Advice on Recovering from a Wildfire, From Californians Who’ve Been There
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Nina Kim. Coming up on Forum, the steps to take after losing your home to wildfire from three survivors of past California wildfires who can also speak to the emotions that will likely come up. We'll also hear how best to reach out and comfort someone who's lost their home. But to say, and not to say, as thousands in Southern California now face a home that's burned down.

If you've lost your home in a past fire, what's something you wish you knew about the road ahead? Tell us after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. Liz Porter is a small business owner who lives in Colfax and lost her home during the 2021 River Fire in Placer County. Melissa Schuster owns Burnt Barn Distilling Company in Paradise and is a former Paradise Town Council member. She lost her home in the 2018 Camp Fire.

Jennifer Gray Thompson is CEO of After the Fire, a nonprofit organization that helps communities rebuild after wildfires. She, too, lost her home in Santa Rosa to the 2017 Tubbs Fire. As more than 12,000 homes and buildings are estimated to have burned so far in the historically destructive and deadly Los Angeles area wildfires, we hear from three people who've been there. Jennifer, welcome to Forum. Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. I do have to say off the bat, my apologies. I did not lose my home, but my hometown lost 5,900 homes, including about 2,400 in the valley that I live. So I just want to clarify, but I'm very happy to be here. A very important point to clarify. Thank you so much. Liz, really glad to have you with us as well. Thank you so much. And Melissa, welcome to you.

And thank you to all three of you for being willing to share your insights and advice. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of what to do after a home has burned, I'd love to hear from each of you. If there was an overarching thought or message that you would want to share with the people of Los Angeles, Melissa, I'll start with you. What's one thing you'd like people to know just at the outset?

We'll get through this. You will get through this. It's not going to be easy. There will be peaks and valleys, but you will get through this. And just take each moment as it comes and each event as it happens. Jennifer, what about you? You've supported people after so many wildfires now, sadly.

Sadly, virtually every mega fire in the United States since 2017. I've stood with the people there over the ruins of their homes and the landscape. But what I never see is the ruin of a community.

And the community is absolutely key and never underestimate the attachment and the dedication to both the land and the people. One time and time again, I've seen the absolute most wonderful people show up during the worst moments of their lives, and they will get through this as long as they hold hope. It is a strategy, in fact.

and structured determination, but also that they're not alone. You know, we have hundreds and hundreds of people waiting to help them with very specialized knowledge. We're on the ground next week, including with somebody from the campfire, and I've been there since 10 days after. So we're taking Casey Taylor from Achieve Charter Schools, and we really do search around for really effective leaders

to bring to the fire in front of us to make sure we're serving. They're not alone. They're going to rebuild. It's going to be hard, but they certainly are not going to be starting at the beginning like we did in 2017. Liz Porter, I thought our message you found helpful after you lost your home.

Yeah, very similar to Melissa. Recovery is a long road. It is not just something that you can be like, all right, so I'm done with this fire stuff. Let's go on to the next thing in life. It is a long, hard road. It is time consuming. It is heartbreaking. It is exhausting. But it's also worth it. It is.

It's important to really rely on your community, like both have said. You need to not be afraid to ask for help because trying to do it alone is a useless journey. It takes everybody. It takes all hands on deck. It's tough and it's not going to be fixed in six months. You're in for it, but it is. It's worth it, really.

So then, Liz, what's something on the other side of this that people should not say, something that you recommend people not say to someone whose home has burned down?

Do not tell them that it was just stuff and that they're lucky to be alive. Do not. It is just stuff, but it was my stuff and I liked it and I had it for a reason. It's hurtful. It's minimizing. It's why can't you be grateful that you're alive? And I can be grateful that I'm alive and I can also be heartbroken that I lost my grandmother's paintings in my wedding dress.

And it just it's incredibly hurtful. And the number of times that I've heard it, people trying to find a silver lining, I guess, is frustrating. And it's it's OK to grieve and it's healthy to grieve. And it is not healthy to tell somebody that at least they didn't die, you know, because it just it doesn't help anything.

It's not the stuff when it's your stuff. Yeah. Melissa, would you say the same? I echo that. I think the most important thing that people can do for another is to listen and to be there with them. I can't tell you how many times...

People, because of my position on the council, people would come at me with anger and hurt and all of these emotions. And they want answers and they just don't know. I can't give them those things. But what I can do is hold their hands and listen. And I think that is the most important thing that anyone can do. Let's talk about how the river fire and leaving your home unfolded for you.

Sure. So we were lucky that we were all home. So my husband and our son, he was 13 at the time. It was the week before school was starting. It was first week in August. So everybody was home. And so it was like 2.30 or so in the afternoon and there was a post in our town Facebook group. Oh, my God, guys, there's a fire at the campground with a picture of like this little puff of smoke burning.

at the campground. So we live, we're right off the Bear River. And this was at the Bear River campground, hence the river fire. And so it's like three miles or so downstream from us, I think. And so it was just sort of like, oh, okay. So we went outside, my husband and I, we sort of sniffed the air. We didn't smell anything. We looked around, we didn't see anything. And so it was like, all right, we'll just keep an eye on it. So we came in the house and

And about an hour later, we went back outside and the wind had shifted or something had happened. And suddenly you could very clearly smell it. And there was a giant column of smoke directly overhead. And it was close enough that you could see the smoke moving. It was actually sort of curling and swirling. So it was that close. So we were like, all right, let's go.

Let's take these steps. And so it was, you know, go, let's go get the cat carriers. Let's go see where the cats are hanging out. Let's pack a couple of bags. We were lucky that we did have some notice. So it wasn't sort of a panicked, you know, fire licking at the backs of our heels while we were escaping or anything. And so we loaded up the cars. We have a camping trailer. So we hooked that up to the truck.

And as we were getting ready to leave, our neighbor, who's a firefighter, actually pulled up our driveway and he's like, guys, it's time to go. We were like 60 seconds. We're out. And so we took it right around four o'clock and then actually passed the sheriff coming in to start banging on people's doors to get them out.

And by fire maps and sort of estimates, we're pretty sure that our house was gone by about 7 p.m. that evening. Wow.

And you really just never thought your home would go, did you? You found that leaving part almost like an annoyance. It's like, okay, gotta just do this process. Yeah, I was expecting to be annoyed and inconvenienced. So the house burned down a year and a day after we bought it. And so it was our first evacuation. So it was very much like, oh my God, this is so annoying.

I have to load all this stuff in the car. I'm going to have to unload all this stuff into the car. And yeah, so I was, I was pretty annoyed at it because it was just like, I knew this was a risk when we moved up here, but I wasn't expecting to sort of check it off in that first year that we were actually like sleeping in the house. And I never, I never thought that our single evacuation would be the evacuation that ended up taking everything. Amazing. Yeah.

Jennifer, I think you said that for the first year after the Tubbs fire, you had what you called fire brain. What is that?

So we see fire brain in every disaster. We walked into 18 counties now across four states and stayed with them. The whole first year is just really strange. It's surreal because everything that you thought was true the day before the fire is completely different the day after the fire, especially for those who lost loved ones, who lost homes. But it really does reverberate through the entire community. It can be hard to form words.

Your, you know, your fight or flight is completely activated for a very long time and figuring out, you know, how to also all of a sudden you have this Herculean task for rebuilders of having your job, your family dealing with what's going on there.

and rebuilding or deciding to rebuild and navigating all of that way to do the cleanup. So it is a mix. It's very much a traumatic response. We work with Dr. Adrienne Hines out of Stanford who specializes in PTSD often. We bring her to communities for this reason.

to talk about that it's perfectly natural and normal for the first year in particular to be very challenging. Sort of the adrenaline starts to wear off. A bit of crankiness can set in. We see higher levels of domestic violence, depression, substance abuse. Those can be headed off. You're not doomed at all and you don't have to overly put

That's what Adrian says. But there is a very real traumatic component that reverberates out into the community. Most of us like activate if we can in order to help our communities. I've never, ever walked into a community and not been impressed by the people on the ground ever.

So some of it is helpful. But after the first year, the attention sort of turns away. And then and usually we're all cleaned up by that. And then another level of sort of sadness comes in because you're still dealing with the grief. But the physical representation of it is gone. And then a lot of people move on. But you can't if you're still in that space. Even for me who did not lose my home, I did grow up here.

It took me years, actually, probably five years before I could turn around and go, you know, I think I'm okay now. And I had already walked through multiple communities and stood with them. So a lot of self-compassion, a lot of grace, even like laughter with your friends and your neighbors who also lost so that you can, because you are in this very unique club now.

a terrible club nobody wanted to be in, but it is full of the very best people. But there are some real parts to having Firebrain.

Yeah. And you're underscoring what Melissa and Liz were saying earlier about it being a very long process. Now, I feel like I also even better understand what they mean. And of course, what I'm hearing from all three of you so much is do not go through this alone and that you do not have to. We're getting advice from three survivors of wildfires and we're hearing from you, our listeners, more after the break. I'm Nina Kim.

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This is Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're getting advice on recovering from a wildfire from Californians who've been there. Melissa Schuster is owner of the small business Burnt Barn Distilling Company in Paradise and lost her home in the 2018 Camp Fire. Liz Porter is a small business owner who lives in Colfax, lost her home during the 2021 River Fire in Placer County. Jennifer Gray Thompson is CEO of After the Fire, a nonprofit that helps communities rebuild after wildfires and live through the 2017 Camp Fire.

Tubbs Fire. Listeners, have you lost your home in a previous wildfire? What advice would you give?

Are you affected by the Los Angeles area wildfires? What questions do you have? Or what would you like to know about how best to support someone who's surviving a wildfire or who has lost their home to wildfire? You can email forum at kqed.org. Find us on Blue Sky X, Facebook, Instagram, or Threads. We're at KQED Forum. And you can call us at 866-733-6786. 866-733-6786. 866-733-6786.

In terms of one piece of practical advice, all three of you said this. Melissa, you were one of them. You said, set up a P.O. box. Just underscore why that's so important, Melissa.

Your mail needs to get to you, and it can get to you any other way. So you could set up a PO box. It's a great way to do that. Or if you, for instance, for me, my husband had a business outside of the area, so we were able to use his business. That's another opportunity. If you have family, if you have business. But you're going to need to want your mail. I wanted to address something earlier.

that Jennifer said earlier, and that is Jennifer didn't lose her home in a fire. So many people that didn't lose their homes were still heavily impacted. Maybe you didn't lose the structure itself, but you may have lost everything inside due to smoke damage. You may be dealing with the only house standing in your neighborhood. It

I think it's also really important that we don't say to those folks, at least your house didn't burn because they may have lost

Way more than we could ever. Would you add anything to that? What Melissa's point is? I so appreciate that because we all have different levels of survivor guilt. Like I felt really bad for years that my home didn't burn, but this has also been my life's work since October 8th. So I feel like I'm doing everything I can to give back to that community. People with smoke damage in particular end up in this very narrow, odd space where they're

They feel like they should, I mean, they're grateful for keeping their home, but they often can't even move home for a year because the toxins are so intense. For anybody going through that, they really need from their insurance to ask for two things in this one action that they can have, which is an environmental hygienist to test your home before you allow the ServPro professional cleaning to come in and then ask for one after.

It's a very common thing for people to think they can move home. Often they can, but they need to get it tested because you have too many fire survivors who end up sick and their entire families are sick and then go back and then they test. And then they find out that their house is still full of the chemicals from the fire and has to be completely remediated

which could take six months, a year, a year and a half, and it's very expensive and it's hard to be your own advocate. We have people with that experience that we can connect them with, but it is really important to understand the entire community is traumatized and anyone who has the capacity to actually step up and support

the entire community, whether or not you lost your home, that is a wonderful thing to do. And I highly encourage it. Yeah. Jennifer, actually, could you just walk us through the basic order of steps in the process of recovering from a wildfire if your home has been leveled by fire? I mean, first, I imagine people will have an opportunity to see if anything from their home is salvageable, right? Yeah.

Absolutely. So a big thing we do for all of these communities from Maui will be in L.A. next week and been in so many of these fires is that we have to telling people what's around the corner gives them a sense of agency for what's going on. So right now it's like they want to go home and see what's left.

But for those who are total loss, it does take a little longer. The first thing we have to do is anytime there are fatalities, there are pretty much always fatalities. They really have to go in. We have to allow for that to happen. That sacred ground when people passed away, like in the campfire, they lost 85 people. Maui fire 102. It's very challenging. And this one, we're not sure yet. You have to go in and find people and we have to allow that to happen. Unfortunately, that's become a huge, a very, a

you know, advanced skillset for a certain group of really wonderful people who do that work. Once they're done with that, then the EPA comes in and they have to take out everything like, you know, batteries, anything that was toxic. If you had an electric car, anything like that has to be removed to make the place as safe as possible.

Once that happens, then assuming everyone has filled out an ROE, if you don't, it can actually slow down your entire neighborhood. It's really important to fill out the right of entry form as soon as possible to give access to your land because they really want to do this in blocks in order to make it efficient, especially in a large scale disaster. Not doing that can actually hold up the entire neighborhood significantly.

And then they come in and you're allowed to sift your land. And some people choose not to do that. That's completely their choice. Nobody should judge them for that, but they will be provided with proper PPE.

Our fires here were a little earlier, so we did not get good advice for returning even to our homes that didn't burn. But now it's a very advanced process. PPE and sifters will be provided to these people. There are nonprofits like Samaritan's Purse that will walk you through it. Once you're finished with that and it's cleared, then they'll come in and they will do debris removal. In the case of this fire, we do expect them to be on a highly accelerated rate.

um, path because of the Biden, um, order for 180 days of full cost. And so maybe they'll be cleaned up in six months would be kind of a record for that size. More like a year is probably what's possible, but we will see. Hmm.

Oh, wow. Okay. And so then after they clear the remnants of the home, then you work with FEMA insurance and then ultimately getting permits to rebuild the home. That's usually the next step, Jennifer. I mean, I'm truncating very quickly, but yeah. Well, it is. Yes. But they also, just so you know, every jurisdiction pretty much does hire an expedited permitting process contractor. And those are, unfortunately, that's also become a very

learned skill. And so you can get your permits in and out when you are ready to rebuild within seven to 14 days, very common. Paradise did a great thing where they can actually give, they have a housing plan library, so you can choose and those things are free.

They will have to take your foundation. So if anybody tells you otherwise, that's just not true. But they don't need to take your retaining walls necessarily. So you have the right to be on your land while that happens. And then going through your insurance process, depending on your insurance company, can be less often painless, more often very painful. And so you may get your adjusters changed several times.

And in those cases, this is why community is so important, is you have to be able to lean on your neighbors to share the very best information. It's why we also recommend you immediately start organizing into block and zone captains. Paradise took ours and turned it into zone captains and did a great job. And there's also digital communities. There's a lot of tools, but this is, again, why community is so important, so that you don't feel lonely and sort of lost in the dark. Yeah. Melissa? Yeah.

As Jennifer is saying, what is something that you felt like Paradise, the local entities there, the governing entities did to make the process less frustrating?

We learned a lot from Jennifer and the Tub Fire, indeed. We were so grateful for everything that they were able to teach us, and we took it one step further. Each time, we learned something like that. So the zone captains and the zones and all of those things were very valuable. There's also a recovery center, it sounds like, that you set up that you said was amazing.

Yes, we had a couple of things. And I believe that the jurisdictions will set up a center immediately after the fire if they haven't already done so, where you can go and you can replace documents like driver's licenses and things like that. The DMV will be there. The county, the state, all of those things will be there for you. Most of the insurance

agencies will be there as well. That was the first thing that happened. After that, Paradise was unique in that it was a very...

jurisdiction. We were suffering prior to the fire, and so we were down to, I believe, 80 people in the government itself, and that includes police and fire for a community of about 27,000. So we were already a very small organization. That

helped us. And one of the things that we recommend is that other jurisdictions activate a response team that is small and also is given the power to make those decisions. In other words, it was about yelling down the hall and saying, hey, Mark, can you do this? Or I've got this for

this person on the phone. Can you take care of that for us? And so that was an advantage. It was a disadvantage in that there was no way that our small team could handle the rebuilding of 12,000 homes. So we brought in another outside group that

and set them up in a separate building to handle just that piece. Well, Leanne writes, my dad and stepmom lost their home in the Tufts fire, and I lost my home in the CZU lightning complex fire in 2020. Oh, that's awesome.

Short-term, if you own your home, download an updated estimated value from realtor.com or another real estate site. Do this quickly. Be very careful about signing up for assistance. We were scammed two days after the fire by a fake FEMA website. Mid-term, search for a longer-term rental and save receipts. Longer-term, call homeowners or rental insurance to trigger loss of use. This typically will allow you to be in a similar property for a certain number of years.

Liz, talk about your experience working with FEMA. For example, you thought at first, or you heard some rumors that you would not even be eligible for support from FEMA, right? Yeah. So our...

So my experience was pretty different from like paradise, even though it happened later. Part of it is because our fire was air quote small. It was only 2,500 acres. It was only a hundred homes. So we did not necessarily get the same level of attention that a lot of other larger fires get. And so there were rumors going around in on Facebook and,

and things like that, that was FEMA's not going to talk to you if you have insurance. FEMA is only going to help people who don't have insurance. And so don't even bother, you know, don't go wait in line at their big semi with the offices. Don't, don't even bother. And, um, it was only because, so we were like, okay, we had insurance, not enough insurance, but we did have insurance. So we were like, okay, well, FEMA's off of our, you know, to-do list.

And then I happened to strike up a conversation with a woman who was one of the FEMA people, like clerks, that they had flown in. She goes from disaster to disaster. And she was like, no, that's ridiculous. She was like, you need to come. You need to meet with us.

And because what meeting with FEMA will do is opens doors to other choices. So we may not qualify for like FEMA grants, but it did give us the ability to apply for FEMA disaster recovery loan, which is then administered through the SBA. And so that is how we were able to close that gap between insurance and our actual rebuild costs. Wow.

Wow. And Jennifer, you've said that it's important for wildfire survivors who set up GoFundMe pages to know that could affect their FEMA aid? It can. You know, they don't want to do duplication of benefits. You know, it's not exactly that easy. So for some, communities don't recover, don't, I'm sorry, qualify for individual assistance based upon the wealth of the county. And that's something we'd like to change because it hurts communities.

Um, grizzly flats inside of the El Dorado County. And that was a very small community. It was heavily affected, very under-resourced. And so some of those laws we'd like to see change. A big thing that FEMA did this year was change the requirement that you have to apply for SBA before you can apply for FEMA. And that was really not good because it was dinging people's credit, um,

So the other thing to know is that if you get a denial from SBA or HUD later, if you're going for other parts to help you rebuild or FEMA, it's often just a request for more information. On a person who's just lost everything, that's actually a very frustrating piece. But the reason they do it is exactly what we were talking about earlier, which was the fraud factor. They're wanting to make sure that you have all of the information in order to give you

to make sure that they are directing aid towards the right people. Different aid is triggered at different times. It is not easy to navigate, but again, it's why you reach out to other fire survivors. And then to bear in mind that you do pay attention to some of the improvements that have been made, but no one is here to say that navigating the process is simple or easy. Again, but if you do it together inside of community, it is much, much easier.

And in terms of helping to make the insurance process smoother, I remember taking photos or being, it was recommended to me to take photos of every room in my home and so on, Jennifer? Yeah.

Oh, you know, I do this every red flag warning. I make real, I make posts. I even boost them to go out every year. As soon as there's a red flag warning, I go around and I videotape my home on my camera and then I throw it up in a cloud. You can also take photos, but I just find it more easy, you know, easier. You go into your closets, things that you're not going to think about because imagine having Firebrain and then having to do a contents video.

of everything you bought every place you bought it in every corner of your home and it's very it's one of the things that really delays people some insurance companies will be more gracious about it and just give you like 75 say if you have a hundred thousand of insurance of contents others will give you the full amount advocate for that there's precedence for it you can ask for that because

If you've ever seen 30 or 40 pages of an Excel spreadsheet, you know that that is not something that you want to do in addition to everything else, but it is sometimes required. There are, we highly recommend, by the way, navigating your insurance that you

access a nonprofit called United Policyholders. They're in every fire. We give them our full, full endorsement for this very unique lane that they run. They're uphelp.org and they're certainly down in the LA fires and they've certainly been in all of ours as well. Let me go to caller Chris in Napa. Hi, Chris, you're on.

Hi, yes. In 2017, we lost a home that we built ourselves, and my son lost his home, and my cousin was his only home standing in his neighborhood from the Tubbs fires. Ours was the Atlas Peak fire. We had no area of evacuation, no property.

pre-warning to get out. Our fire came so quickly. All we could do was run for our lives. And eight of us were living together, and most of us drove through fire to get off the mountain. We all had PTSD. We just really went through it. And there are some things that

could make it better for other people now they have the fire zones and they have evacuations to get out and notifications on your phones but we had none of that uh... so definitely having a rendezvous point for your family members a place where you come together to go

to get shelter and to take care of each other. Always have your documents in a safety deposit box at the bank. Try to really put your baby photos in the cloud.

and have cash ready to help you. Also, I would highly recommend that anybody who your insurance, make sure that your house is insured for the value of your house because that's where a lot of people got really devastated.

Oh, Chris, you're really making me remember those Napa fires. Thanks for that advice. And Melissa, we're coming up on a break. But I know that you emphasized how, you know, the LA fires have come back on you as well. When you heard about them memories of paradise. Can you just say quickly what you went through?

I think the overwhelming size of the devastation, the scope of the devastation is the thing that hit me the most, especially watching it happen again in Los Angeles, which is where I spent my young adult years. So I was... Even more than the local choirs that we've experienced since...

More after the break. Stay with us. I'm Mina Kim. Welcome back to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're getting advice this hour on recovering from a wildfire, from Californians who've been there. Jennifer Gray Thompson is CEO of

of After the Fire. Liz Porter owns a small business in Colfax. Melissa Schuster owns the small business Burnt Barn Distilling Company in Paradise. Listeners, have you lost your home in a previous wildfire? What advice would you give? Are you affected by the LA wildfires? What questions do you have? What would you like to know about how best to support someone

who's lost their home. The email address is forum at kqed.org. Find us on our social channels at KQED Forum. Call us at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786.

We're getting lots of questions and I want to go to this one. This is Naran X asks, what advice would you give to those who haven't been through a wildfire but want to be prepared? Liz, I like your advice about, you know, thinking about how much time you have and figuring out what to prioritize. But one of the things that you said that I think I'll use if ever I am in this situation is if you're going to grab clothes, one of the best places to look is your dirty laundry basket.

Yeah, this falls into our things that would have been, to quote Adam Sandler, things that would have been helpful to know yesterday. When I was packing to evacuate, I packed like I was going camping. I had like three sweatshirts and some jeans and some sweatpants and

And no underwear. And it was like 98 degrees outside. In my panic, I went into camping mode and I grabbed all of these totally inappropriate seasonally things. And a few days later, someone was like, oh, yeah, I just grabbed my dirty laundry basket. And the most genius thing, everything fits perfectly.

You like it enough that you wore it recently and it's seasonally appropriate. So it's such a no brainer that it's like, why, why is this not so clear? I post it every time there's a disaster, I post it online and I always get tons of comments that are like, Oh my God, this is, this is genius. I can't believe this never occurred to me. But yeah, that's the, that's the thing. It's, it's,

It makes it so easy. The sister writes, what should well-meaning people not donate to fire victims? I've heard that clothing donations, for example, are more trouble than they're worth. And you should just send someone a gift card to replace their clothes. Would you agree with that, Liz? Absolutely. I mean, it sounds, I don't want to say it sounds selfish, but cash and gift cards. If you know your friend's Venmo, send them 20 bucks. If you know, you know, if you know that they,

Prefer Target for their underwear or clothes or wherever. Send them a gift card for there. It's well-meaning people. And there are exceptions. But well-meaning people are like, I'm going to donate all these things. And it's like, thank you so much, but I don't need pillowcases. And I don't need towels. And I don't need mixing bowls. Because I don't have a house. And then people do donate dirty clothes sometimes.

stained clothes, you know, just like garbage, like basically trash. And there are many well-meaning people in this world, but there are also people who are like, I can clear all these bags of things out of my garage by donating them. Hooray. And it's really like the ability to, for us to just go into the store and pick, because it's not,

We were like desperate just because we didn't have stuff to wear. But also, I'm not going to wear, you know, a 10 year old ripped and stained shirt. Like, I'm still the same person that I was. But I'm just it's like, it's just so much easier. Donating clothes makes more work for volunteers.

They have to sort it. They have to wash it. They have to take it to the dump if it's inappropriate. And then the collect, it has to be stored. It has to be distributed in some way that makes sense so that you don't have all of these shell shock survivors digging through piles of T-shirts looking for something in a medium.

You know, it just it's it's the most helpful thing is cash and gift cards. Can I add on to that? Because I want to just preach on this so hard. I just got a call from a major organization in Los Angeles who have had so much stuff.

fast fashion, that people cleaned out their closet, the best of intentions. And even in the Santa Anita racetrack was good for people emotionally. But our experience over seven years, and I saw this in the campfire too, was 90% of that will end up in the landfill because it's a secondary disaster. And people send things people don't necessarily need, like ice skates to Puerto Rico. And in the LA fires, somebody donated a

And there are just, you know, it just turns into this big mess of like old shoes. And while what I tell people when they want to help is that's wonderful, but you can't have your need to give supersede the fire survivors need to receive.

And that's really important. Like they are central. This is why asking the questions and listening. And it's not just like, let me know if I can do something to help. Send them a door dash if that's what you can do. Make something easier for them, but also listen at the same time. So very, very important. We see this in every single disaster. Let me go to call on Mariah in San Francisco. Hi, Mariah. Hi. Hi.

Yeah, I lost my house in the Palisades fire. I'm 24. I'm a caretaker for my grandmother's sister. She's been in the Palisades since the 70s. We lost my grandmother's house as well, which was my mother's childhood home. My mom went to Pali High.

I evacuated them. We saw the fire starting and I evacuated. It took us three hours to leave the Palisades, which anyone familiar in the area knows how small and hard it is to get out of the Palisades. But we made it out.

Just listening about your guys' conversation with donations and stuff, it's really interesting being 24 in this situation and thinking how to rebuild my own closet and life intentionally and sustainably. And it really is true that the most helpful thing is just to think

think of what someone might need and fill the gap. Like my friend, we evacuated up to the Bay area and my childhood friend and her mom, uh, had broken into our, you know, they, they knew how to get into our house and they left us like three bags of groceries. And my mom just broke down so emotional, just, just seeing that, um,

So, yeah, this conversation was really helpful. I took down some notes for my mom. She's doing all the policy stuff. Oh, Mariah, thank you so much for calling. I really appreciate it and sharing what is helpful to you, but also just wondering how you are doing and what is helping you right now through all of this.

Yeah, I'm okay. I went through a little like angry couple days doing all the like itemizing and accounting. I was just feeling so like irritated and like tight in the chest. And I made sure I do a lot of yoga. So I made sure to start fasting.

prioritizing my meditation. It's like grounding in my friends, talking to friends on the phone. A lot of my friends are long distance, so staying connected virtually, but

Yeah, like, so my, really, my bestie set up a GoFundMe without even asking, like, just filling in those gaps, like, sending someone to DoorDash, like, that, getting the groceries without even, you know, prompting. Someone, one of our neighbors brought over, like, applesauce that she was making, which

which has just been just those little things. You know, it's nice to check in to, hey, how can I help? But also, yeah, just picking up the phone and calling. And this is relevant for all crises. But we're just sad. We're just mourning. We're mourning the heirlooms and the irreplaceable things the most. It's just really sad. It's devastating.

Well, Mariah, I hope you'll stay in touch with us through this process. Again, I just so appreciate you wanting to share what you're going through right now. These fires are still burning. So thank you, Mariah.

Thank you. I appreciate it. You know, Melissa, Mike writes, I survived the Tud's fire. I recommend that people remember to offer assistance in the following months. The help always comes early and decreases over time. I realized months later what I really needed. Would you say that's true for you?

It took us almost five and a half years to rebuild our home. We were in an RV for four and a half years. And I know a lot of people, others were too. But again, it's that it's kind of help. It is really about being there for people. And I really, I'm so impressed with what Jennifer is saying. The words that are coming out of her are all the lessons that we learned from the campfire. And she put them together.

together. And what I would like people to know is that, yes, there are people that have been through this before, and yes, they can help you. She mentioned Casey Taylor, who is the head of a charter school. I just spoke with her last week while she was in Los Angeles saying, and what she said to me, which I just love, was, I know how to do this.

There were five charter schools that were displaced and called Casey Taylor to come in. And Casey said, I know how to do this. There are people that know how to do this. We'll get through it. Absolutely. Melissa, you've also said that you feel like it's important to know. You said Paradise is amazing and that you really hope people find encouragement and hope from what Paradise was able to do. But the community is.

isn't back and when the expectation that the community will be the same as it was actually may not be the best way to conceive of it going forward. It's that you can't really go back to the way it was, right, Melissa?

Absolutely. And I think, which brings another point, a lot of the people, their first instinct is to get the stuff that they had, get the stuff that they've lost, rebuild the same house. And this is an opportunity, really, for us to do something different and do it better. So things that we've learned or that I've learned personally, I don't need the number of clothes and all the fast

and all the stuff that I had before the fire. I don't need the things that I had before the fire. I can live in a much smaller footprint. And we built our home. It is one of the most fire-safe homes, I believe, in Paradise. It has a plus rating from IDHSS. It is, and it's made of, we built it with ICDF, which is insulated carbonate.

concrete form. So the end thing is to get back and get back now. But I think it is so much better. It is now time for us as humans to think about how can we get back. Such a good point. Let me remind listeners, you are listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. You know, Jennifer, Melissa was saying just how much what you're saying is so helpful. And I do just want to ask you,

You've made the point that, you know, all fires are very different. If you've seen one megafire, you know one megafire. So can you talk about what might be the particularities, what will be unique to these fires? Because we're hearing about just how historic the destruction is, as well as how historic the cost will be and so on, that you foresee for L.A., L.A. area.

Well, you know, we make it a point that when we walk into a fire, it's the fire. And we look at the pre-existing conditions, the demographics. The demographics in Paradise were very different. There was a much older population, often lower resource, but also wonderful community. And now they're seeing a bigger change of demographic.

than we normally see after a fire, but it is also revitalizing that community. We really love the people on the ground there. This is going to be a very different rebuild. And even between the Eaton Fire, which is a little over 7,000 homes in the Pacific Palisades, that too will be different, but each can help each other. In this case, we are concerned about the higher-end custom homes are the slowest to come back.

And people who are extremely low resource without insurance, they're the next slowest to come back. The people who come back the fastest are actually middle class who have an income that matches the land that it was on and they have enough insurance to do it. We actually think that the we were pretty much rebuilt in five years in Sonoma County, but we are an unusually wealthy but middle class.

community. In the case of the LA fires, it's very different because we cannot count on the federal government in the way that we normally would.

Maui Fire, again, completely different. But in this case, because it's been made political, we're really going to, for the very first time, partner primarily with the private sector to not deploy private equity, but instead to use the innovation, the speed, the investments, because there are so many well-resourced people in the Palisades that can also help

the people in Eaton Fire. Now, Eaton Fire, this is the most communications I've ever been asked for after a disaster. We've already done four or five town halls last week. We have two coming up this week. And that's before we're on the ground. But my hope is that if we're able with Los Angeles to actually help

them to rebuild back in a way that is sustainable and is not, and that's very multi-parallel climate resilient housing and new ideas and to showcase that, that it could actually reverberate throughout the entire megafire crisis.

So we are looking at this one a little bit differently. We are not going to pay attention to the noise and the nonsense, even though I do a lot of work on the Hill. Instead, we're going to look toward the community and the private sector to be their primary helpers on the big level, of course, working closely with local government. But we actually do think they'll be rebuilt within five to seven years.

This listener, Bree, writes, I was told by a victim of the L.A. fire that his insurance company has declined his claim because his house is now under the name of his living trust and not his personal name, which is the name on the insurance policy. Please advise your listeners to update their policyholder's name to avoid similar insurance problems. Another listener, Perry on Discord, writes, what by way of supplies did you need but had the hardest time getting your hands on? Liz, I'll go to you on that.

Money and gift cards. No. So we actually it was 2021. So there was some difficulty in getting PPE so that we could get into our property. I actually we have a dear friend who happens to be a firefighter who loaned us boots and so that we had good footwear, which is so important because all of that debris is so toxic. But really, I can't stress enough how toxic.

how important money, like seriously, how important money is. So individual people would ask me, like our niece who lives in Seattle called us and was like, Hey, you know, we're going to come down and visit and hang out for a few days and just kind of take care of you guys. She's like, I'm going to bring you some clothes. Do you need them? Cause we're the same size. And, um, and so she like brought a duffel bag of clothes, which was a lifesaver. And it was like,

When tupled the size of my wardrobe at that point. And so it really asked individuals what they need because there are going to be different situations. Like we lived with my mother-in-law, God bless her, for over two years while we rebuilt.

Um, so I didn't need pots and pans and towels and things because she had all of that stuff for us in her house. That said though, Liz, I was struck by, because you were underinsured, there were a lot of costs. You put all your money into that rebuilding process when it was time. I think you said that first shop at Costco or something like that was so much more expensive than you expected it to be. It was like a thousand dollars because we're,

We're like, we're so excited. We're moving home. And it was like all of a sudden we go to Costco and it was like, oh, we need Ziploc bags and foil and toilet paper and paper towels and dish soap. And it's like all of these purchases that you normally spread out over time that like all of a sudden jumped in. And it was two years after our fire. So like the world had moved on.

So we're not still getting any sort of assistance. We're paying our loan bill every month, but we're really like we were just on our own. Like it is a very expensive thing at all fronts. Yeah. You know, and it's just it's like the support really does taper off. I was suggesting to people online, set a reminder for six months or nine months from now to check in with your friends who have lost everything online.

You could make their week if you send them a DoorDash or, you know, just 25 bucks, 50 bucks. Like, it can be game-changing because that support does really taper off. And we do stay for years, to be clear. I just want everybody to know that it's

After the Fire and our whole community of fire survivors, we will show up for you for years. Jennifer, thank you so much. Jennifer Grayne Thompson of After the Fire. Liz Porter, Melissa Schuster, can't thank you both as well more. And thank you, listeners. You are listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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