The Southland Firestorm: A Special Report : The Recovery

As embers still smoldered, from Malibu to Calabasas, a common sentiment rose from the ashes. People who had lost their homes and all their possessions spoke of rebuilding.

It’s a natural response to disaster. But mental health experts and survivors of previous fires offer a warning:

Take your time.

“When something bad happens, people want to act quickly because they want it all to go away,” said Carol Hoffman, a UC Berkeley administrator who counseled victims of the 1991 Oakland Hills fire. “If they lost a house, they want to build a new one. But it is a hard time to make decisions.”

In the months to come, survivors who barely escaped the onrushing flames will have to stand and face a myriad of decisions both small and large. They may have to buy new underwear and a toothbrush. They may have to choose architectural plans.

“When people are called on to make decisions, they need all of their intellectual powers,” said Barbara Cadow, a clinical associate in the USC psychology department. “After a loss, you don’t think clearly.”

So Cadow and others spell out some basic steps--don’t make any big decisions before they have to be made, focus on necessities, attend to your emotions and the emotions of those around you.

Sounds easy enough. But some homeowners may panic. There is the emotional urge to replace what has been lost. There is also the fear that architects and contractors may soon be overwhelmed and the city permit process besieged.

Experts warn, however, that you can end up regretting even the smallest decision if it turns out badly.

In the Oakland Hills, victims received their insurance checks and found themselves driving all over town to buy the same shirt, the same towels they had lost in the fire, only to realize later that they hadn’t liked these possessions much to begin with.

And many of the things that decorate a home are collected over years. They cannot be replaced in one shopping spree.

Bad choices are not the only mistakes that can arise from rushing to recoup. Mental health workers in Oakland found that some parents became preoccupied with rebuilding and overlooked their children, who became depressed and anguished. Many victims had careless accidents in the days following the fire, the small scrapes they might usually avoid.

People may be so disoriented that they might cross intersections without looking or drive on the freeway in a daze, said Ilana Singer, a psychotherapist who counseled or interviewed at least 75 of that fire’s survivors.

Emotions can be neglected, too. Some victims focus on rebuilding at the expense of dealing with their sense of loss.

Lynne McKernan knows that scenario too well. Watching news reports of the brush fires has brought back traumatic memories of a fire that destroyed her Duarte house last year. In the weeks after the fire, she said, the hustle and bustle of rebuilding became too much.

“I had a fit one day. I told our insurance agent not to call me for a week,” McKernan recalled, saying she used the time to hold a funeral for her house. “People need to stop and mourn their loss. They need to walk the ground and say goodby, as if somebody they love had died.”

Cadow and other mental health experts echo this sentiment. They advise victims to make only the required decisions, such as buying necessities and finding a place to live in the immediate aftermath of the fire.

McKernan’s husband, Mitch Kaufman, recalls the initial flush of receiving a large insurance settlement.

“The first reaction is, ‘Wow, I’ve got all this money. I get to go shopping,’ ” Kaufman said.

“But we didn’t want to rush out and buy everything at once because it’s like compulsive buying. We also didn’t know what we needed most of. We had to re-prioritize.”

A year has passed and McKernan has bought only three pairs of pants and is still wearing the T-shirts that friends gave her the day after the fire.

She did, however, recently visit an art gallery to buy a $900 blown-glass lamp that her husband had admired for years.

Experts see a healing value in that kind of purchase. Victims, Cadow said, should be good to themselves.

“It was a frivolity but it added so much joy to what had become a bleak life for us,” McKernan said of the lamp that now hangs in their rebuilt dining room.

“For all that you’ve been through, you deserve a treat.”