Starting over after wildfires
Those left homeless in Calif. wine country face tough market
PETALUMA, Calif. — Asfirefighters gain on wildfires burning in California’s wine country, the many thousands who lost their houses, condos and apartments will have to find a new place to live in one of the toughest housing markets in the nation.
In San Francisco, an average one-bedroom apartment rents for more than $3,000 a month, and the median home price is about $1.5 million. The climbing cost of living has reached the greater San Francisco Bay Area, which includes parts of the fire areas.
The fires that swept through parts of seven counties were the deadliest and most destructive in California history. At least 42 people were killed and 6,000 homes destroyed.
Crews made excellent progress Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, setting off controlled burns to deprive wildfires of added fuel, said Daniel Berlant, spokesman for California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as Cal Fire.
“We’re hoping that Mother Nature will continue to cooperate with us,” he said. “Increased moisture in the air and potential rainfall, all of those are welcome signs.”
Keeping positive is hard when facing the reality of starting from scratch, said John De Groot, whose home in Santa Rosa burned down along with a lifetime of memories.
“We’ve worked our whole lives,” De Groot said. “We’ve had this house for 23 years. So there are a lot of memories there. Grandkids have been there. They love it. And it’s not there. So now what?”
California, which was grappling with a housing shortage before the wildfires broke out, is faced with a massive logistical issue with entire neighborhoods destroyed.
“This is a tremendous event for an urban area,” Brock Long, an administrator with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Tuesday. “We’ve got a lot of thinking to do about how you mitigate this from happening in communities down the road and becoming more resilient.”
An estimated 100,000 people were evacuated at the height of the fires, and about 34,000 remain under evacuation.
“The good thing is we have each other,” said Ramona Lancu, whose family home in Larkfield was destroyed. “We were able to escape. Now we just start a new life. It’s hard.”
Highlighting the concerns of mental health professionals, the California Psychological Association has emailed an urgent request calling for volunteers to help wildfire evacuees cope with the trauma.
“There is tremendous acute and long term impact and we are needed right now to help,” Dr. Chip Shreiber, the association’s disaster resource coordinator, said in the email sent Monday.