Thousands of families in the Eaton and Palisades Fires lost everything and are just now figuring out their next steps. The road ahead is long: finding temporary housing; navigating insurance; buying new clothes, furniture, and all the things taken for granted. Music composer Gary Scott has been down this path — he lost his Malibou Lake home in the 2018 Woolsey Fire, but rebuilt a new home that’s as fireproof as possible.
“I'm sitting in a house that I've had fire people approach it and tell me, ‘If we tried to burn your house down, we don't think it would be possible,’” he says.
The exterior surfaces of his home are what he calls Class A — “the top fire-rated stuff that you can get.” That includes tempered glass, a fire-retardant barrier, and Corten Steel. No wood and no eaves. The landscape features largely succulents — at an appropriate distance away from the house.
Six agricultural Rain Bird-type of sprinklers — the large ones that spray crops in the Central Valley — surround the property. “If I activate this system, I could create a massive vapor cloud over my entire house, all of my landscaping and everything. I would completely saturate the property.”
However, COVID-19 “horribly complicated” the rebuilding process, Scott says. It took six to nine months before crews removed debris. Construction lasted about three years, and he and wife moved nine times before permanently settling into their new home.
What role did insurance play? In a total loss on a conventional policy, Scott explains, he had to show progress on rebuilding, and inspectors showed up. The money didn’t come in one lump sum.
Insurance payout alone wasn’t enough to cover rebuilding costs (materials were also more expensive due to COVID supply chain issues). The extra necessary funds came from proceeds from a settlement when Scott sued Southern California Edison.
Having been through all this, Scott says there were silver linings, but it took years to see them. “People start talking about silver linings a year into it, two years into it, three years into it. You don't even want to hear that. ‘Don't tell me there's a silver lining. I'm dealing with million things right now. You don't know. It didn't happen to you.’ That kind of stuff.”
He continues, “But now … I'm sitting in the house of my dreams. We didn't build a huge mansion. We actually built a smaller house because that's what we needed and wanted. … Not only do I love the house, but we did a great job.”
The whole process was transformational, he describes. “You truly know, when you've gone through this, what you need and what you don't. And there's a lot that we don't need. … Twelve guitars burnt up in my studio, but I only replaced them with three, and that's enough. But you've got to come back to what's important. And you learn that when you lose it all.”