Kee Hinckley's Post

Some thoughts on house fires (having had one).

I see right now they're saying over 5000 buildings burned in one of the LA fires, and 1000 from another. But the the number will increase.

In some respect having your house reduced to ashes is easier. You just build a new one. Assuming the money is available of course.

But a lot of people will find that they didn't insure the contents of the house for enough. And they didn't have riders for particularly unique items. Check yours; even if you rent.

Others won't have documentation of what they had in the house, and the insurance will want proof they don't have. Video your house while talking about stuff. Save receipts in the cloud for major items.

But there will also be homes that survived the fires, and maybe they don't even look too bad. But it's not that simple. The plus, you can document what you lost, and you don't need to start the house from scratch. The minus, rebuilding has complicated decisions. And what survived is not as clear as you might think.

A few decades ago we had a house fire when we were away. Halogen torchère lamp without a wire cover. Some papers fell onto it from a bookcase. Lamp was on a timer.

A neighbor spotted the smoke. The fire department got there quickly. The house was just a few minutes from the flashpoint where everything in the house would have gone up at once. The microwave melted. The finish on the newer furniture upstairs melted. The thermostat upstairs melted. It was very close.

• An insurance adjuster came and spent a week inventorying everything in the house. He produced a 100 page spreadsheet. We had to put values on all of it.
• I hired a friend to help me in the library. We went through every book, keeping those lower down that survived, tearing the covers off the upper ones so we could see what they were, and recording title and author of everything. My original US copy of The Hobbit looks like someone found it in Smaug's treasure pile.
• Every piece of clothin,Cloth, rugs.... had to be treated for smoke. Only about a third survived the treatment. Leather was hopeless; it came out brittle.
• Newer furniture with cheap finishes was hopeless. Some of the antique wood ones we had refurbished. They'd super lightly sand the grime off. But one of my dressers still smells like smoke on hot days.
• And the smoke was the issue. We had two choices. Tear it down. Or remove all the interior paneling, and coat the framing in a sealant that would keep any smoke smell from escaping. Because that smell was embedded in every piece of unprotected wood in the house. We went with the latter, and it worked. But wow that was a lot of work.
• Rebuilding took about six months. We had to rent a house. Friends donated furniture. Our kids were still able to go to the same schools. With a fire like this that's going to be much harder. Where are those folks going to stay? Where are they going to get contractors? Richer folks are going to be in a bidding war for contractors, prices will be insane.

I will say, USAA insurance was a dream. They even went to bat for us when the contractor tried to cut corners. Not sure if they are still that good though. And of course a lot of insurance companies have left CA, and this fire might bankrupt some. The current insurance (and the "you have to rebuild to get the money") model are not going to survive climate change.

We were very lucky. We ended up with a home that was even more personalized. I ran Ethernet to every room! (Just in time for wifi to make it unnecessary) And we lost very few things that were irreplaceable. It's going to be a lot harder for these people, and it's going to impact many many people who didn't even lose anything.

#housefire #fire #PalisadesFire