Consumption problems likely to seduce a long recovery of Los Angeles fires

And so the word came out almost precisely two months after the fire incinerated most of the Pacific Palisades District in Los Angeles: “The water is correct, you can drink it, go home.”

Immediately, the old Latin slogan vacuum (“Let the buyer be wary”) has acquired a new relevance for the survivors of the January fires in the Palisades and Altadena, 40 miles in the east – and for the potential survivors of large fires that state authorities predict later this year. Because it doesn’t matter what the happy speech came from the besieged mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, few showed a lot of attention.

“In the tragic Camp Fire (which in 2018 destroyed the city of Paradise in the County of Butte), it took a year (to restore the quality of the water). This was done here in two months,” she said.

It may not have much importance. The large part of the thousands of residents whose houses were not burning do not retreat at the moment. He enters the sometimes bitter reality of vacuum.

Frank and Grace Milton (not their real names) ran very quickly. Once the 70 grandparents-something have learned that their house had survived and that, at least, all its internal walls and ceilings need cleaning, they have taken offers from rehabilitation entrepreneurs.

These entrepreneurs are subject to the California anti-prison troop law (article 396 of the penal code), but to wash their walls, estimates from Milton Place de Four Chambers began $ 40,000. This did not include polluted furniture, carpet and beds that should all be replaced.

They gave an entrepreneur a deposit of $ 500, then have never heard of the company again. An out of the state, his “office” was a cell phone from South Carolina. $ 40,000 for a three-day job are prices at prices? It was the best price that Miltons could find.

Lawyers differ in the fact that it was the gougeage, and if the company did not work before in California, no one will say with certainty without lack of basic price. Similar problems would have tormented the survivors of the Tubbs 2017 fire near Santa Rosa, which destroyed more than 5,600 structures.

No one knows the full extent of these possible fraud and fraud; There is no formal register. Miltons have still not obtained a reliable rehabilitation entrepreneur. Another family including the house in the Sunset Mesa subdivision nearby (400 of the 500 in 500 houses burned) is not sure to want to come back, even if their house can be cleaned.

“Our house and a few others have survived, but we cannot see any other standing house from our windows,” said the husband of the Sunset Mesa family. “We do not yet know how much the toxic material has penetrated our house. We are not sure we want to return to such a pure desolation. ”

Meanwhile, this couple pays $ 15,000 a month for an apartment in an 850 square feet room in a neighboring part of Los Angeles. This makes the pre-fire rate in the region more than three times. Renting for rent is illegal, but the apartment has never been before on the market.

The couple rented their current place while feeling pressure after having lived a month in a series of Airbnb rentals and on the sofas of their loved ones. They could not prove that they are subject to illegal prices.

All of this is even before most of the return residents are starting to test toxicity in their walls and yards and well before fires materialize at the more expected state scale later this year. However, there are also positive stories of reliable entrepreneurs and newly fenced properties signaling the signaling of sports entrepreneurs.

Thus, when the bass and other politicians get rid of the care of part of the reconstruction of the fire zones, the survivors of these fires and future can easily see how empty the comforting words can be.

For many victims of the current fire, the main thing is that they will wait until today’s overheated activity goes out before deciding on their future. Meanwhile, others move elsewhere or plan to wait two or three years for the value of their lots to recover enough to be sold without heavy losses.

In the end, as for the Fire camp – where almost seven years after the fire, around 43% of the structures are rebuilt or authorized to rebuild, with more than 3000 requests for additional pending license – it now looks like a process of a decade with good and bad news, but probably to be afflicted by consumption problems, that everyone says that politicians say.

Send an email to Thomas Elias to tdelias@aol.com and read more of its online columns to Californiafocus.net.