I live in Northern California and we lost everything we own to a wildland fire. By everything, I mean I made it out with the shorts I was wearing and that's all. Didn't even grab my wallet or glasses.
My wife grabbed one of our dogs and her purse. Everything else burned for 3 days so nothing was left. I posted about it on here someplace. If I find it, I'll attach a link. This happened July 16th 2006. Now, over 10 years later, we have rebuilt and feel back at 'home' again. I planted almost 500 trees that are making a good come-back as well as lots of other landscaping. Our insurance company was awesome. In every stage, they were our advocates not adversaries. The told us we were one of the lucky ones that our house was a total loss so we could rebuild anything we wanted. We combined all our policy payouts; house, personal property, landscaping, outbuildings, property improvements, RV, boats, motorcycle, etc plus some of our own cash and built our dream home; a log house. My friends call it the chalet. Ha!
As with most disasters, as they are going down, you are in survival mode; just doing what you need to do. It's afterwards that you have time to worry about it all. My insurance adjuster set my mind at ease. He told me that it was arson, they caught the suspect red handed, that they would max out the limits of all my policies since I had everything from cars to home insured with them and that since I lost everything, they would add 10% more than the policy max payment would be. By the end of one year, we had been paid over $680,000 from the insurance company plus they paid for a rental home, fully furnished, plus any expenses that we would not have otherwise encountered if we had not suffered a loss. Heck, they even paid for me to go on charter fishing trips since I had a boat and it wasn't reimbursed yet. The rental was so complete, it even had toilet paper and laundry soap provided when we moved in. Not a dime for any of that. Lawn mowing service paid until I got the lawnmower replaced, stuff like that.
The tragedy was hard on my wife. This wasn't just a house for her, it was where she raised our family, homeschooled our kids, grew food and tended livestock. Me? As most guys, it was the place I lived when I wasn't working. Hardly saw it in the winters when I left for work in the dark and didn't arrive home until after dark again.
We lost the unreplacables; photos, mementos, personal stuff you can't replace. We did survive without much injury. I was scorched pretty good since I didn't have a shirt on. My wife not physically harmed at all. Our hardest loss was our family Labrador. My hunting dog and queen of the house. I think she got scared and ran back inside somehow. As a yellow lab, I could barely see her with all the smoke and thought she ran when I did. I found her chain collar, but that was all. The fire was so intense, no bones were left.
I'm glad it happened when I was relatively young; 50 years old. I had planned to ER that year, in October. We were three days away from a vacation to Glacier National Park. I stayed working another 5 years to refurbish the house as we spent all the insurance money building the house. I figured the house would be an investment and I didn't need anything for two years since the insurance company paid for all rentals for that period of time. I ER'd in 2012 and we've been improving the homestead ever since, building driveways, barn, landscaping, etc.
Our new home;
If you want to see the whole house after we rebuilt and furnished it, you can view here;
Front Door/porch View W/log Bench. Photo by skipro33 | Photobucket
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