Recovery Continues One Year After Alpine Fire

Speaker 1: 00:00 San Diego was enjoying a mild and mostly sunny 4th of July weekend, but right about this time last year I heat wave and dry conditions sparked several fires in the county. The worst was the west fire and Alpine destroying 39 homes plus more than 20 other structures. Some of those homeowners are still going through the long process of recovery. Speaker 2: 00:22 It's still feels very much like the fire just happened and everybody is just, I'm trying hard to stay positive. You can see it in people's faces, everybody's tired, it's exhausting, but also resiliency is floating up to the top and everybody is just head down, get to work and that feels really good. Speaker 1: 00:44 The West fire reminds all of us of the fire danger that surfaces for San Diego. As soon as the temperature rises and the northeast winds begin to blow. Joining me is Vince Nicoletti, the deputy director of planning and development services for San Diego County. He was the assistant recovery manager for the West Fire and Vince, welcome to the program. Good morning. Can you remind us about where the west fire did the most damage and at kind of how quickly it spread? So the west fire was focused in Alpine, just south of interstate eight. It burned just over 500 acres and burned most of that within the first 24 hours. And it sort of raced through a housing development, didn't it? Correct. It did destroy, uh, 39 homes as part of the fire. What's your role in helping victims of the fire? So at the county of San Diego, we train and do drills throughout the year to assist with recovery after a fire or disaster, um, for fires themselves. Speaker 1: 01:42 What we do typically is the first step is information. Setting up a hotline or recovery website, pushing information out to the public, but also listening to the interest, the needs from the community, from the survivors, those impacted throughout so that we can connect them with the resources that they're looking for. We set up a local assistance center that has state, uh, local and federal resources, entities like FEMA, Red Cross, wonderful volunteer groups like volunteers after disaster to provide resources all at one central location. We identify specific recovery liaisons that worked for the county that can work with those who lost homes. Let me ask you, in what ways does the liaison help each other? Homeowner who lost their home? So one, having a single point of contact at the county we find is extremely helpful so that they don't have to try navigating through the different departments that are here to help them. Speaker 1: 02:31 We reach out and call them as soon as we have a contact and let them know. We recognize recovery is a journey. It's a marathon, not a sprint. We're here when they're ready early on. One of the first things we do is we want to find out what their needs are in terms of debris removal. So we offer resources to help with debris removal, connect them with volunteer groups that could also provide assistance with that. Other debris removal steps could be household hazardous waste or vehicle abatement. For those who don't have the ability to remove vehicles that were burned, we can do that for them. There's so many aspects of this. As I mentioned, as you mentioned, 39 homes were lost in this fire, the west fire. How many of those homeowners have decided to rebuild? So at this point we have seven homes that have completed construction, 15 that have obtained a building permit or in the construction phase, and then three more that are in the plan check process. So we have over 55% that have either started or completed construction. The additional three that are in the plan check process. And some people have decided to move away. Well, some people it takes time for them to decide what they want to do. They're working through insurance and weighing their options. We have another clip. Here's one from Tiffany Devlin and her husband Jason, who lost their home in the west fire. Here's Tiffany. Speaker 2: 03:45 We're lucky to already be moved back into our rebuild and that's a pretty incredible accomplishment that we're really proud of. We, we'll be spending our year anniversary in our new home. But it's hard because you missed the old hope. It's a totally different life now and something that we're stronger for Speaker 1: 04:06 and it's a year later and people don't keep up with that continuing kind of grief that victims feel, you know, nine mobile homes who were a part of that total number of homes lost. Where is the mobile home park in terms of recovering from this fire? So at this point, a three of the nine mobile homes that were destroyed have rebuilt. Um, we're working with the mobile home park. When they're ready to move forward, oftentimes those individuals might change and move to a different mobile home parks. So it might tank time for them to, to make other options. Now insurance coverage of course is a huge factor in the rebuilding process. Do you have any advice for homeowners in terms of being properly insured? So we recommend people always talk with their individual insurance carriers. Insurance can change from time to time. Uh, especially in southern California in the last 15, 20 years. Speaker 1: 04:52 So recommendations I make to friends and family is talk to your insurance carrier, make sure each year you know what you have covered and any other tips in terms of being prepared for a wildfire. So talking to local fire districts, couple of key messages that they have is one, people should visit ready San diego.org so that they can register their cell phone and download the apps that they're notified should a disaster, like a wildfire breakout. There's also a lot of great information on that website for having disaster preparedness plans for families, kids pets. The other key message point from fire districts has generally been defensible space is a year round responsibility. The Alpine fire protection district indicated that what they saw in the 2018 alpine fire was that defensible space worked. It helped increase the ability for those homes to withstand the fire and it helped the firefighters to better protect those homes. I have been speaking with Vince Nicoletti, the deputy director of planning and development services for San Diego County. Vince, thank you very much. Thank you.