A consultant team produced 88 specific recommendations, and by 2022 the county claimed it acted on over 80% of those.

County leaders said that improvements were made in emergency alert systems, interagency training, and community outreach. The county Office of Emergency Management, under new leadership, pledged to “drive change and improvement countywide” using the Woolsey report’s findings​.

Fire departments updated protocols for unified command in split jurisdictions, hoping to avoid the jurisdictional hesitation seen in Woolsey. There was also discussion of increasing local firefighting resources after Supervisor Janice Hahn noted Woolsey “proved that we can’t rely on mutual aid” alone​. In short, officials recognized that mega-fires were becoming a recurring threat and talked of being better prepared.

Yet alongside these steps forward, there were troubling areas of inaction – missed opportunities that would come back to haunt the county. Perhaps most glaring was the failure to upgrade critical water infrastructure in high-fire-risk communities.

In the hills and canyons of Malibu and Topanga, the Woolsey Fire had strained the limited water delivery system, draining hydrants and leaving firefighters begging for pressure. County engineers had long known the system was under-capacity for a wildfire scenario: as far back as 2013, a list of “highest priority” projects called for new water tanks, larger pipes, and inter-connections to bolster fire flow in these areas​.

But year after year, those projects stalled. Public records show that plans to add over 1 million gallons of storage and replace aging, “leak-prone” pipelines were left on the drawing board, delayed by funding shortfalls, environmental reviews, and, by some accounts, local opposition to development​.

A proposed emergency pipeline link between Malibu’s system and a neighboring water district – which a 2015 plan said could “prevent water shortages” in a catastrophe – sat unbuilt as bureaucratic delays piled up.

By 2019, county supervisors again listed these water system upgrades as urgent, budgeting roughly $59 million for 13 projects and setting a target of completion by 2024​. But that timeline slipped. As of late 2024, most projects had not even broken ground.

The community’s lukewarm support for infrastructure investment was part of the problem: Malibu residents, who pay some of the highest water rates in the county, protested rate hikes and worried that expanded water capacity could spur unwanted development​.

In the end, despite Woolsey’s stark warning about firefighting water needs, the hardening of the water infrastructure remained largely undone by the time the next fires struck.

Emergency evacuation planning for vulnerable populations was another deficit slow to be addressed. Woolsey’s evacuations had been chaotic but ultimately succeeded in getting most people out alive, in part because many residents self-evacuated early.

However, it was noted that there was no system to identify and assist residents who couldn’t drive or needed special help to evacuate. Advocates pressed the county to create a registry of elderly and disabled residents for disaster planning. While some preliminary efforts were made, a robust plan was not in place by 2024.

Similarly, though communication systems were upgraded – for example, the county gained the ability to send Wireless Emergency Alerts to all cell phones in an area – those tools would need effective use and coordination among agencies to make a difference. As the region would soon learn, technology alone couldn’t fix deeper coordination problems.

Through late 2023, officials repeatedly warned that Southern California’s wildfire risk was as high as ever. Drought, overgrown vegetation, and more frequent wind events meant that the “next Woolsey” was not a question of if, but when.

Fire departments conducted drills and pre-deployed crews during red flag wind forecasts. But even as minor brush fires flared and were subdued, the lingering unfilled gaps – in infrastructure, in fully unified emergency command, and in detailed evacuation logistics – remained perilous vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, it would take back-to-back disasters in the winter of 2024–25 to reveal just how much work was left unfinished.

Franklin Fire (Dec 2024): A Narrow Escape in Malibu

The Franklin Fire erupted amid fierce Santa Ana winds in the Malibu Canyon/Corral Canyon area – the same region devastated by the Woolsey Fire six years earlier.

Fanned by gusts topping 50 mph, the wildfire raced through chaparral in the mountains above the coast, at one point threatening Pepperdine University and nearby neighborhoods. For Malibu residents, it was an eerie case of déjà vu.

“Although the Franklin fire has scorched about 4,000 acres, it pales in comparison to the nearly 97,000-acre Woolsey fire in 2018, which still looms large in many residents’ minds,” locals braced for the worst.  Memories of 2018’s firestorm had people packing their cars at the first whiff of smoke.

This time, the outcome was markedly better. Over 20,000 residents were ordered or warned to evacuate during the Franklin Fire’s peak​, but firefighters managed to prevent a catastrophe.

By the time winds eased and cooler, moist Pacific air rolled in, approximately 4,000 acres had burned 20 structures and to 28 others, encompassing both residential and commercial properties – a tragedy for those families, but a fraction of Woolsey’s destruction.

Officials credited improved coordination and a bit of luck. Multiple fire agencies, including L.A. County Fire and Cal Fire, attacked the Franklin blaze in a unified command from the outset.

Aircraft were mobilized quickly, and ground crews took advantage of firefighting tactics refined since Woolsey. “We’ve had a lot of good success… we were able to repopulate residents back into their homes,” Incident Commander Dusty Martin announced at a community briefing, just five days after the fire started​.

The message was that the Franklin Fire had been contained and life in Malibu was returning to normal.

Yet, underlying problems were evident even in this “successful” firefight. Veteran residents noted that it was only a fortuitous shift in weather – a lull in the Santa Ana winds and rising humidity – that truly turned the tide. Had the gale continued, Franklin could have easily swept into central Malibu. In fact, fire commanders kept wary eyes on forecasts of another wind event the following week, knowing how fast conditions could turn​.

Moreover, some of the vulnerabilities from 2018 were still present. Water pressure in the remote canyons remained a concern; firefighters, while not as hamstrung as during Woolsey, still had to truck water into some areas.

At least one local homeowner became a symbol of resident self-reliance: lacking confidence that help would arrive in time, he stayed behind with a garden hose and even used his swimming pool water to douse embers around his property.

Such stories echoed the Woolsey era, when a handful of Malibu citizens famously formed impromptu fire brigades to save homes. Ideally, residents wouldn’t feel compelled to take such risks, but the fact they did suggests gaps in on-the-ground coverage. Franklin was a warning shot that even with better preparation, nature could still overwhelm, and critical infrastructure upgrades were still desperately needed.

“If my neighbor hadn’t texted me before the blackout, I wouldn’t have known there was a fire and to evacuate.”

One infrastructure failure during the Franklin Fire foreshadowed a much bigger crisis to come: fire hydrants in parts of Malibu simply could not deliver enough water. Residents in several neighborhoods reported that hydrants ran dry or had very weak flow as firefighters tried to draw water.

In the end, Franklin’s footprint was limited enough that these shortfalls did not cost lives,  but they highlighted the years-long delay in strengthening the water system. The same trouble spots that struggled for water during Woolsey – poorly supplied canyon areas and dead-end water lines – still had not been fixed by 2024. Los Angeles County had been warned repeatedly about this vulnerability, but the fixes were slow in coming.

Communication was also still lacking. Karen Doyle, who rents a small studio east of Malibu, said the lack of communication during the Fire was especially troubling. Her power had already been cut that morning, leaving her without cell service or Wi-Fi. “If my neighbor hadn’t texted me before the blackout, I wouldn’t have known there was a fire and to evacuate,” Doyle said.

Franklin Fire thus ended as a mixed story: on one hand, it showed improved emergency response coordination and quicker containment relative to a Woolsey-level event. On the other hand, it underlined how some Woolsey lessons had not fully translated into action on the ground.

As Malibu’s fire-weary residents breathed a sigh of relief, many hoped the near-miss would spur officials to finally complete the protective measures that had languished. Little did they know, an even more ferocious windstorm and wildfire were only weeks away – and this time, the consequences would be far worse.

Palisades Fire (Jan 2025): History Repeats with Deadly Consequences

In the predawn hours of January 7, 2025, disaster struck Los Angeles on a scale that eclipsed even the nightmare of Woolsey. A fierce Santa Ana wind event – the most powerful in years – blasted through the region, toppling trees and power lines.

Around 10:30 a.m., fire crews were dispatched to a brush fire igniting near the boundary of Pacific Palisades and Malibu. Fueled by hurricane-force gusts, the Palisades Fire exploded through dry coastal canyons, racing toward neighborhoods in the Pacific Palisades and into unincorporated Malibu-adjacent communities.

Within hours it grew into a conflagration over 23,000 acres, jumping roads and forcing more than 105,000 residents were evacuated as the wildfire rapidly spread. The fire, driven by hurricane-force Santa Ana winds. By nightfall, much of the seaside enclave was an apocalyptic scene – entire streets of homes on fire, iconic hillside vistas cloaked in thick smoke, and embers flying in “vortexes” of wind as residents scrambled to evacuate.

Officials warned that the “worst is yet to come” with overnight winds expected to intensify, grounding firefighting aircraft and leaving exhausted ground crews almost on their own.

The Palisades Fire would rage for days, along with another blaze that erupted 35 miles away in Altadena (the Eaton Fire) during the same windstorm. By the time the winds subsided and the fires were contained, the toll was staggering.

In Pacific Palisades and Malibu, nearly 7,000 homes and buildings were reduced to ashes and 12 people lost their lives, making it “likely the costliest disaster in L.A. history,” according to officials​. Another 17 people died in the Altadena fire, most of them senior citizens who could not escape in time.

The devastation in the Palisades Fire zone cut across westside city neighborhoods and rustic county areas alike. It marked a devastating bookend to the promises made after Woolsey: many of the very failures identified in 2018 resurfaced in 2025, now with even deadlier consequences.

Water infrastructure collapse was perhaps the most glaring repeat failure during the Palisades Fire.

As firefighters surged into the burning neighborhoods, they often found no water in the hydrants. Later investigations revealed that at least 20% of the hydrants in use went dry as the small local water system was overwhelmed. In one stark example, the 117-million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir – a huge city water tank above the Palisades – had been drained for maintenance and was empty on the day of the fire.

That reservoir could have supplied crucial backup water; instead it sat useless due to poor timing of repairs. This left firefighters entirely dependent on the under-built county water mains in the area, which could not maintain pressure once multiple hoses were open. Crews radioed in frantic calls for water tenders (tank trucks) because hydrants were sputtering.

One firefighter described the moment as “a nightmare scenario of no water” as homes burned around him. Neighbors with swimming pools offered them as water sources of last resort.

Governor Gavin Newsom said he was stunned by reports of hydrants failing, “losing supplies from fire hydrants likely impaired the effort to protect some homes and evacuation corridors” during the fire​. He ordered an investigation, declaring, “We need answers to ensure this does not happen again.”​

Those answers, however, were already hiding in plain sight. A trove of public records later showed that the water disaster was years in the making. L.A. County officials missed dozens of opportunities to implement water system improvements that experts say probably would have enabled firefighters to save more homes​.

Plans for additional storage tanks, high-capacity pumps, and inter-district pipeline connections — many “specifically aimed at improving ‘fire flow’ and ensuring enough water during emergencies” — had been drawn up over the past decade but never completed.

The long-delayed upgrades, estimated at under $60 million, would have been a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in damage now wrought by the fire​. That painful lesson was not lost on residents.

Emergency response coordination and leadership decisions during the Palisades Fire have also come under harsh scrutiny, amid allegations that authorities again fell short.

One major question is whether LAFD and L.A. County Fire – sharing responsibility at the city/county boundary – had pre-positioned sufficient resources given the extreme wind forecasts.

In the Woolsey aftermath, fire departments vowed to pre-deploy strike teams before big wind events. In early January 2025, some extra crews were staged in Southern California as a precaution​. But in Los Angeles, it appears the preparations were inadequate. Just three days before the fire, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass had left the country on a trip to Africa even as weather reports warned of a “particularly dangerous” fire situation. And as the firestorm hit, coordination between agencies became strained.

While L.A. County Fire took lead on areas outside the city, inside Los Angeles the LAFD was managing its own battle. Which agency’s crews arrived first to the ignition point at Piedra Morada Drive? Did city and county commanders effectively share information in the crucial first hours? The public still doesn’t have a clear answer – and that itself has become a scandal.

Mayor Bass’s office was maintaining “extraordinary secrecy” about the city’s preparations and response, refusing to answer basic questions about deployment decisions​. The fire department denied dozens of public records requests from journalist, including the Westside Current, and citizens seeking 911 dispatch logs and internal communications, stonewalling any review of its actions​.

The lack of transparency has angered fire victims.

“People want answers and are getting no answers,” Sue Pascoe told the LA Times in a recent story. Pascoe, a 30-year Palisades resident who lost her home and is the founder of Circling the News, a local online outlet that has provided critical information during and in the aftermath of the fires.

Pascoe also expressed frustration about the City withholding information about 911 calls during the emergency.

The political fallout has been swift. Facing intense criticism, Mayor Bass fired LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley just six weeks after the fire, citing “deployment decisions” before the blaze as a key reason.

A recall campaign even targeted Bass herself for perceived failures in leadership. The secrecy and finger-pointing suggest that, much like after Woolsey, interagency coordination and command once again faltered when put to the ultimate test. Without an open accounting, the community is left to suspect that vital errors were made behind closed doors.

The evacuation of residents during the Palisades Fire and its sister blaze in Altadena revealed perhaps the most heartbreaking repeat of past mistakes. In Malibu and Pacific Palisades, evacuation orders did go out more promptly than in 2018, aided by wireless alerts that blared on cell phones. But even with improved notification systems, the chaos on the ground echoed the failures of Woolsey.

Most mobile, able-bodied residents managed to flee the fast-approaching flames – hence the relatively low death toll in the Palisades portion of the fire. Even so, some local evacuation plans broke down.

Infamous images showed lines of abandoned cars along narrow canyon roads as residents tried to flee—many on foot after traffic came to a standstill. Dramatic video footage captured scenes of confusion and panic, highlighting how little had changed in the years since the last major firestorm.

But the greatest tragedy unfolded in the foothill community of Altadena, illustrating that L.A. County as a whole had still not developed effective procedures to protect its most vulnerable residents. There, in the Eaton Canyon Fire on the same day, 17 people – many of them elderly or disabled – perished when flames overtook their neighborhood​. The median age of the victims was 77, and at least a third had mobility impairments​.

A Los Angeles Times investigation later found that official evacuation alerts to West Altadena went out nearly nine hours late, long after the fire had started​. By the time deputies and firefighters arrived to help evacuate a senior living facility, it was too late for some residents. “The systems which were supposed to be in place for emergencies not only didn’t function, they didn’t even seem to exist,” said one grieving friend of an Altadena victim​.

In Pacific Palisades, a similar story nearly played out: the city of L.A. had no official registry of disabled residents to prioritize in evacuations, so a nonprofit disability center scrambled to contact people they knew in the area and even called rideshares to assist those in need​. It was pure luck that more lives weren’t lost on the west side of town.

These incidents underscore a devastating fact – despite the Woolsey Fire’s lessons, Los Angeles County still lacked a robust, practiced plan to evacuate those who cannot rescue themselves, whether due to age, illness or disability. It was a known gap in 2018 and remained so in 2025.

Recurring Failures and Missed Opportunities

From the Woolsey Fire to the Franklin and Palisades fires, a clear pattern emerges of recurring problems and missed opportunities that compounded the severity of each disaster.

Chief among them: Inadequate water infrastructure for firefighting. Both Woolsey and Palisades saw firefighters literally running out of water at the worst possible moments. Woolsey’s after-action report highlighted water pressure problems in Malibu, yet the promised upgrades were delayed for years​. In 2025, hydrants ran dry and planned emergency water sources were unavailable​.

Experts agree that had the county completed even a few key projects – bigger storage tanks, inter-system connections – fire crews likely could have saved more homes. The failure to act decisively on infrastructure, despite ample warning, is perhaps the most tangible missed opportunity linking Woolsey to Palisades.

In all three fires, moments of confusion and hesitation by agencies cost precious time. Woolsey saw a disjointed tri-agency response at the outset, as Ventura County, L.A. County, and LAFD struggled to coordinate.

Franklin benefited from a smoother unified command, but then Palisades showed coordination issues between the City of L.A. and County once again – evidenced by the post-fire secrecy and leadership turmoil at LAFD​.

The failure to establish transparent, unified incident command in a complex, multi-jurisdiction fire remains an unsolved problem. After Woolsey, officials knew they had to improve mutual aid and communication; by Palisades, it appears some of those improvements were either insufficient or not effectively implemented under pressure.

Woolsey’s chaotic evacuation exposed the need for better planning and public communication. Some progress was made (for instance, wireless alerts used in Palisades), but the fundamental challenge of evacuating large, diverse populations swiftly and safely persists.

The flow of critical information, both to the public and internally between agencies, has repeatedly broken down. During Woolsey, public alerts were scattershot and over-reliant on social media​.

By Palisades, the use of cellphone alerts had improved outreach, but communication issues shifted to the aftermath – where LAFD’s refusal to release records has damaged public trust. A lack of transparency can mask operational mistakes that need addressing.

Woolsey’s extensive post-fire review at least identified problems so they could be fixed; in contrast, the Palisades response has, so far, been shrouded in silence, which could impede learning any lessons. Effective crisis management requires honest communication in real time and after the fact, something authorities have struggled with in these incidents.

Today, many residents impacted by the Woolsey Fire are still picking up the pieces. Empty lots, RVs parked on burned-out properties, and for-sale signs serve as daily reminders that the community is still in recovery.

“To this day, we’re still saddened by all those who lost everything,” Trejo said.

As Palisades residents begin their own long road to recovery, the scars left behind by Woolsey serve as both a warning and a lesson. The path forward will require not only resilience, but vigilance—because for fire-prone communities like these, the threat never truly disappears. Yet amid the loss, one constant remains: the strength of neighbors standing together, determined to rebuild what was lost and protect what remains.