What will happen with debris from SoCal wildfires? Here's what was done in 2017 North Bay fires

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) -- As Southern California copes with the devastation brought on by the fires, attention continues to be focused on how will they begin to clean up.

Rebuilding can't happen until the debris is cleaned up - a process survivors of the North Bay wildfires know well.

The devastating 2017 Tubbs Fire killed 22 people and destroyed more than 5,000 structures.

One of those structures was the Coffey Park home of Jeff Okrepkie, who has since been elected to the Santa Rosa City Council.

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"With any great tragedy or loss or trauma, there's no getting over it. It's being able to move past it and not let it affect you," Okrepkie said. "And in times like this, it comes back."

Okrepkie knows firsthand that the road to recovery for those in Southern California will be long and says cleaning up the debris can be a big step in the healing process.

"Driving through the neighborhoods, not even just being at your own property, but driving through them, you will see bikes twisted and mangled and melted car rims and all this stuff," he said. "So getting that stuff removed is helpful for the recovery process because it's sort of, moving on to the next step and putting that portion behind you."

Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order that directs fast action to clear debris.

Yana Garcia, the California Secretary for Environmental Protection, spoke with ABC7 from a burn scar in Altadena Wednesday.

"Today, we met with U.S. EPA who has been mission-tasked to start phase one of debris removal," Garcia said. "That includes removing hazardous waste, things like batteries, propane tanks and other volatile material that needs to be safely removed in order for the remaining debris to be removed from the properties that have been damaged or destroyed from the fires and allow rebuilding to take place."

California has been through the process too many times.

The former director of the California Office of Emergency Services who served between 2013 to 2022, Mark Ghilarducci, weighed in on what happens to that debris.

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"Typically, some goes into existing landfills, some goes into recycling. I know in the case of some of the concrete from the foundations and others that we've taken out have been crushed down and used as roadbed for future projects. Metals and steels are recycled and reused as building materials or other kinds of things," he said. "The trees that come down, we will repurpose them back into the lumber for rebuilding or we will sell it, or recycle it, essentially for other kinds of purposes. There's multiple different places that this stuff could go, but you know, ultimately some of it does end up in landfills."

Okrepkie said a key part of the recovery in his community was them taking some of it into their own hands, forming block captains with one or two people who spoke for each area.

He hopes what his community went through can serve as a roadmap in their recovery.

"You need somebody to lean on and that's one of the things when we came together with our block captain system, is we were working together as individuals with a shared trauma that knew what we were going through," he said.

As for when that debris in Southern California will be cleaned up, Garcia said that in past fires the first phase has taken a couple of months but she hesitates to give any estimate in Southern California until they get a true sense of the volume of waste.