Tips for Recovering from Wildfires: Lessons from Survivors

For many of us, the idea of rebuilding your life after losing your home and belongings to a wildfire is unthinkable. But for many in Los Angeles, that’s now the reality after a firestorm leveled thousands of homes and businesses in early January.

This kind of recovery is “a long, hard road,” said Lizz Porter, a small business owner who lives in Colfax. Porter lost her home during the River Fire in Placer County in 2021. The work of rebuilding in the wake of a fire can take years, she said. “It is time consuming. It is heartbreaking. It is exhausting, but it’s also worth it.”

Porter is one of many Northern Californians who have survived devastating wildfires in recent years — and endured the process of rebuilding their lives. In a conversation broadcast on KQED’s Forum, Porter and other fire survivors shared their emotional and practical advice for people who have only recently started along the path to recovery.

Big picture advice for fire survivors

Give yourself space, time and compassion — especially in Year One

“You will get through this. It’s not going to be easy. There will be peaks and valleys, but you will get through this,” said Melissa Schuster, owner of Burnt Barn Distilling Company in Paradise, California. Schuster lost her home to the Camp Fire in 2018. “Just take each moment as it comes and each event as it happens.”

Jennifer Gray Thompson is the CEO of After the Fire, a nonprofit that helps communities rebuild in the wake of wildfires. Her community in Sonoma was destroyed by the North Bay fires in 2017.

“It’s perfectly natural and normal, for the first year in particular, to be very challenging,” said Thompson. “It can be hard to form words. Your fight or flight [response] is completely activated for a very long time.”

Once the adrenaline starts to wear off, Thompson added, “a bit of crankiness” can set in. She described the whole first year as “surreal.”

“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.”

Lean into your community

Another piece of shared advice from fire survivors: Gather a community of supporters around you. And don’t be afraid to rely on them.

“Let people do things for you,” Leigh-Anne Lehrmann suggested. “Do you have a friend that you can send to the store to buy you some basic clothes or comfort foods? Let them do it. They want to help and you don’t need to spend time doing these errands.”

For Lehrmann, the “fun” of shopping was gone after she lost her home to the CZU Lightning Complex fire in 2020. “It quickly becomes a chore, because you don’t want a new shirt,” she explained. “You want the one that you always liked to wear but now it’s gone.”

Lehrmann also recommends being transparent about your loss, as you begin to purchase replacement goods and clothing. “Tell the store owner your situation,” she said. “Many stores will give you some level of discount, as their way of helping you.”

“Reach out to your work community,” suggested another Forum listener. “My union was a huge supporter of my family. They asked for my whole family’s clothes sizes. They got us new clothes and suitcases! You always forget that you need a way to carry stuff.”

Network, recommended Lehrmann, because you’ll “learn so much from other people as you go through the rebuilding process.” Lehrmann said she and her family formed a special email list with everyone who had the same home insurer, which was “invaluable.”

It’s important to remember that you’re not alone, Thompson said. “You are in this very unique club, a terrible club nobody wanted to be in, but it is full of the very best people.”

Keep yourself open to transformation

For many people, said fire survivor Melissa Schuster, their first instinct is to “get the stuff that they’ve lost, rebuild the same house.” Schuster saw it more as “an opportunity, really, for us to do something different and do it better.”

Among Schuster’s learnings from the experience: “I don’t need the number of clothes and all the fast fashion and all the stuff that I had before the fire. … I can live in a much smaller footprint.”

Schuster and her husband ultimately decided to rebuild the home they lost, but not exactly as it was. Their new home is less flammable, using insulated concrete foam — and it took over five years to construct.

“We were in an RV for four and a half years, and I know a lot of people were, too.”

Practical steps for fire survivors to take 

Get your bills and finances in order

Set up a P.O. Box ASAP, says Schuster. “Your mail needs to get to you, and it can’t get [to you] any other way.” You could also lean on a trusted friend or relative for a new mailing address, or redirect mail to your business address, she advised.

To accomplish these tasks, Lehrmann said she relied on a checklist. Among her recommendations:

• Quickly download an updated estimated value for your home from a real estate site.
• Ask your cellphone carrier if they will give you an unlimited data, voice and message plan at a discount.
• Request a waiver of mortgage payments and interest charges for at least three months.
• Call all of your utilities and either freeze or cancel service.
• Stop payments to your homeowners association.
• Cancel or update magazines and newspapers to online subscriptions.
• If you lost a car, don’t forget to cancel your car insurance.

But the most important step, according to Lehrmann, is to open a dedicated checking account just for fire expenses and payments from insurance or relief foundations: “Our credit union did this at no charge, and gave us a debit card for that account.”

You should also save receipts carefully, she advised, but having this dedicated checking account and debit card will help with documenting expenses for insurance and tax purposes later.

Document your losses — and communication

One of the most difficult parts of the process, survivors agreed, is taking stock of all the personal property you’ve lost. “This is not fun at all,” said Lehrmann. “Be prepared to cry.”

To split this task into mentally — and emotionally — manageable chunks, she recommended  organizing your list room by room, and listing everything that was there with a replacement cost.

Be specific with brand names of the things you owned, she added — because otherwise you could end up with insurance only covering “a crappy generic item.” And the replacement cost should be what it would currently cost to replace your item, she noted — “not the sale price at Walmart.”

It’s important to list everything, even if it is above and beyond your policy limit — because those costs can still be considered a loss and claimed as such on your taxes. This process isn’t linear, Thompson said, and you may remember lost items weeks — or months — later. Her tips: Keep an inventory of things you find and remember — for example, while clearing your property. Collect photos of property and belongings to share with your insurance company, and expect to be updating this inventory for a long time.

Colorado-based wildfire survivor Dan Hasselbach suggested that to juggle the huge amount of information, numbers and costs you’ll be discussing, you should record all phone conversations (with permission), request everything in writing, write “confirmation emails” back to insurance adjusters and contractors to make sure you have any information in writing — “to make sure everyone is on the same page, and to jog your memory later.”

Plan for long-term temporary housing — and get your insurance involved

Start searching for a long term rental, advised Lehrman — because “everyone will be grabbing whatever they can.”

You should plan on renting for between one and two years, she said, but she advised against signing a lease for a full two years, as your circumstances could change. You should call your homeowners or rental insurance to trigger “Loss of Use” coverage, which can help pay for you to live elsewhere.

You can also ask your insurance company to ask about allowances for additional living expenses (a.k.a “ALE”) for costs potentially including clothes, toiletries, meal stipends and hotel stays.

Get familiar with the cleanup and rebuilding process

You won’t be allowed back inside your home right away after a fire, stressed Thompson — and it helps to know why that is.

If a wildfire has resulted in fatalities or missing persons, emergency services first will need to conduct searches in the area. After this, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will move in to remove any hazardous waste — which is why Thompson stressed it’s important to fill out a Right of Entry (ROE) form as soon as possible, to give remediators access to your land. “They really want to do this in blocks in order to make it efficient, especially in a large-scale disaster,” she said. “Not doing that can actually hold up the entire neighborhood.”

Once the EPA has cleared your neighborhood zone, you’re allowed to sift your individual land — although Thompson noted that some people choose not to. Those that do should wear personal protective equipment (PPE), as there may still be hazardous waste and chemicals on the property.

Don’t forget that there will almost certainly be permits to account for, said Lehrmann — such as a permit for removing debris from your property. You may also need a permit to put erosion control in place, or to install a temporary power source and trailer while you build. Get the ball rolling on these permits early, advised Thompson, which can help you move quickly once the land is clear — and this is another reason that organizing with your neighbors into zones or blocks, and designating “zone captains” will be really helpful.

For example, your home insurance claim may be passed from one insurance adjuster to another over the period it takes to rebuild — perhaps even several times. This means most fire survivors don’t deal with one insurance adjuster who understands the full history of their claim, Thompson explained — and may find themselves having to explain the history of their claim and experience to several adjusters. This is another reason why community is “so important,” she said, and remember that you’re not the only person in your area dealing with this. “You have to be able to lean on your neighbors to share the very best information,” she advised.

Zone captains can help collect information for the neighborhood, and help your community advocate collectively with insurance companies and government agencies. Thompson particularly recommended UnitedPolicyholders as “a wonderful resource” for people looking to get organized and informed about their options.

Learn about the agencies and resources you have to work with

Agencies, organizations and advocacy groups that a wildfire survivor might encounter include:

• California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire)
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
• California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (CalOES)
• Search for regional offices of emergency management
• United Policyholders (nonprofit that supports consumers with insurance)
• After the Fire (nonprofit that supports fire survivors)

Each jurisdiction will likely set up a recovery center immediately after a wildfire, where representatives from the DMV, the county, the state and insurance companies will gather to field questions from survivors.

Lizz Porter said that in the aftermath of the Tubbs Fire, there was a lot of misinformation about what FEMA would or wouldn’t help with. Ignore this, she said, and make an appointment to meet with FEMA anyway — because it will “open doors to other choices.” Porter’s own situation didn’t qualify her for FEMA grants, but it did give her family “the ability to apply for a FEMA disaster recovery loan,” which allowed them to “close that gap between insurance and our actual rebuild cost.”