The Palisadian-Post photographed volunteer Savanna Fiehler clearing dirt at a fire-damaged property on Edgar Street on September 23. At another address on the same street, the paper documented a volunteer using a chainsaw and a group clearing landscape. It was the opening day of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles’ four-day Pacific Palisades Community Build, an effort to put volunteers to work on damaged properties and neighborhood spaces.
Habitat listed the event for September 23 through 26 in Pacific Palisades and Malibu. The organization’s event page said participants would take on landscaping, exterior repairs and neighborhood projects. The Palisadian-Post’s report from the September 23 kickoff identified homes with varying levels of fire damage on Avenida De Santa Ynez, Edgar Street, Palisades Drive, Enchanted Way and Livorno Drive. Its photos and captions record volunteers clearing and preparing outdoor areas on Edgar Street that day.
The kickoff began at Habitat LA’s base camp at the site of the Corpus Christi rectory, in the 800 block of Toyopa Drive. The rectory had been destroyed in the fire. Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park, Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath, Habitat LA president and chief executive Erin Rank, and Monsignor Liam Kidney, pastor of Corpus Christi, addressed volunteers and attendees. The gathering marked a workday within a much longer recovery effort across the neighborhood.
The documented tasks show a limited but concrete part of the process. Clearing dirt and landscape at a damaged address does not mean a house is finished or that a family can return. Neither Habitat’s event page nor the Palisadian-Post report gave a final tally of homes completed during the four-day build. The local reporting instead establishes the kickoff, several work locations, and outdoor preparation by volunteers on September 23.
Habitat’s event page lists 200+ volunteers among the people for the build. It separately lists wildfire survivors, local residents, civic leaders, skilled tradespeople and community organizations among the participants. The page is an organizer’s event description, not a verified turnout figure; the Palisadian-Post did not publish an as-run count. The Palisades Recovery Coalition’s calendar listed Habitat Community Build activity on September 24 and September 26, corroborating dates within the scheduled event without establishing attendance or completed work.
Alongside the build, Habitat LA was providing longer-term help for people navigating reconstruction. In the September 26 Palisadian-Post report, Rank said 160 families were actively rebuilding with Habitat’s assistance in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and nearby unincorporated areas. She said 167 more families were in the process of applying. The counts describe Habitat’s wider program, not the volunteer event, and reflect what Rank reported to the paper at that time.
The article describes the organization’s assistance as including rebuilding and remediation, furnishings, loans, counseling and down-payment help. Rank said Habitat’s rebuild navigators help residents work through questions; staff can review contractor bids and consult about utility hookups. She also described assistance for condominium and mobile-home residents, including work with homeowners associations. These services address parts of the rebuilding process beyond the outdoor clearing documented during the Community Build.
At the kickoff, officials talked about residents still waiting to rebuild and the value of volunteers’ time. Horvath cited displacement and insurance-gap figures, while Rank discussed funding gaps that can prevent longtime residents from rebuilding. The Palisadian-Post attributed those figures and assessments to the officials. Its report did not include a final count of repairs completed or a homeowner describing a specific result from the four-day event.
That is why the build is best understood as one piece of a much longer process. The sources establish volunteer work on damaged properties, organizers’ planned scope, and a separate support program helping families consider next steps. They do not show that the volunteer event completed home rebuilds or returned residents to their houses.
The four-day build was scheduled to run through September 26. Habitat described its goal as helping fire survivors rebuild, while the independent local report documented how the work opened. The record is specific: volunteers cleared outdoor areas on Edgar Street, the kickoff brought local officials and community members to a shared base camp, and Habitat staff were helping residents navigate bids, utilities and other rebuilding questions.
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