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The Battle for Recovery Supplies in a Disaster-Strewn America!

Rarely have so many cities ruined by natural disasters attempted to rebuild around the same time


Tue 28 Jan 25

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A battle for disaster recovery resources is poised to erupt across the United States. The vast scale of Los Angeles’s wildfire damage is coming into view, while devastated cities on the other coast are just starting to rebuild after back-to-back hurricanes ravaged the Southeast last fall.

Rarely have so many cities ruined by natural disasters attempted to rebuild around the same time. Hurricane reconstruction efforts are underway in North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. Soon, Los Angeles County will be starting to rebuild.

“We’ve had disasters like these,” said Jay Lybik, national director of multifamily analytics at CoStar. “But never anything like this where we’ve had so many.”

Cities in rebuilding mode are now all vying for specialised construction labour, scarce building materials and custom home appliances. Some home builders and developers said that competition for resources would likely slow the pace of recovery for all the cities.

Builders may not experience all these shortages immediately. Insurance negotiations, permitting approvals and other parts of the recovery process will likely be a long slog. That can prevent rebuilding projects from breaking ground immediately, allowing local supply chains and labour forces to keep up.

As more projects get underway, escalating demand for home-building resources could affect the economy, tightening supply chains and driving up costs.

The fires in Southern California have destroyed more than 12,000 structures. They are on track to be the country’s costliest wildfire disaster ever, with early estimates of the total economic loss of nearly $50 billion.

Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, which killed more than 250 people in the fall, also led to a combined loss estimated at another $50 billion between affected areas like Florida and North Carolina.

Signs of a squeeze are already emerging.

Some construction crews helping to repair Florida’s Gulf Coast are considering driving to Los Angeles for the wildfire recovery because they think more opportunities exist there, said Saket Soni, executive director of Resilience Force, an organization that trains, deploys, and protects disaster recovery workers.

Recovery crews are often spread thin and have to bounce from one wreckage site to another. Soni said that one disaster recovery worker drove a crew of nine from Louisiana’s Hurricane Francine destruction to Florida after Hurricane Helene. He had already worked on 19 hurricanes before that.

“You’re going to have a Hunger Games-style competition for materials and labour,” said Sean Burton, chief executive at the Los Angeles-based multifamily development firm Cityview. Builders will compete for engineering resources, architectural resources and debris removal, he added.

Burton thinks that the government, homeowners and contractors should buy appliances and building materials in bulk to reduce costs and expedite the redevelopment effort in Southern California, even if that means storing some of that supply in vacant warehouse space.

Trump’s deportations are adding to the chaos.

If President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his vow to impose stiff tariffs and deport undocumented workers, rebuilding could become even more fraught. Undocumented workers comprise an estimated 13% of the construction industry, while many builders rely on imported steel, lumber and other materials that could soon be more expensive.

Soni said a mass wave of deportations could lure more undocumented workers to Los Angeles since they might feel safer working in a sanctuary state like California. Meanwhile, some in the building business are getting ready for the materials race by looking to alternatives.

Kishani Perera, a Los Angeles-based interior designer, suggests that her clients consider rebuilding their homes with unconventional materials. Instead of lumber framing, she proposes aluminium; instead of fibreglass insulation, sheep’s wool; instead of drywall, magnesium board.

For years, she has pitched these alternatives as being more climate-resilient. Now, Perera also plans to recommend them as tariff-resilient: “All these materials can be found in America,” she said.

Rebuilding neighbourhoods after one natural disaster takes years in the US. Recovering from three of them almost simultaneously could drag out the timeline even further. More than three months after the hurricanes, Asheville, NC, is still cleaning up debris. Some homeowners have only now finished negotiating with their insurance companies and so their rebuilds are just getting started.

John Judd Jr., the co-owner of Judd Builders, a luxury home builder in Asheville, said the pace of rebuilding has been slow. Projects he took on within three weeks after the hurricanes hit are only now in the framing stage. He was dealing with construction labor shortages and long waiting periods for high-end materials and appliances – obstacles left over from the pandemic.

Given those delays, he already expected that Asheville wouldn’t fully recover until the end of the decade. As he watches fires incinerate homes in the West, including some of the most expensive in the country, he anticipates even more competition for those already-squeezed resources.

“I definitely expect some kind of strain – now definitely on materials,” Judd said. “This is going to put large demand [on the market for materials] and the main focus is going to be LA.”

California lawmakers are now trying to remove the buffering period for construction.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed an executive order suspending some environmental reviews to rebuild homes damaged and destroyed by the fire. A day later, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass followed with her own executive order expediting permitting approvals and inspections for rebuilds.

With Los Angeles scheduled to host the World Cup in 2026 and Summer Olympics in 2028, lawmakers want as many rebuilds happening simultaneously as possible.

“If lawmakers ease home-building permitting requirements, then I predict that a lot more contractors will jump into the fray to make use of the window of deregulation,” said Soni of Resilience Force. “That will intensely compound the labour shortage.”

Meantime, President Trump said, “We don’t need Canada to make our cars. We don’t need their lumber because we have our own forests,” he said. “We don’t need their oil and gas.”

“Trump is wrong on all three, but we’ll focus on lumber.” The Wall Street Journal said. “The US doesn’t produce enough lumber to meet domestic demand and thus imports about a third of the softwood used in home construction, mostly from Canada.

Trump’s tariff threat has created uncertainty for lumber wholesalers and contractors, delaying the rebuild. The U.S. can’t ramp up lumber production in the near term to meet domestic demand, so contractors will have to eat the tariff cost on lumber from Canada or import more from other countries, which would be expensive. “If Trump wants to increase US. lumber production, he could open more federal land for logging. More tariffs will punish Americans trying to rebuild.”

Author

  • Wood Central

    Wood Central is Australia’s first and only dedicated platform covering wood-based media across all digital platforms. Our vision is to develop an integrated platform for media, events, education, and products that connect, inform, and inspire the people and organisations who work in and promote forestry, timber, and fibre.

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