The wildfires that devastated Los Angeles tore through the city and county in January; the last of the fires were extinguished at the end of the month. Three and a half months have passed; last month,  Los Angeles County launched a website that tracks how many rebuild permits have been issued in Pacific Palisades and Altadena following January’s fires.

As of this morning, the county has issued… seven building permits. Seven!

The county estimates that more than 12,000 parcels of land were damaged or destroyed by the wildfires.

At a pace of one new building permit every two weeks, Los Angeles County will issue 26 rebuild permits per year, and have Pacific Palisades and Altadena rebuilt within 461 years. Mark your calendars for the final ribbon-cutting ceremonies for the spring of the year 2486.

Earlier this month, our Audrey Fahlberg reported from Altadina about how the extraordinarily daunting task of rebuilding once-beautiful neighborhoods that now look “more like the wreckage from a nuclear blast” is exacerbated by the onerous “permitting, fireproofing, and rebuilding requirements to comply with California’s building code — such as fire-resistant roofs, solar panels, and automatic sprinklers.”

In January, California governor Gavin Newsom promised victims of the fires would “not get caught up in bureaucratic red tape” and would be able to “quickly rebuild their homes.” In March, Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass promised the neighborhoods would be rebuilt at “lightning speed.”

As many of these officials’ critics suspected, those promises turned out to be absolute meaningless happy talk.