After the LA Fires, No Playbook Existed for Testing and Managing WUI Fire-Impacted Soils. LightBox Helped Fund Purdue Research to Create One.

Palisades native and LightBox CTO Eric Bollens saw the gap firsthand. LightBox's $25,000 donation supports a Purdue University research initiative led by Andrew Whelton, Ph.D, to develop a plain-language soil safety guide for residents, environmental professionals and public agencies.

NEW YORK, June 16, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- When the Palisades and Eaton fires devastated Pacific Palisades, Altadena and other Los Angeles-area communities, residents faced more than the question of how quickly homes could be rebuilt. Property owners, environmental consultants and public agencies also needed to know whether fire-impacted soil had been properly evaluated, cleaned up and made safe for rebuilding.

The scale of the disaster made that need urgent. Together, the Palisades and Eaton fires burned 37,469 acres, destroyed 16,264 structures and damaged 2,051 more, according to CAL FIRE.^1,2

The need extends beyond Los Angeles, reflecting a broader wildland-urban interface (WUI) megafire trend as more people and property move into areas where homes and wildland vegetation meet.

The U.S. Forest Service reports that between 1990 and 2020, the WUI expanded by 179,000 square kilometers, roughly the size of Washington state, while the number of homes in WUI areas grew from 30 million to 44 million. By 2020, nearly one-third of all homes in the continental United States were in WUI areas.³

A global study of WUI and WUI fires identifies the expansion of these fire-prone built/wildland zones as a worldwide pattern,⁴ while CAL FIRE data show that 15 of California's 20 most destructive wildfires by structures destroyed have occurred since 2015, including the Eaton and Palisades fires.⁵

Destructive WUI fires — from the Marshall Fire in Colorado to Lahaina in Hawaii and the Los Angeles fires — are no longer a California-only problem. The National Interagency Coordination Center has identified significant wildland fire potential this summer in parts of California and segments of 14 other states, underscoring the need for practical recovery guidance beyond any one community.⁶

In the aftermath of the Los Angeles fires, many residents and professionals encountered a practical guidance gap: while scientific expertise existed, it had not been translated into a unified, plain-language playbook for post-fire soil testing, cleanup and restoration decisions.⁷

A REBUILD community survey conducted after the January 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires found that air, water or soil testing had been conducted for less than half of responding households. Among Palisades respondents, 38.6% said they wanted testing but did not receive it. The survey, summarized in the California Department of Insurance Smoke Claims and Remediation Task Force report, was completed by 1,229 residents.⁸

The gap extended to environmental professionals as well as residents. Environmental consultants were being asked to advise residents, agencies and property owners without a consistent, research-backed methodology for WUI fire-impacted soils, forcing firms to develop their own approaches to sampling, cleanup and restoration.⁷

A Palisades Native Saw the Gap Up Close
For Eric Bollens, Chief Technology Officer at LightBox, the issue was both professional and personal. Bollens grew up in Pacific Palisades, and his family was personally affected by the Palisades fire. In the months that followed, he connected with Purdue University professor Andrew Whelton, who was working with public agencies, engineering firms, practitioners and communities facing urgent technical questions about contamination, testing, cleanup and safe return after the Los Angeles fires.⁷

"The guidance gap was not theoretical," says Bollens. "In the Palisades and Eaton recovery, residents, agencies and environmental professionals were asking specific questions: What should be tested? Who should do it? What methodology should a consultant use? What does a safe result look like? When can people rebuild or return? The answers were not available in a consistent, usable form."

LightBox donated $25,000 to a Purdue research initiative led by Dr. Whelton and his team to develop the Property Owner Guide for Rapidly Restoring Soil Safety after Fires, a plain-language soil safety guide intended to help property owners, consultants and government officials navigate post-fire soil contamination, debris removal, cleanup, sampling and restoration decisions. Palisades residents Mario and Chantal Spanicciati contributed an additional $25,000, bringing total support for the initiative to $50,000. Together, the funding supports Dr. Whelton's applied field research and the development and distribution of the guide itself.⁷

"LightBox donated $25,000 toward this research initiative because its outcome will be the first playbook for environmental testing and management of soils impacted by wildland-urban interface fires," Bollens says.

The guide is intended to help communities rebuild not only faster, but more safely, consistently and confidently. As residents return, rebuild or make decisions about their properties, soil safety questions can shape cleanup plans, contractor scopes, consultant recommendations, agency coordination and long-term confidence in the community's recovery.

"Speed matters in disaster recovery," Bollens adds. "Families want to get back home, and communities want to move forward. But speed without clarity can leave residents and consultants guessing. The goal is not to slow rebuilding down; it is to give property owners, environmental professionals and agencies a practical way to move forward with confidence."

Dr. Whelton's team has been working with Los Angeles-area households and businesses recovering from wildfire impacts, including weekly support for property owners navigating environmental testing decisions and surveys designed to inform recovery efforts. The soil safety guide will build on that applied field work, translating lessons from the Palisades and Eaton fires into guidance for future communities facing similar uncertainty.⁷

"Our goal is that this plain-language residential soil safety guide can empower property owners and their consultants to restore fire-impacted land safely and confidently," says Dr. Whelton.⁷

From Field Work to the State Capitol
Separately, Bollens and Dr. Whelton co-authored the Purdue paper After a Wildfire: Considerations for Building Environmental Testing with Cristiane Ferrarezzi. Published online in February 2026, the paper focused on environmental testing of fire-impacted buildings, not soil and not the forthcoming Purdue guide.⁹ In October 2025, Bollens and Dr. Whelton also briefed California's Smoke Claims and Remediation Task Force, which was examining wildfire recovery, testing and remediation issues after the January 2025 fires.⁸

Where Environmental History Meets Community Need
For LightBox, the effort reflects a broader commitment to communities and to the professionals who help them recover. The company provides location intelligence, property data and workflow solutions for commercial real estate, serving more than 30,000 clients across finance, government and environmental sectors. Those customers regularly rely on clear data, defensible workflows and credible guidance to make complex property decisions.⁷

That connection is rooted in LightBox's history of serving environmental practitioners. LightBox EDR (Environmental Data Resources) has provided environmental due diligence data and site assessment tools used to research contamination history, regulatory records, historical land use and site conditions as part of Phase I ESA research and broader due diligence. LightBox's support for Dr. Whelton's Purdue research initiative grows directly from that work, extending the company's role in supporting practitioners as they apply credible information and defensible methods to new environmental risk scenarios.¹⁰

"For more than 30 years, we have supported environmental engineers in due diligence activities," says Eric Frank, Chief Executive Officer of LightBox. "This is another way to support them as they address a category of contamination that has moved to the forefront with climate impacts and the increased prevalence of WUI megafires."

"At LightBox, we work every day with professionals who need reliable property and environmental information to make high-consequence decisions," Bollens says. "Supporting this guide is a natural extension of that mission, and for me, it's also a way to help the community where I grew up move forward with more confidence."

Dr. Whelton's team expects the Purdue guide to cover post-fire soil contamination risks; common hazards from wildfire and urban fire debris; clear steps for debris removal and soil cleanup; protocols for designing and conducting soil sampling; health- and economically-protective cleanup benchmarks; and visuals and tips that illustrate good versus poor restoration practices.⁷

"One of the hardest parts of disaster recovery is that residents are suddenly expected to become experts in environmental testing, cleanup and risk, and environmental professionals are being asked to advise them without the benefit of established methods," Bollens adds. "They should not have to do that alone. This guide is about turning applied science into practical guidance that communities can actually use."

About LightBox

LightBox is the Decision Foundation for the Built World.

LightBox provides trusted property, environmental, zoning, ownership and location intelligence, along with workflow solutions that help real estate, environmental, financial and government professionals make better-informed decisions. By connecting critical property data with practical tools, LightBox helps organizations evaluate risk, support due diligence, understand site conditions and move complex property decisions forward with greater clarity and confidence.

LightBox provides clarity you can stand on.

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1. CAL FIRE, "Palisades Fire," incident page, last updated April 9, 2026. https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2025/1/7/palisades-fire
2. CAL FIRE, "Eaton Fire," incident page, last updated April 9, 2026. https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2025/1/7/eaton-fire
3. USDA Forest Service Research and Development, "Where humans and forests meet: The rapidly growing wildland-urban interface," May 14, 2025. https://research.fs.usda.gov/nrs/articles/where-humans-and-forests-meet-rapidly-growing-wildland-urban-interface 
4. Tang, W., He, C., Emmons, L., Zhang, J., et al., "Global expansion of wildland-urban interface (WUI) and WUI fires: insights from a multiyear worldwide unified database (WUWUI)," Environmental Research Letters, 2024. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad31da
5. CAL FIRE, "Top 20 Most Destructive California Wildfires," Oct. 9, 2025. https://34c031f8-c9fd-4018-8c5a-4159cdff6b0d-cdn-endpoint.azureedge.net/-/media/calfire-website/our-impact/fire-statistics/top-20-destructive-ca-wildfires.pdf
6. National Interagency Fire Center, Predictive Services, "National Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook," issued May 1, 2026, Outlook Period – May through August 2026. https://www.nifc.gov/nicc-files/predictive/outlooks/monthly_seasonal_outlook.pdf 
7. Purdue University College of Engineering, "Purdue researchers receive donations to produce soil safety guide for homeowners affected by wildfires," May 21, 2026. https://engineering.purdue.edu/Engr/AboutUs/News/Spotlights/2026/2026-0521-purdue-whelton-wildfire-soil-safety-guide-donation
8. California Department of Insurance, "Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara's Smoke Claims & Remediation Task Force" report, March 9, 2026, pp. iv, 34–35. https://www.insurance.ca.gov/01-consumers/140-catastrophes/upload/CDI-Smoke-Claims-and-Remediation-Task-Force-Report-030926.pdf
9. Andrew J. Whelton, E. Bollens and C. Ferrarezzi, "After a Wildfire: Considerations for Building Environmental Testing," Purdue University Resilience to Emergencies and Disasters, date of this version Feb. 2, 2026. DOI: 10.5703/1288284317911. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/red/1/
10. LightBox, "EDR^®: Environmental Due Diligence Data Tools," accessed May 28, 2026. https://www.lightboxre.com/industries/environmental-due-diligence-products-edr/

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