Altadena and Pacific Palisades rebuild unevenly after devastating wildfires

Among the many things Beatriz Coca did not know about building a house - and only learned as workers were laying rebar in her future basement - is that she would need a temporary power pole installed before the next phase of construction could begin.

Coca was one of the dozens of applicants who drop in daily to Los Angeles County's One-Stop Permit Center for Eaton fire rebuilding. Her mission on a recent day was to pay Southern California Edison the $425 power pole fee.

Mixing with the contractors, architects and expediters who normally frequent building offices, novices like Coca, a retired psychologist, are showing up at the center to run errands for their builders, pursue their own applications or just try to understand the many roadblocks in their path to recovery.

The first thing they are likely to learn is that nothing moves at a speedy pace.

A Times analysis of Los Angeles County building permit records shows two distinct realities: Interest in rebuilding is high and progress is slow.

At the end of March, The Times found, just under 3,400 applications to rebuild destroyed residences had been filed. That's about 56% of the roughly 6,000 residential structures in Altadena that CalFire designated as destroyed.

The time it takes those applicants to obtain building permits has steadily grown from a median of 127 days in December, when The Times first calculated the figure, to 155 days currently.

To date, 33 new homes have been completed, more than 1,000 are under construction, and about 560 more have received building permits.

A different profile has developed in Pacific Palisades. Applications have been filed with the city of Los Angeles to rebuild only about a third of the destroyed dwellings there, but the turnaround is faster, averaging less than 100 days from application to permit. So far permits have been issued for 867 homes and seven have been completed.

The Times analysis showed that both communities were still progressing well behind the pace of Santa Rosa after the 2017 Tubbs fire, with about half as many permits issued in the Palisades as a percentage of those burned and two-thirds in Altadena in the same period.