Fire 7 – Processing New Lives
by Angie Brenner
November 2, 2007
The Weaver family (see previous blogs) are evaluating there losses and trying to bring normalcy to their lives. A friend offered them (and they accepted) a temporary vacant home, a ranch house a quarter mile from where Julie works as superintendent for the small Spencer Valley School and where Julian, her seventh grader, can walk to school. “I can walk to my friend’s house too,” he told me. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen Julian happier then when he got to walk home from school yesterday.
A Ramona High School senior, daughter Emily has stayed with her girl friend away from her family since the fire. “She’s acting as if she’s already on her own,” says her dad, and maybe that’s what she feels. And while mom Julie is looking at possible options for rebuilding and taking time to adjust, her husband Rob only wants to get a FEMA trailer so the family can return to their property as soon as possible, to go home. “Let’s wait and build a yurt,” she suggests, “it’s something we can use later.”
The family horse, Buddy, still wary from his ordeal in the fire, is recovering from burned eyes and singed coat at the EA Horse Ranch.
Rob has started to list everything that was lost for the insurance company claim: all his tools and fishing gear, and an antiquated book collection given to him by his grandmother. How do you list your entire life?
There are hundreds of people who lost homes in the 2003 fire available to give them advice on contractors and builders. “I was burned twice,” says one local, “Once when the fire destroyed my home, and twice by the insurance company!” It seems unanimous; the insurance companies have made rebuilding a nightmare. That is if you have insurance. Many home owners in the area can’t afford or get insurance, and almost no one has enough to cover all possessions. Regardless of how one can finance their new life, how does one begin to do it?
I’ve watched my friends during the past four years who have had to do this. They all go about it differently. One single woman who had just finished building her house months before the 2003 fire was the first to reconstruct the same house. The plans were so current that the county waived all building fees. Another friend not only rebuilt their exact two story log home, she went on E-Bay to replace each item lost, down to the china cups and saucers she’d inherited from her mother. My friend Fe, a local artist, lost her unique metal and stained glass home overlooking a valley. Without insurance coverage, she had to settle for a standard-issue, wood-frame two bedroom house. I’m sure she’ll give it her own style, eventually. Others simply sold their scorched and burned property and left for the Pacific Northwest. “I need green,” said my friend Susan when she and her husband decided to relocate to Eugene, Oregon.
The Weavers will find their new footing, of that I’m certain. But, how many others in the community will leave, I wonder. This fire has brought back old wounds and angst, and caused new anxieties to form. A slight gust of wind sends a shiver down my spine causing me to look up for smoke. This catalyst of nature that changes the way we look at our lives and possessions may be necessary, but it doesn’t make the process any less painful. Growth never is.