Dayna Galbreath and her husband had just months ago finished a renovation on their Altadena bungalow when the Eaton Fire tore through their neighborhood on January 8.
Around 3:30 a.m., her phone rang out with a notification. “It basically said an evacuation order has been initiated for your area, and in big capital letters, it said, ‘GET OUT NOW.’”
That would be the last time Galbreath saw their bungalow intact. Weeks later, after the devastating Eaton Fire tore through more than 14,000 acres of Los Angeles County, she returned to Altadena to find her home and surrounding community reduced to a pile of ash.
“It’s unreal, because you just don’t think it’s going to be you,” she says. “You think everything’s going to be okay. You’re like, okay, we’ll bring three days worth of clothes. We’ll bring our important documents. We’ll bring our dog, and we’ll go back in a few days.”
The Eaton Fire destroyed over 9,000 homes, structures and businesses and claimed 17 lives, according to Cal Fire. It joined the Palisades Fire, which burned concurrently through more than 23,000 acres, as one of the deadliest and most destructive fires in California’s history.
With both fires now 100% contained, California continues recovery efforts after an estimated $250 billion in damages.
Trees sway in high winds as the Eaton Fire burns structures on January 8 in Altadena, California.
Rebecca Rice, an assistant professor of communication studies at UNLV who specializes in crisis communications and natural disaster response, views these catastrophes as a sign of the times.
“Our past understanding of fire behavior is changing. The thought was, if I live in an urban area, I’m safe from wildfire, right? And if I live in the woods, I’m obviously at more risk. But we’re seeing fires that are so extreme and winds that are so extreme that they are blowing embers into urban areas, and fires are spreading faster through urban communities than before,” Rice says. “LA is not the first place to experience that, and I think that’s starting to happen, particularly in the western U.S., where we thought that there were rules about how fire behaved. Now, the rules are changing.”
It isn’t just wildfires. Rice says climate disasters have gotten more frequent and more devastating as climate change shifts the narrative and makes disaster recovery more costly.
“With climate change now, we need to ask is rebuilding in the same place the right thing for me and my family, or is it going to be the case that certain places become less livable?” Rice says.
Much of Galbreath’s life is in a state of flux right now, but one thing she says she’s certain about is this: “We will stay in California.”What about those who won’t?
Each year, more and more people find themselves displaced as a result of the increasing number of environmental changes and natural disasters—climate migrants.
According to a study by RAND, 3.4 million people in the U.S. were displaced by a natural disaster in 2022. And although most displacement is temporary—that same study found that only 500,000 of the 3.4 million had not returned home by 2023—some may decide to settle in regions with lower risk factors.
Las Vegas has its own share of climate challenges, including a dwindling water supply and extended periods of extreme heat. However, it’s relatively safer than California, which in recent years has been pummeled by drought, wildfires and landslides—so much so that State Farm Insurance announced in 2024 that it would not be renewing coverage for 72,000 houses and apartments in California, citing catastrophe exposure and reinsurance costs.
This year’s wildfires have accelerated an already-growing housing crisis in LA. This recent disaster, paired with a loss of inventory, expensive rebuilds and an unreliable insurance landscape, could be the tipping point of relocation for many Southern Californians. And they could be looking at a certain fast-growing desert metro that’s only a few hours away.
According to a 2023 policy brief from housing advocacy nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners, “Migrants will often relocate to communities that are familiar, or with which they have existing cultural ties borne from prior migrations. …Migrants may also look for jurisdictions in areas with a relatively low-risk of climate-related impacts, especially if located relatively proximate to their own hazard-prone communities.”
Rachel Bogardus Drew, senior research director at Enterprise Community Partners, studies housing markets and policy including climate and disaster resilience. In a 2023 report for Urban Institute, she examined the impacts of climate-change induced migrations, including the 2005 situation in which residents of New Orleans migrated to Houston, Texas following Hurricane Katrina; and in 2017, when Puerto Ricans fleeing Hurricane Maria settled in Central Florida.
In both cases, the communities that received these migrants had to step up on a local level. Should Las Vegas anticipate doing the same? Could and should Southern Nevada position itself as a climate migration destination?
With President Trump’s stance that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which coordinates federal response to disasters, should be “terminated,” mutual aid between states is becoming more important than ever for emergency response.
In the past, Southern Nevada and our neighbors to the west have shown that we’re capable of this type of assitance. During the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting in 2017, Southern California hospitals opened their trauma bays to injured survivors and even shipped equipment to MountainView and Sunrise Children’s hospitals. And in recent weeks, Las Vegas has extended its hand to people impacted by the LA wildfires. Local fire departments sent strike teams to provide support and resources to help fight the fires. Hotels around the Valley offered discounted rooms to the displaced. The Plaza allowed horses affected by the fires to be rehomed in its equestrian stalls. Local pizzerias donated a portion of their proceeds to help those in need.
“We’ve certainly anecdotally heard stories of that. Often a receiving community will be incredibly welcoming and open to migrants in the immediate aftermath. These are folks who have just been through this major traumatic event, and receiving communities, by and large, want to support these folks and help them,” Drew says. “But there can be sometimes some frustration over the long term. Again, it depends how the community prepares for the migration, and understanding too [that] this is a long-term process.”
Preparing for climate migration begins with policymakers. It’s about figuring out what resources Las Vegas already has, and making sure there’s enough to go around, Drew says.
Affordable housing (see sidebar on page 20) and building better transit systems have long been a pain point for Las Vegas residents. If the local community expects to experience population growth from climate migration, it would be even more necessary to strengthen infrastructure.
“It does start with housing and making sure that they have a safe place to live. But beyond that, some of the key areas are transportation, if folks have lost their vehicle, or they’re coming from an area where they didn’t rely on one to an area that they do,” Drew says. “Transportation networks can be incredibly important, making sure that you pair the housing with transportation access.”
Current residents also need more affordable housing and better transportation resources. Some will undoubtedly ask: Why should Southern Nevada welcome more Californians?
In the grand scheme of things, it could benefit the continued growth and economy in the region. There’s much to consider when it comes to climate migration, Drew says.
“Can this be a benefit for the receiving community, to have folks coming in supporting that local economy, filling those open jobs, adding businesses, adding customers to that area?” she says. “It absolutely can be a net positive for the receiving community, depending upon their capacity, depending upon their acceptability, and depending upon their planning.”
We likely won’t understand the full impact of the LA fires on the Las Vegas Valley for some years to come. But forward thinking has rarely done any harm in an unpredictable world.
“You think it will never happen to you, but now unfortunately, climate disasters are almost becoming a when, not an if,” Rice says. “Maybe that looks different for Las Vegas than it does for places impacted by wildfire.
“But certainly Las Vegas residents understand the stress about things like extreme heat and water consumption. It can feel like resources are scarce and we should protect them. But also one day, you might be the person who needs help.”
How the LA fires might impact southern Nevada’s housing market
An estimated 16,000 homes were damaged or destroyed by the LA fires that broke out in early January and burned through the neighborhoods of Altadena, Pacific Palisades and Malibu, leaving thousands of residents in search of new housing.
The disaster and loss of inventory has had a domino effect on LA’s housing and rental market, which was already strained by high home costs and rising rents before the fires. At the end of January, LA County rents were up 37% from a year earlier, according to a report from real estate company Redfin, leaving many residents priced out of the market in their time of need.
The increasing wildfire risks posed by climate change and the rising cost of housing might be reasons enough for Angelenos to look to relocate—and Las Vegas could be a prime location.
“When those things happen, it does make you start to think, is it worth it here?” says Troy Reierson, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices for Nevada, Arizona and California.
Even before the recent wildfires, Californians were moving to Las Vegas in droves, Reierson says. According to a recent report from UNLV’s Lied Center for Real Estate, 40% of new Nevada residents are from California. There could be several reasons for this.
“We’ve got lower property taxes than California has. Our home prices, if you’re coming from California, look phenomenal. The median home price in Southern Nevada is $440,000 … [and there’s] no state income tax. We’ve had strong job growth here. Construction is still going crazy throughout the Valley, and it’s kept us as one of the top 10 fastest growing metros for the past three years,” Reierson says.
But growth in Las Vegas coincides with the worst affordable housing shortage in the nation. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there are only 13 affordable homes for every 100 extremely low-income households (making 0% to 30% area median income) that need one. And the average cost of housing has risen considerably since the pandemic.
“We’ve seen so much change here in Las Vegas. As part of that, the rents are going up. Home prices are going up like crazy. Salaries aren’t necessarily trending in that same direction,” Reierson says. “Mortgages are up roughly 56% from four years ago. Home prices have almost increased close to 40% since 2020.”
More Californians moving to Southern Nevada could exacerbate those issues, if leaders don’t take steps to shore up the region’s shortage of affordable housing and ensure that jobs support the cost of living. But despite that, Reierson says Southern Californians continue looking to Southern Nevada as a land of opportunity.
“I think you’ll continue to see plenty of middle class folks coming in, as long as the economy can support it,” he says.
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