An Oakland Fire Survivor Offers Words of Advice

As fire victims in Southern California begin to deal with the rest of their lives, they’ve been receiving lots of “expert” advice in the media. Most of it is platitudinous or unhelpful. My Berkeley house burned down in the Oakland Hills fire of 1991. My family and I escaped with the clothes on our backs. As I queasily watched the Southland fires on television, I thought of what the new victims will be going through and what I’ve learned in the past two years. I’d like to offer some real-life, practical pointers on coping; advice I wish someone had given me.

1--The next two to three years of your life are going to be complicated. Be kind to yourself.

2--Everyone in the family will go a little nuts at some time--usually not at the same time or in the same way. Therapy and support groups are very helpful for both adults and kids.

3--Stay in touch with your neighbors who are also fire victims. Six months from now even your dearest friends and closest relatives will be sick of hearing about your insurance or rebuilding hassles. Your fellow survivors will never get bored.

4--Dealing with any insurance company on a loss of this magnitude takes a strong stomach and a tremendous amount of time and effort. Determine if there is someone in the household who is willing to do the work and who has or can quickly acquire some expertise in construction costs. If there is no one with the time or energy for strenuous negotiations, pay a public adjuster, lawyer or builder to be your advocate.

5--You need an independent opinion on the cost to replace your house to seriously negotiate with your insurer. If you still have copies of the old plans, give them to a reputable residential contractor to get a replacement bid on the destroyed structure.

My house was built in 1926, and no plans survived. I worked with an architect to reconstruct the plans as best we could to give to a contractor to bid. You don’t have to rebuild the same house, but your insurance settlement depends of the cost to replace the burned structure.

6--The first offer from your insurance company will probably be ridiculously low. Don’t panic; you don’t have to accept it. In our area the early offers were often as little as 50% of the final settlement.

7--Attend policyholder meetings. You can learn a lot from the experiences of other fire victims working with the same insurance company.

8--There is no right or wrong answer in deciding whether to rebuild or buy a new house. After a while you’ll figure out which solution is best for you.

9--Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) construction loans have very attractive interest rates. Don’t be embarrassed to apply.

10--You will be amazed at the thoughtless or stupid things otherwise well-meaning people may say to you. I’m sure that somewhere in Berkeley or Oakland there are fire victims who rescued every valuable, made a killing on their insurance, got a fabulous new house built in six months and are living happily ever after. I don’t know people like that; I just hear about them. I have also yet to meet a fire survivor who is thrilled that her house burned down so that she could have a bigger and better one.

11--Advice to kids from my 10-year-old daughter and 11- year-old son: Be kind to your parents and remember that the tooth fairy will find you wherever you live.

So where am I two years after my fire? We are still living in a rented house with rental furniture. Our beautiful new house, being built on our site, will be finished in May; we can’t wait to move in.

The public adjuster I hired is still negotiating with my insurance company. It will take another year to reach a final settlement, but I’ve received enough money to rebuild the same quality home I had and to replace most of our personal property.

My husband, children and I have survived, and you will too.