recover

As local and state leaders celebrate the fastest wildfire debris removal in modern American history, the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Home Estates — a rent-controlled, 170-unit enclave off Pacific Coast Highway — remains largely untouched since it burned down in January.

Weeds grow through cracks in the broken pavement. A community pool is filled with a murky, green liquid. There’s row after row of mangled, rusting metal remains of former homes.

Yet just across a nearly 1,500-foot-long shared property line, the Tahitian Terrace mobile home park — like thousands of fire-destroyed properties cleared by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the last nine months — is now a field of cleaned, empty lots.

The difference in treatment is based on standards used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which directed the corps’ cleanup efforts. FEMA, which focused on providing assistance to local residents — and not properties owned by real estate companies — argued in letters to state officials that since it could rely on the Tahitian’s owners to rebuild the heart of Pacific Palisades’ affordable housing, it would make an exception and include the property. However, it said it could not trust the owners of the Palisades Bowl to do the same.

Both mobile home parks requested federal cleanup services, records obtained from the corps show. And both Los Angeles County and the city of Los Angeles lobbied the agency to include the properties in its mission.

In a May letter approving the corps’ cleanup of the Tahitian, FEMA noted that the property, riddled with asbestos and perched above the busy Pacific Coast Highway, was a public health hazard and that the owners, with limited insurance money, probably would struggle to pay for the cleanup. FEMA Regional Administrator Robert Fenton also wrote to the state Office of Emergency Services, saying that he was “confident” including Tahitian “will accelerate the reopening of the park for its displaced tenants and ensure the community retains this affordable residential enclave in an otherwise affluent area.”

When it came to the Bowl, FEMA took a different tone. The agency said in a July letter to the state agency that with flatter terrain, the Bowl did not pose the same health hazard as the Tahitian Terrace did, and with $1.2 million in insurance money already disbursed to the property owners, it had “no indication the owner lacks the financial means to remove the debris independently.”

FEMA’s letter also noted that unlike with the Tahitian property, “FEMA cannot conclude that Palisades Bowl represents a preserved or guaranteed source of long-term affordable housing,” based on the owners’ track record.

The Bowl’s former residents — artists, teachers, lifeguards, boat riggers, bookstore owners and chefs — are now scattered across Southern California and the globe. Speaking to The Times, many felt helpless, frustrated and unsure whether they’ll be able to return. Many, nine months after the fire, are running out of the insurance money and government aid they’ve relied on to pay rent for temporary housing.

“We’re the great underdogs of the greatest American disaster in history, apparently. This little community,” said Rashi Kaslow, a boat rigger who lived in the Bowl for more than 17 years. “The people of the only two trailer parks — the isolated, actual affordable housing communities … you would think that we would be the No. 1 priority.”

The Bowl began as a Methodist camp in the 1890s, and was developed into a mobile home park in the 1950s. For decades, the Bowl and the Tahitian remained among the only places along the California coast still under rent control, preserved by the Mello Act, and consequently, some of the only affordable housing in the Palisades.

“We’re all connected through this legacy of what we had,” said Travis Hayden, who moved into the Bowl in 2018, “and I think our greatest fear is that it goes away.”

Many longtime residents never planned to leave.

“I was going to have my bed put in the living room, with a large window wall, and lay and watch the sun set and the ocean. That was going to be the end of my life,” said Colleen Baker, an 82-year-old closet designer. “I don’t, of course, have it anymore. … It’s all gone.”

The Bowl was passed among a few families and local real estate moguls over the decades.

In 2005, Edward Biggs of Northern California bought the Bowl. When Biggs, who rarely appeared at the park, died in 2021, his real estate empire was fractured between his first wife, Charlotte, and his second wife, Loretta, further complicating the Bowl’s management.

Since the fire, residents have heard virtually nothing from ownership. Neither Colby Biggs — Charlotte and Edward Biggs’ grandson who began co-managing the park after Charlotte’s death — nor lawyers with Loretta Biggs’ real estate company, responded to a request for comment.

What Bowl residents have seen is the corps descend on other Palisades properties — clearing burned-out cars, piles of rubble and charred trees from single-family homes as well as the Tahitian — while leaving the Bowl untouched.

At the center of FEMA’s reasoning to refuse cleanup for the Bowl: “The prior actions of the owner demonstrate a lack of commitment to reopen the park for its displaced residents.”

Over the two decades the Biggs family has owned the Bowl, residents have become painfully familiar with this “lack of commitment.”

In 2006, some residents sued Biggs and the previous owner, accusing them of failing to repair and stabilize the bluff behind the park that, the previous year, crumbled after heavy rain, leaving some units uninhabitable.

A year later, Biggs fell into a legal dispute with city of Los Angeles over a plan to split up the property that residents characterized as a move to circumvent rent control.

It prompted Biggs’ attorney to send residents a letter in 2009, stating that the inability to raise rent and the never-ending series of lawsuits made the park unprofitable and that he may file for bankruptcy. It also claimed that Biggs already had received a $40-million offer from an international hotel developer, the Palisadian-Post reported. No sale ever went through.

In 2013, Biggs decided to build an “upscale resort community” instead, by buying up resident’s homes, demolishing them, and building two-story, manufactured homes on the properties. To do so, he planned to target the homes of the residents suing him over a landslide on the property, the California 2nd District Court of Appeal found.

The residents ended up winning $8.9 million from Biggs. The case with the city eventually made it to the California Supreme Court, which sided with residents and the city.

While residents agonize over FEMA’s decision, the experiences have led many to ultimately agree with FEMA’s reasoning: They cannot trust that the owners intend to preserve their park as affordable housing.

Former Bowl residents met atop the Asilomar bluff overlooking their old community on Oct. 3 — the day after a city-imposed deadline for the owners to remove the debris — to call on local leaders to act.

Most skipped the formality of a handshake, going in for hugs. They reminisced. Many took a moment in silence to look down. Rows of empty dirt lots to the left — the Tahitian — and rows of rubble still sitting to the right — their homes.

Nine months after the fire, many former Bowl residents are trying to figure out what to do when their temporary housing insurance money and aid runs dry. They still have little certainty when — or whether — they’ll ever be able to return.

Baker, the closet designer, found a 388-square-foot mobile home in Santa Monica to live in.

“I’m in the very sad stage, and I’m realizing my losses,” she said. “You go to look for something and you go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s gone.’ That’s an everyday occurrence.”

Tahitian’s residents are stuck in a different limbo: With cleared lots, they wait for the property owners to decide whether to rebuild — adding back the concrete slabs for homes and building back the common spaces — or whether to sell the park to its residents, Chase Holiday, a Tahitian resident, said.

“We’re pretty much ready,” Holiday said. Indeed, Tahitian’s homeowners’ association has been in talks with the owners. Barring the complicated paperwork, “we could buy the park tomorrow.”

Although the wait is excruciating, “I feel pretty confident that either we’ll buy it or they’ll rebuild,” she said. But with little clarity over when that would happen, “the bigger question is, will I want to?”

On Wednesday, a handful of Bowl residents — including Jon Brown, a real estate agent who has become one of the Bowl’s leaders in the fight to rebuild — packed a board of Building and Safety commissioners meeting, pushing for the board to finally declare the property a public nuisance, which would allow the city to do the cleanup work and send the owners the bill.

The L.A. County Department of Public Works estimated that, at the end of September, about 20 properties in each burn area, Palisades and Eaton, had failed to clear debris.

In a letter mailed and posted at the Bowl, dated Sept. 2, the department had given the owners 30 days to complete the work or risk being declared a public nuisance.

At the Wednesday meeting, Danielle Mayer, an attorney whose law firm represents Loretta Biggs’ company, asked the commission for more time.

“This community has seen these park owners act with such a lack of integrity for years and years,” Brown said to the board. “They never do anything unless they are absolutely forced to.”

The board ultimately declared the Bowl a public nuisance.

It’s a small but significant step, with a long road still ahead. The Department of Building and Safety has yet to provide any details for how and when it will remove the debris. And the Tahitian’s still-empty lots serve as a reminder that debris removal isn’t the end of the battle.

Yet, Bowl residents remain optimistic that, someday, they will be able to buy the park from the owners and finally serve as the caretakers of the eccentric and beloved affordable community.

To residents, the Bowl was something special. They cared for one another. They surfed together, let each other’s cats in and celebrated holidays on the small community lawn. They raised their kids in the Bowl and sometimes bickered over politics and annoyances, as any proper family does.

“If the people were permitted to go back,” saidresident John Evans, “that would just restart — probably with a vengeance.”

Times staff writer Tony Briscoe contributed to this report.

Guardiola’s best teams have been built on control, patterns of play and attacking incision.

When City beat Wolves 4-0 on the opening weekend of the season, it was natural to think the troubles that had plagued them last term had been erased over the summer.

But Sunday’s defeat on the south coast was a repeat of the inconsistency City displayed throughout last season.

Guardiola’s side stifled Brighton in the first half, limiting the Seagulls to a single opportunity through Kaoru Mitoma.

Erling Haaland, making his 100th Premier League appearance for City, opened the scoring with his 88th league goal for the club.

But a quadruple substitution by Brighton boss Fabian Hurzeler after an hour changed the course of the game, with James Milner, Brajan Gruda, Georgino Rutter and Yasin Ayari entering the fray.

Brighton dominated from there on, equalising from the penalty spot through Milner, before a last-gasp winner from Gruda.

“We conceded two goals. We were excellent for one hour,” Guardiola told BBC Sport.

“After the goal we forgot to play. We were thinking of the consequences.

“I like many, many things we are doing. Like against Tottenham, we started well. I like many things the team has done here today but we were unable to win. When we conceded the goal, we stopped playing.

“It’s one game. The season has just started. There is a long, long season ahead of us. We will see what happens.”

Only Manchester United’s 1992-1993 title-winning team have recovered from losing two of their first three league matches to be crowned champions, and that came during a 42-game season.

“It’s back to the drawing board for Man City,” former Middlesbrough goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer said.

“There are a lot of questions still about this team and Pep Guardiola. Is he going to turn it around? He has never been in a situation quite like this before and the hole keeps getting deeper and deeper.”

Rescuers working at a site of a strike following a mass Russian drone and missile attack on the Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine on July 4, 2025. The European Commission announced a $2.7 billion fund to help Ukraine recover from war. Photo by State Emergency Service of Ukraine/UPI | License Photo

July 10 (UPI) — The European Commission on Wednesday announced a $2.7 billion package of agreements with financial institutions to support Ukraine‘s recovery and reconstruction efforts.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the European Flagship Fund for the Reconstruction of Ukraine at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome.

“Today, the EU reaffirms its role as Ukraine’s strongest partner. Not just its top donor, but a key investor in its future,” President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said. “With $2.7 billion in agreements signed, we aim to unlock up to $11.7 billion in investments to rebuild homes, reopen hospitals, revive businesses, and secure energy. This is solidarity in action. Ukraine is moving closer to the EU every day — in energy, education, roaming, and culture. Europe stands with Ukraine — today and tomorrow.”

The package includes $2.1 billion in loan guarantees and $677 million in grants. It is expected to mobilize up to $11.7 billion in investments in Ukraine.

“(It will be) the largest equity fund globally to support reconstruction,” she said. “It will, together with the private sector, kickstart investment in energy, transport, critical raw materials, dual-use industries. We are taking a stake in Ukraine’s future by leveraging public money to bring large-scale private sector investments and help the rebuilding of the country.”

Von der Leyen named as contributors Italy, Germany, France, Poland and the European Investment Bank. She said, “I trust others will be eager to join. The people of Ukraine are ready to drive their country’s economy into the future. The time to invest is now.”

Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhii Marchenko said on Wednesday that the country will need at least $40 billion in external financing in 2026 because it now allocates most of its budget to defense.

With an initial capital of $257 million, the fund plans to mobilize $584 million by 2026 – with further fundraising planned as security conditions improve, a press release said. The Flagship Fund will foster the developmzent of a private equity ecosystem in Ukraine to attract new capital and “maximize synergies with existing market players.”

July 7 (UPI) — Authorities in northern California have confirmed the recovery of the bodies of seven people who had been reported missing following last week’s explosion of a warehouse storing fireworks near Sacramento.

“In accordance with standard procedure and out of respect for the families, the identities of the deceased will be withheld until formal identification is complete and next of kin have been notified,” Yolo County said in a statement Sunday.

The fireworks warehouse, located near County Roads 23 and 86A in the Esparto area of Yolo County, exploded Tuesday at about 5:50 p.m. following a fire that erupted on the compound.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

On Sunday, authorities executed a controlled explosion at the site “to safely remove hazardous materials identified at the scene,” Yolo County said in a statement.

The explosion was scheduled to occur between 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. PDT.

“Residents may hear loud noises or notice smoke and odors in the area during this time,” the county said. “This is expected and part of the controlled process … There is no immediate threat to public safety, and all necessary safety protocols are in place.”

Authorities had confirmed on Friday that remains of at least some of the seven people reported unaccounted for had been found.

The fire and the ensuing explosion resulted in the Oakdale Fire, which burned 78 acres before it was 100% contained on Sunday, according to Cal Fire.