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Rebuilding areas ravaged by wildfires will present a daunting challenge, but the flip side could be the “compelling image of a city emerging from the ashes.”
Jan. 13, 2025, 3:30 p.m. ET
For seven years, the promise of the 2028 Summer Olympics has shimmered on the horizon as a source of pride and celebration for Los Angeles. There were concerns: the homelessness crisis, cost overruns, comparisons with the successful Games last year in Paris. But for the most part, 2028 held out the hope of delivering as much of a boost for the region’s economy and international image as the Olympics of 1984.
That has all been called into question in the space of a week.
The fires that have ripped across the region have presented Los Angeles with a challenge that would test the bandwidth and resources of any city: how to host a 17-day, $7 billion spectacle expected to draw as many as 15 million visitors to a region of 18 million people, all while rebuilding entire neighborhoods erased by fire.
No one is suggesting that the Games be postponed or canceled. But there is rising concern that an already difficult endeavor for both Los Angeles, the main host city, and LA2028, the private committee in charge of raising most of the money and running the Games, has become staggeringly complicated.
Mike Bonin, a former City Council member who voted in support of the Olympics when the effort came before the Los Angeles governing body for approval in 2017, said the wildfires posed a “nightmare scenario.”
“It calls into question the city’s ability to deliver the Olympics,” he said in an interview. “This is cause for elected officials to ask themselves the question: Is this something we can handle?”
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