As many as 10,000 homes have burned in the Los Angeles fires, and many people have nowhere to go. Hotels have filled up and the few available rentals in the area were quickly taken up.
Rebuilding will take years and won’t get started until toxic chemicals from burned houses are cleaned up and regulations and permits are waded through.
So there’s been speculation that some of the people who lost their houses might find new homes in Idaho, but it wouldn’t be the first time. Californians have fled their state for Idaho in the past, after major fires and even earthquakes.
But Idaho has also seen its share of fires that have burned homes, or come very close to burning down whole communities. The L.A. fires have a lot of people wondering about building homes in the wildland-urban interface.
Journalist Rocky Barker has been musing about these issues on his blog, he even wrote a book about surviving the 1988 wildfires in Yellowstone National Park, called “Scorched Earth: How the Fires of Yellowstone Changed America,” and he joined Idaho Matters to talk more.
