A new sound in Pacific Palisades: Hammers on nails

There’s a new buzz in Pacific Palisades lately.

The streets were quiet for a long time, except for the rumble of excavators and dump trucks, clearing away the debris.

But now, if you visit the Palisades during the day, you will hear the rhythm of hammers against nails.

The wood frames of the new houses are finally going up.

For weeks after the January 2025 fire, the Palisades were a graveyard of chimneys, jewels sadly marking the ruins where their homes once stood.

Then the Army Corps of Engineers swept in.

LA Mayor Karen Bass said it will take 18 months to clear the lot. With President Donald Trump in office, it took less than eight.

Still, it was quiet in the city.

City officials were slow to approve rebuilding permits. And some of the insurance companies dragged their feet for months, leaving home owners scrambling for cash.

However, last January, President Trump decided to get involved.

I personally saw him sign an executive order in the Oval Office where he took over the permitting process for the Palisades and Eaton Fire sites. (I kept the pen.)

The residents were stunned by this news. Others pointed out that permits are no longer a deterrent, and that the city has begun to do its job.

But what was most important was that the president was involved in the rebuilding effort in a way that no other state or local official had done.

Finally, someone answered. And there was nothing for Trump – no votes, not even a congressional seat to take.

He did this because he had friends in the Palisades who – rich and successful though they may be – were on their edge.

And you did it, I believe, because you care.

Love him or hate him — and Palisades is heavily Democratic — Trump has given the effort to rebuild power.

He assigned EPA director Lee Zeldin — one of the administration’s most effective members — to oversee the process.

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Zeldin’s team met peacefully with local residents to find out what the issues were.

Most importantly, he also met with Mayor Bass.

Bass once told Trump to get out of the rebuilding effort — “to run his business, because we’re running ours.”

But one of our Palisadian brothers, a man named Spencer Pratt, started running for mayor.

Then Nithya Raman, a socialist on the City Council, jumped into the race, unexpectedly.

The mayor immediately had every incentive to cooperate with the Trump administration — to criticize Spencer’s criticism, and to cast Raman as a threat to the rebuilding effort.

Bass is a poor director, but good at building relationships. And as luck would have it, he and Zeldin got along well when they were in Congress together.

It was democracy at work: As the 2026 election approached, everyone began to pull in the same direction.

(Everyone except Gavin Newsom, who seems to think that fighting Trump is good for his presidential chances.)

Homes went up first on “Alphabet Streets” near the center of the Palisades, where smaller lots made building cheaper.

Then they started going up to Marquez Knolls, my neighborhood, where the neighbors have come together to help each other.

There is still much to be done. And it’s hard to drive past vacant lots, overgrown with tall weeds.

There are burglars who steal building materials, and burn copycats looking for trouble.

The streets are dark and scary at night.

My house, which survived the fire, is half a house at the moment. We had to strip the entire back wall.

We also had to remove the soil, which was contaminated with lead. California is very good at hazardous waste, so we had to truck it to Arizona, which cost a lot of money. And insurance does not cover soil.

My wife used to joke that I should have let the place burn instead of fighting the fire with buckets of water. It would be easy.

But when I saw those redwood stud beams in the background, exposed for the first time in 76 years, they were as good as new.

No one builds with redwood. We still have it.

Part of the house sounds like a development. It sounds like hope.

In December, I visited Coffey Park in Santa Rosa, which burned down in 2017.

Almost completely rebuilt. I was standing in the park and heard dogs barking and children playing. It became a community again.

I realized that we can do it too.

There is still a long way to go. But during the pandemic, stuck in that house, my son and I read Homer’s Odyssey together.

It’s about a young man trying to get home.

That is the essence of every epic story.

And this one is ours.

Joel Pollak is the Opinion editor for the California Post.