Solastalgia: The Burn Scar Part 2

Credit: Ariel Lavery

Ariel returns to see the burn scar that was once her childhood home. She feels strangely…homesick. “Imagining one’s home place meet its end – envisioning just what this neighborhood looked like engulfed in flames – I wonder if this is all part of the feeling of solastalgia.”

Reeling

“So that's where I am, I'm still a 70 percent homeless person,” my dad tells me over Zoom.

I check in with my parents regularly through Zoom in the weeks after the Marshall Fire, trying to keep tabs on Dad’s adjustment. It’s hard hearing him talk about feeling homeless.  In their rushed evacuation, my parents were only able to save a few personal possessions. Mom got her computer, phone, wallet, Dad’s medication, and a change of clothes, but pretty much everything else burned. In the coming months, it will dawn on her again and again, that, had she been out that day, the total loss could have included the lives of Dad and their dog Jesse.

“I’m still in recovery phase,” Dad says. 

My mom, who is also on the Zoom call says, “He still needs some clothes.”

Without supplies to sustain them more than a day, they start acquiring things through the FEMA disaster center and regular shopping trips. 

My parents were able to avoid the hotel stays that so many other victims rely on. They stay a few nights with their friends Mark and Laurie. Then they relocate to another of my mom’s good friends, Marty’s, who lives alone and has an extra bedroom.  

“Within a few days of being at Marty's house, I got a call from Jim Hardmen,” says Mom. Jim’s our neighbor to the north. He knew someone who was working at a local senior living home, Balfour.  

“And he said, ‘Hey, they have some available apartments there, are you interested?’” 

I am conflicted here because the thought of my spry, 69-year-old vegan mom moving into senior housing is not a thought I am comfortable with.  Nor is she.  But she and Dad tour the Balfour facility and meet with a representative who shows them an apartment and offers them a waiver for the $10,000 initiation fee.  

Mom is resistant. “I don't think I ever wanted to think about living in a retirement home like this,” she says.

Even before the fire, the Front Range’s housing market was tight.  Rental prices had been steadily increasing for decades, and there was less and less housing stock available.  Now, with more than 1,000  households needing someplace new to live, that stock is disappearing even faster and landlords are taking advantage. One neighbor tells me about her landlord wanting to increase his original listing price by $500 dollars a month in the wake of the fire.  I think Mom feels wary about being taken advantage of in a senior living situation she never wanted. The decision not to rebuild has put them in a tricky spot, suddenly planning for the rest of their lives all over again. But Mom is not the only one needing a safe place to live.  Her needs are partially defined by my dad’s.

“She has to put clothes on me about six times a day. That takes a lot of time,” my dad says over Zoom.

“Yeah, I dress and undress Dad,” Mom says.

The 800-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment in independent living is also incredibly expensive at $6,000 a month, and that is after the initiation fee. Who can afford $6,000 a month? Well, come to find out, my parents’ insurance can. Most standard policies pay to maintain your cost of living if you can no longer live in your home.  It’s called “loss of use coverage.”  But taking this small apartment would mean Mom would be sleeping on the couch while Dad took the bed. They’d have to share a small bathroom, and would be in each other’s space all the time. Mom considers the possibility of just staying at Marty’s and paying her monthly rent with Mom and Dad’s insurance allotment.  

“But I think that maybe they would have cut down the monthly allotment,” Mom says. “I don't really know. I didn’t ask questions like, ‘Oh, since we’re spending $6,000 a month, is that what you’re going to keep giving us?’ And it sounds like, yes.”  

“Was it clear to you about how those living expenses, like how much you would be getting and what that depended on? And in terms of where you were living?” I ask Mom. 

“No, not really, there was nothing explained about that at all. They just said, ‘Sending you $36,000 for the first six months,’” she says.

Ultimately, Mom chooses the senior living facility.

“And I thought, ‘You know, this will be a really good place for Dad to be for however long we're here,’” she saysMy mom accepts that her aging husband probably needs to be in a place like this anyway, and maybe this is the opportunity to get them integrated. 

I ask her, “How are you? Have you guys both been talking to each other about your kind of mental progress with this?”

“Yeah, I think so. Didn’t we talk about that this morning?” she asks Dad.

“We talk to each other all the time,” he says.

Aside from Dad’s declining cognitive abilities, the difference between Mom and Dad’s experience of recovery has been consistent with the roles they’ve played in each other’s lives – and my life.  Dad was the visionary, the romantic, the university professor, who declared that a person should follow their dreams. Answering a question is never a straightforward task for him.

“But only recently have we started making real noticeable movements into our lives together,” Dad says.

Mom is the pragmatist and an incredibly hard worker.  Growing up, I watched her grit her teeth and buckle down. 

“Well yeah, most days it's like, this is what we have to do today. We have to do A, B, C, and D. It's just a list of things to do and what we have to get done,” Mom says.

Ariel Lavery’s mom and her daughter look at debris from the Marshall Fire.

Credit: Ariel Lavery

The Dandelion and The Enclave

“Alright, it’s recording,” Mom says.

I ask my mom in April, about four months after the fire, if she wants to work on producing a podcast series with me about the loss of our house.  I have been producing podcasts professionally for a few years now, and in one of those eureka moments in the shower I thought, ‘I’m living through a defining moment of my life right now.  We all are. Maybe we should record this.’ Mom is on board pretty quickly and learns how to use one of my old Zoom recorders, adding to the set of skills she is fast acquiring as a wildfire victim.  

“So my name is Victoria Simpson. I am a retired physician and anesthesiologist,” Mom says.

When I was young, my mom wasn’t around much.  She started medical school when I was just a baby. 

“When I graduated in May of ‘88, then I immediately came to Colorado, did an internship at St. Joe's Hospital in internal medicine.”

Now, after having two kids, hearing her list of accolades blows me away.

“I started my residency in anesthesia at University of Colorado hospitals,” she says.

Imagine doing all this with a young child.

“After I finished that I did a one year fellowship at Children's in pediatric anesthesia.”

After school, I would plunk down in front of the TV until the moment I heard the garage door open. Then, I would bolt upstairs and act as if I had been doing my homework the whole time.  I was scared of Mom when I was young, never sure what baggage she would be bringing home to come raging through the door with her that evening.  But today, I totally get it.  Raising kids and maintaining a household is no picnic, especially when you have a super high-stress job in a male dominated field, and virtually zero down time.

“I wasn't playing a lot of tennis then. I don't think I was playing very much at all. I was just working basically,” Mom says, chuckling.

But all that stress did come with a healthy paycheck and they decided to buy a home in the growing Front Range.

“The first time we looked at it was, must have been in 1988, that is when we moved in,” Mom says. “There were not many other houses in the entire development. I think there were four or five houses. I had never even lived in a two-story house before. And I thought that was great! I always wanted to live in a two story house, and it was right on Davidson Mesa. At the time, I think that wasn't an official open space of Louisville because our realtor said to us, ‘I can't guarantee you that this space behind the house won't be developed.’ She wasn't sure at the time, I don't think anybody was. So we were hoping that would never get developed, and we got lucky. Louisville somehow managed to buy the property and develop it into our own private park, right behind our house.”

To be clear, that open space wasn’t privately kept for our neighborhood’s use.  But I think a lot of residents that moved into The Enclave felt like us: this was our space. When you’ve spent a lot of money on a brand new home that overlooks vistas for miles in all directions, it’s hard not to feel like you own the entire Front Range.  

“There was almost nothing on McCaslin, just The Enclave.That was one of the earliest developments. And yeah, it's, it's just… Boy! It's hard to remember what it was really like!” Mom says.

Silent aftermath: Ash and burnt brick echo the profound impact of the Marshall Fire.

Credit: Ariel Lavery

In 1988, it felt like The Enclave was surrounded by prairie.  But since my parents bought their house, the expansive landscape has filled in.  Hundreds of houses and shops have been developed along the McCaslin corridor. The neighborhood became incorporated into a suburban landscape.  But its name, The Enclave, suggests something separate, removed, and insulated from outside influences. Mom and Dad had really never lived in a place like this before.  

“I thought it was unusual. I mean, it seems a little exclusive. I think that's the way they wanted it to be. But I thought ‘Okay, that's fine.’ It's like, maybe they named it that because it's just a little circle drive and it sits there by itself and you can't drive through it. Maybe that’s why they call it The Enclave,” Mom says.

Bearing Witness

I don’t get to see what has become of The Enclave until April, four months after the fire.  But when I’m here, not much has changed since the fire roared through.  I am driving through the Enclave with my parents. Looking at one of the houses, my mom says, “These guys got torched, just like us.  I don’t want to be part of Colorado history.”

“This is not the club you want to be in,” I say.

“I really don’t,” Mom says with a laugh.

I never really considered my family an important part of the evolving history of the West.  In fact, I’ve been privileged enough to feel kind of removed from history. When I was young, I always wondered what it would be like to come West in a covered wagon and see the Front Range for the first time.  I imagined the untamed wilderness of this landscape taking my breath away, without ever considering how it could also take my life away. Today, it’s hard to describe what it feels like to drive through the burn scar that was once our place of peace and comfort. It now looks like a war zone.  A pallet of dull grays, white ash, and charcoal-colored skeleton trees blanket the ground.  Stone facades remain like scattered monuments, steadfast amidst piles of burned rubble. 

As we drive, my dad says, “This is very traumatic.  Right there.”

“Yeah, this is pretty shocking to see all this,” Mom says.

We finally come to our lot. 

“Have they moved the mailboxes up to the street so they know what the addresses are?” I ask.

“No, actually, I moved that so I could find it because initially, the first time I came by, I had a little trouble identifying things until I really stopped and looked,” Mom says.

A big reason I go out in April is to see what is left of our house, despite the toxins left behind. I guess I’m one of those people that needs to see the body in the coffin for it to become real. For Mom, it’s been real for a while.

“This is our house that we lived in for 33 years that burned to the ground in the Marshall Fire,” Mom says into her microphone.

Trying to identify things from inside the car is tricky.  I do notice, immediately, the tall black skeletons scattered around the front of the lot. Mom had planted as many trees as she could fit around the house.  

“We planted all of these trees and every one of my trees I really had a lot of affection for. So, I was very sad to see them all go,” she says.

“What were these ones? Were these pines, right here?” I ask.

“Yes, there were three spruce,” Mom says.  “And the one in the back that’s a little taller was a Bosnian Pine.”

I think growing up in Missouri, Mom missed the privacy and sense of security the trees offered.  The vastness of this landscape, though beautiful, offers no privacy or protection from the elements.  

My brother, Andrew, was the first family member to visit the site and he described it to me: “You can go stand at the house now and it doesn't feel like it is the neighborhood. The landscape feels different just because there's no buildings anywhere. All of a sudden, it's this flat landscape and you can see further than you ever have, but it feels like you're in a different space.”

And he’s right.  It’s a totally different space.

“All that was really standing was like stone structures. Like, the Enclave sign I think was still there,” Andrew said.

I ask both my siblings in an interview what they remember about our house, comparing their memory to mine, and to the remains of the house I see now.

“I thought about your massive horse painting a lot,” my sister, Katie, says. 

Katie remembers my artwork hanging everywhere.  The six-foot tall horse painting was a little sad for me, but at least I didn’t have to figure out what to do with all that anymore.

“I remember the piano. The piano was one of the first things that you saw going into the house and it was a nice, largewood piano,” Andrew says.

All that’s left of the baby grand is the charred frame.

“I remember what our house looked like before Mom and Dad remodeled the kitchen,” he says.

“Mom's big wok that was rarely used, but it just hung there in the kitchen,” Katie says.

“Christmas, you got me like six plates or so with little chilies that you had decaled on them. It was one of those things that was always at Mom and Dad's house that I was going to pick up one day,” Andrew says.

“I'm pretty sure the entire bottom half of one of the cabinets, a bunch of drawers, were just filled with photo albums, and photos, and VHS tapes,” says Katie.

Our family’s entire collection of photo albums is gone. All those memories were never digitized, despite us having many conversations about doing that.

Looking around, Mom points out what she thought was her exploded e-bike battery. 

“See the splatters over there that look like aluminum? I think that's probably my bike frame. Maybe what happened is that lithium battery on the frame exploded,” she says. 

I reflect on this with Katie in her interview who says, “Yeah, you could see, like, the debris of that all over the ground. That was crazy. That makes you think, like, yeah, wildfires are wildfires, but a house fire is truly toxic.” 

Continuing to walk around our lot, I find an unidentifiable object and ask, “What was this for?”

Mom says, “I think that was a fire extinguisher.”

“Oh.  Too bad it didn’t work,” I say.

Both of us begin to laugh and Mom says, “It didn’t work!”

I tell Mom, “I feel like, as I'm seeing all this stuff, I'm just imagining the house disintegrate underneath it, and imagining the fireplace falling down,” 

“Me too,” she says. “ I have those visions in my head all the time.”

Imagining one’s homeplace meet its end – envisioning just what this neighborhood looked like engulfed in flames – I wonder if this is all part of the feeling of solastalgia. That’s a term you won’t find in the dictionary, it’s too new.   But, if you’ve lost any part of the home or the environment you grew up with due to disaster or destruction, I bet you’ve experienced solastalgia. It’s a term invented by the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe the feeling many people are having these days of homesickness. Albrecht wrote that solastalgia is the feeling of homesickness without leaving home. 

Visiting the site, some things are still the same. The house finches sing the same song they did in my childhood. I hear the same roaring of a jet plane overhead. If I close my eyes, and plug my nose, for a moment, I am standing right back in my parent’s yard, as it was years ago. Then, I’m brought back to today with the sounds of nearby cleanup crews.  It’s completely bizarre, to straddle two different realities in the same place.  Solastalgia is an increasingly common experience as the natural environment rapidly changes. I find myself wondering if it will become more common for urban and suburban landscapes, like this one. 

My main takeaway after touring our burn site? It’s going to be a huge cleanup project. 

An Open Niche

The mess left behind by a wildfire extends far beyond the property. Wildfire victims must become proficient in many new skills in order to hit the restart button.  Everyone whose homes were destroyed by the fire are now responsible for finding someone to clean it up.  

Over Zoom, my mom says, “My understanding was, if you had so much allocated from your insurance policy, like, $50,000 to clear the lot, then FEMA was going to take that and then they would do the clearing.”

Some of the FEMA funds that come into a community after a disaster go toward paying a contractor for coordinated debris removal, which is basically the community-wide effort to clean up, as opposed to an independent contractor. A contractor is then selected by the city or county.  The contractor selected for the Marshall Fire clean up was originally set to begin on March first. But that changed.

“There were all these lawsuits filed against Boulder County. They were designed to slow down the cleanup because they were contesting the award of the contracts for the cleanup,” Mom says.

“That was all from the former head of FEMA on behalf of his company DIGS?” I ask.

“Right, Michael Brown.” Mom says.

During the time of these lawsuits, 9 News reported, “The nonprofit, Demanding Integrity in Government Spending was created by a former FEMA Director Michael Brown. Brown resigned from that role after criticism of how FEMA handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.”

As victims of the Marshall Fire try to move forward with their lives, this former FEMA director is trying to slow down the process.  It’s unnerving for a lot of people, including Mom. She attends a protest that the community organizes.

It seems to Mom and me another instance in which a predatory company is trying to swoop in and fill the niche opened by the fire.  Mercifully, protest efforts are effective and Michael Brown drops the lawsuit.  Victims press on with cleanup efforts, but clarity about just how the coordinated debris removal is paid for isn’t really there either.  Neighbors are telling Mom conflicting information. 

“Then later,” Mom says, “Jim Hardman, who had FEMA clean his lot said, ‘Well, now that we’re considered to be underinsured, FEMA is going to absorb the whole cost.’ I don't know if that's really true or not because Paul Austin told me the opposite.”

The debris cleanup that over 1,000 households are responsible for stretches all the way into summer before finally reaching completion in August. Thankfully for us, Mom and Dad’s insurance provides good coverage for debris removal and Mom is able to get off the FEMA waitlist.  

“So the reason I went with a private contractor was because I got to an estimate that came in at $38,000, I think, to clear our lot, which is very reasonable,” says Mom.

At my request, Mom records her consultation with her cleanup guy, who comes out of retirement to help.

“Boy, did you ever think you'd have a job like this?” Mom asks him.

“It’s so bizarre,” he says. “The whole thing’s bizarre. I retired two years ago, 32 years as a paramedic/firefighter. My boy owns Linkus Corporation, and he says, ‘I've got like three or four houses. Can you go do that?’ I go, ‘Sure!’ I come up here and next thing you know, it's 50 houses. And so everyone at the firehouse is laughing. It's like, ‘Hey, how's your retirement going?’ And I said,  ‘It’s full time, baby!’”

What About Insurance?

Getting your life back after your home is destroyed requires a lot of paperwork. Your heart is broken, you’re homeless, and you have to worry about these tiny details. 

“Save all your receipts,” Mom says over Zoom. 

 It’s not just a matter of filing a claim with your insurance company.

“So I saved every single receipt I collected for the first six months,” Mom says. “I had bags of these receipts, and most of them were groceries.”

Without knowing much about how the insurance was going to work, Mom becomes very systematic in making sure that everything they spend is archived.

“Because they really do want accounting of what you spend the money on.  I could actually get the paperwork out and read off everything. Let me look,” Mom says, finding a folder with all her receipts. 

Every policy is unique. Every insurance company uses a formula to estimate the total required coverage to rebuild a home.

“What they paid out was what the house was assessed for by Boulder County,” she says.

Since my parent’s total loss of their home, there’s one thing that is now painfully clear: you’ve got to read your policy. You’ve got to check in with your insurance agent and understand what your life would look like if you suddenly lost your house in a disaster event. Otherwise, you might be getting left in the dust.  

“It was probably a couple years beforehand that I had talked with the insurance company and we had upped our insurance, so that it was in a little better shape than most everybody else,” Mom says. 

My parents have coverage based on a relationship my dad started with their agent 40 years ago when  he was living in a mobile home in Marshall, working as a postdoc at the University of Colorado. My thinking is, they got lucky getting an insurer who is easy to work with. For one thing, he gives them a payout for personal property loss without any extra work.  Many, if not most people, who know they wanted to rebuild right away find out they’re seriously underinsured.  Many of those people are our neighbors.

I speak with a Louisville city council member, Deborah Fahey, who says, “I remember thinking that this was the perfect place to raise kids, because like you said, especially in The Enclave, with no through traffic, nobody came over there unless they were visiting someone.”

The Fahey’s were a family of six who lived across the street from us.  I played nearly every day with the two twin girls, Catherine and Carolyn, who were a grade below me in school.  I interview their Mom, Deborah, for a few reasons. Number one, because of her presence on the Louisville City Council, I think she might have some great insight from the city’s perspective on the after-affects of the fire.  Number two, this family has been considering the effects of pollution and climate change for as long as I can remember. Deb and Dave were strict about when their kids were allowed to be outside in the sun.  “Sun hours” is what it was called.

Dave Fahey, the twin’s dad, works for  the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or, NOAA.  

“He has always been very interested in climate and sustainability things since he was part of the Montreal Protocol for ozone,” Deb says.

“I guess I kind of assumed that there was a hyper vigilance in your family,” I say, “maybe because of Dave’s awareness.”  

“Well, we're so frustrated with what has not happened worldwide. I mean, the Paris Accord and the COP15 have been almost entirely ineffective. And if we don't do something globally now, we're not going to recover from it,” Deb says.

My vegan mom and I have made a bargain with the planet that by living as green as possible and trying to make daily choices for a healthy environment, we hoped we’d get protections from the effects of climate change. But that bargain, obviously, hasn’t worked out. And when I think about the Fahey’s situation, I think about the anxiety they’ve been living in for as long as I’ve known them. Here they are, also having lost their house in the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history.  Deb told me recently that Dave has come home everyday for years, carrying the weight of climate change on his shoulders. So, it would seem, their efforts have also been in vain. In fact, the Marshall Fire is the second time relatives in that family have lost homes to wildfire.  

Deb says, “My brother-in-law lost his home in the Santa Rosa fire five years ago. So he knew how to do it. One of the things that we hadn't listened to from my brother-in-law, was to go through the house right away, before you lose it, and film everything. Open every drawer, open every closet, every kitchen cabinet, and film – a dated film – what's in there.”

So there’s some good advice for anyone living in a fire-prone area, or anyone who just might end up in a fire-prone area as the climate dries up the West. Unlike my parents, the Fahey’s don’t accept the initial personal property loss payout from their insurance.  

“The day after the fire, we hired a public adjuster, and I would recommend that to anyone. What I was told, and the reason we did it, was because it's like going to court with an attorney,” says Deb. 

A public adjuster is an independent adjuster for hire by the homeowner.  So, they are paid directly by the homeowner to get the best payout possible from insurance. With the help of a public adjuster, the Fahey’s painstakingly go through every room, every drawer, every closet, to recall, from memory, what they had lost in the fire.  

Every member of the six person family helps complete their inventory, hours of independent work plus 10 to 12 hours of Zoom meetings. But if this endeavor is to prove fruitful they have to reach a quota.

Deb says, “Well, we were told by the adjuster to come up with a value of at least 25 percent more than what they were obligated to give you, and we came up with double.”

My parents also face the choice of accepting their personal property payout or creating an inventory that everyone would need to contribute to.  When I talk to them about it, Mom and Dad disagree about whether this decision will mean they’re leaving money on the table or insurance is taking care of them.  Mom is inclined to take the original payout, but Dad’s paranoia, a symptom of Lewy Body Dementia, keeps intervening. Still, it’s a daunting task to consider.  All three of us kids, living in different states, busy with the care of children, pets, or school – it’s not a task any of us are thrilled about. 

“We did talk to an adjuster, and we kind of gave him the numbers of what we got,” Mom says. (This was an internal adjuster with Mom and Dad’s insurance company.) “and he said I don't really think I can do anything more for you.” 

“But if they’re employed by the insurance company, then what is their incentive to help you get the biggest payout?” I ask.

“Probably, there is no incentive. Yeah, that's what I have heard over and over again is that the insurance companies are not your friends. They will never give you the best deal,” Mom says.

We all flounder, feeling guilty and burdened, before we all kind of  just conclude that it’s not going to be worth the time to try to get more than what their payout is. I tell Mom, time is money too, and as my dad’s caretaker, hers is already in short supply.  

What Every Homeowner Should Know

I have many questions about insurance, and I have done many Google searches about insurance.  I really want to be able to get answers from the guy both my parents have trusted for 33 years, Sherman Schrock. 

After reaching out I get a voicemail from Sherman that says, “Hi, Ariel. This is Sherm Schrock. Thank you for thinking of  me. I appreciate the opportunity to chat on a podcast, however, Farmers will not let me do that kind of stuff.  Keep smiling. Have a good day.” 

Alas, corporate policy prevents our conversation.

So, I reach out to an organization my mom, and many of the Marshall Fire victims, have gotten a lot of help from: United Policyholders. I speak with the executive director of United Policyholders, Amy Bach. “We are a unique nonprofit that serves as an information resource and a voice for insurance consumers across the country with a special focus on disaster resiliency and recovery,” Amy says. 

Rusted and burnt metal lays amongst the rubble.

Credit: Ariel Lavery

She tells me most people will never have a total loss insurance claim in their life, which is a good thing. But, Amy explains what happens when people think insurance will automatically take care of us when we need it.

“They just don't understand why you'd need this kind of advocacy. But the reality is, a total loss insurance claim can, for a lot of people – it's a full time job,” Amy says.

Like Mom said, insurance companies are not your friends, even if you’ve known your agent for 40 years and they’ve always been friendly. Amy says that insurance companies do not easily part with their profits.

“They've erected lots and lots of, let's just say, hoops, that people have to jump through to get that kind of money,” she says.

Hoops like filling out an entire inventory for loss of use are required. That’s when all of your stuff is totally destroyed. I recently discovered my own insurance company requires an entire inventory of everything before they will pay out a dime.

“You've been collecting a premium for a certain amount of content coverage. Everything's gone, you could just just pay them the limit,” Amy says. “As soon as the East Troublesome Fire hit the year before, the insurance commissioner contacted us for ideas on ‘Okay, what kinds of things should I be asking the insurance to do voluntarily?’ Publish a list of the names of the insurance companies that were being extra cooperative. And then the ones that weren't, so consumers could see. And he did that.”

After our interview, Amy sends me a survey United Policyholders sent out to Marshall Fire victims.  In that survey almost 58 percent of respondents say they “experienced problems with (their) insurance claim or with insurance company representatives.” In the survey they say it’s factors like, “delays in answering… questions, phone calls… or emails” and the “estimate to replace… dwelling(s) (was) ‘lowball’(ed) that seemed to contribute significantly to the perception of problematic insurance.” 

But the most heartbreaking problem is when rebuilding a home becomes prohibitive because you’re so vastly underinsured that the coverage gap is just too much.  If you look at wildfire rebuilding coverage nationwide, you see that about two-thirds of victims are underinsured. This problem can ruin entire communities after a wildfire, like what we’ve seen in Paradise, California. Yet, the wildfire victims in Louisville have many advantages that other fire-stricken communities don’t.

“When you have a pretty strong community,” Amy says, “like what you have with the Marshall Fire, you have educated professional people that are organized, they’ve got the Slack channel, they're talking to each other all the time. And you have a proactive insurance commissioner. You've got three factors that are likely to lead to fewer lawsuits. They know they’re not going to get away with things that they might get away with in areas where people are not as organized.”

“Is that something you see, then, in communities that are less organized, that are less affluent? You see insurers kind of taking advantage of those victims?” I ask.

“We do see that,” Amy says.

The Spirit of People

Mom and Dad’s decision not to rebuild might help simplify some of the gap between their coverage and the cost to rebuild. But there’s a catch: one of their insurance agents tells them, you can’t take the money and run. 

“What were you thinking about doing with this payout money?” I ask Mom.

“Yeah, I'm not sure. The first thing I said was, ‘Oh, maybe we can just stay in Balfour for 10 years.’ But you know what, when I really, when I think about, again, the conversations I had with Jamie Johnson, he stated very clearly: he said, ‘This is what you can do with this money. You can rebuild at the same site. You can go to another site and rebuild or you can buy a place.’  And I kind of forgot all about that because for a while I was thinking, ‘Oh, we'll just live on this money for a long time.’ But you really can't do that because the insurance company pays you this money to rebuild, really. To replace what you had. And the federal government looks at that as income, so it's taxed as income. So, it was never really much of a possibility to just take the money and sit on it,” Mom says. 

The thought of rebuilding your life from scratch is daunting to anyone.  Add to that being retired, being your partner’s full time caretaker, and living in a climate where this could happen again. Why would anyone choose to rebuild? But we’re talking about a dandelion of a woman here.  

Mom says, “It’s great to see the spirit of people that are just coming back and saying, ‘I’m not going to let this tragedy define me.  I’m not going to let it beat me down.’ As a species I think we’ve removed ourselves way too much from everything, the world we live in.  We need to learn how to live a little bit more in step with the rest of existence.”

That’s next time on The Burn Scar.