LOS ANGELES — Despite widespread stress, smoke inhalation and other disruptions caused by the January wildfires, a majority of Los Angeles County residents are happy with their lives here and don’t plan to leave.
Fewer than 1 in 4 LA County residents are considering moving out of the area because of the fires, and fewer than 1 in 10 residents are seriously weighing that decision, according to a new poll from the University of California Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies co-sponsored by the Times.
The poll found that 57 percent of residents are satisfied with the region’s quality of life, while more than 7 in 10 people are happy with their own neighborhood.
“This huge tragedy affected a lot of people in the county, and yet, the overall measures on the quality of life in Los Angeles are positive,” said Mark DiCamillo, the director of Berkeley IGS poll. “It’s the California lifestyle. A lot of people like it.”
The fires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades destroyed more than 13,000 homes and businesses and — in combination with smaller blazes in Hollywood, Studio City and Sylmar — forced the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people.
The poll found that the fires had a wide-reaching effect on the physical and mental health of county residents, including those who lived far from the disaster zones.
Nearly 4 in 10 LA County residents said their health, or the health of a family member, had been harmed by wildfire smoke. About 6 percent said they or a family member had been treated by a doctor for an illness or injury resulting from the fires.
The mental toll was higher still, with 3 in 10 residents saying they’d experienced high levels of additional stress.
Anxiety was more pronounced among women than men: About 37 percent of women said they experienced high stress during the fires, compared with 22 percent of men. Men also were more likely to say the fires hadn’t stressed them much at all, with 4 in 10 saying they had low anxiety, compared with 22 percent of women.
“Women are often the caregivers in the household, either for older folks or for their kids,” DiCamillo said. “The burden is greater for them.”
Parents in Los Angeles County reported feeling more unease than people without children, the findings showed. Parents also were more likely to say they are seriously considering leaving the county in the aftermath of the fires.
The level of confidence that residents have in the region’s recovery had a strong correlation with whether they are thinking about moving, the poll found.
