When FEMA failed to test soil for toxic substances after the LA fires, The Times had it done. The results were alarming.
On the heels of the Eaton and Palisades fires, among the most destructive urban wildfires in U.S. history, federal and state disaster agencies have refused to pay for soil testing to ensure fire-related contamination no longer remains in thousands of now-empty dirt lots across Los Angeles County.
Without this long-established precautionary measure, tens of thousands of wildfire survivors are poised to rebuild and eventually return home, not knowing if unhealthy levels of heavy metals are hidden in the soil on their properties. That leaves homeowners with a daunting choice: Pay for testing and potentially additional soil removal themselves, or live with the possibility of lingering contamination.
How concerned should homeowners be? The Los Angeles Times set out to answer that question by launching its own soil-testing initiative, modeled after the state’s sampling methodology used in previous wildfires. Journalists fanned out across Altadena and Pacific Palisades to obtain soil samples from 20 properties cleared by federal cleanup crews and 20 homes that survived; the samples were transported to a state-certified laboratory where they were tested for 17 toxic metals.
Two of the ten Army Corps-remediated homesites in Altadena still had toxic heavy metals in excess of California standards for residential properties — including one where lead levels were more than three times higher than the state benchmark. The findings are the first evidence that — by skipping comprehensive soil sampling — federal contractors are leaving toxic contamination behind.
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-05-04/the-government-wont-test-soil-on-properties-burned-in-the-la-fires-so-we-did-it-ourselves
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