January 12, 2025 • 39 mins
Dean continues to take calls, Dean chats about water curtains and how effective they are during a wildfire. Dean gives you a step-by-step breakdown on what to do after a natural disasters, about infrastructures dealing with heat, power outages and how to approach it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The
House Whisper on demand of the iHeart Radio app. Hey,
did you know that this very program is also the
House Whisper podcast that you can listen to anytime anywhere
on demand, including today's program, today's episode. If you missed
(00:20):
any of it, you need say what did he say
about this? In regards to fire? As well? About an
hour after we go off the air of our live broadcast,
that episode is Boom, part of the House Whisper podcast
and it lives in perpetuity wherever your favorite podcasts are found,
of course on the iHeartRadio app, but also Apple Podcasts, Spotify.
(00:42):
Wherever you listen to your podcast, you can find us.
You just search for Home with Dean Sharp, or you
can search for The House Whisper. You're gonna find us.
You're gonna find me. There you will find it, and
you will find eight seasons, eight years, hundreds of episodes,
all all listed by topic, all waiting for you when
(01:03):
you want to hear them. And if you're thinking, well,
that's all great, but what we really need is Dean
and Tina in our house. And you're joking about that, well,
you can do that too. You can book an in
home design consult with me and Tea. You just go
to house whisper dot Design. There are contact forms there
to fill out very easily, very quick, and more information
(01:26):
for you house whisperer dot Design. All right, I want
to take one, maybe two more calls from our callers
today and then move on to how do you rebuild
and what the expectation is after a whole neighborhoods have
been wiped away? So for now let's talk to Richard. Hey, Richard,
(01:46):
welcome home.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
My question today was about the water curtains, and you
kind of answered it, but John brought up about the
limitations of a private water system, which I could actually
give you some numbers on that.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Okay, So do you have a question left about the
water curtain idea around the house or I.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Was actually interested in your opinion at them, but you
kind of gave it during the program.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah, I mean so again real quickly again, like John said,
is it a bad idea? No, you know, I mean
the idea of a curtain of water falling from the
eaves of your home all around it, the idea of
a water curtain. But I will tell you this, that's
not how fires are most effectively fought with a wall
(02:45):
or a curtain of water. I mean, if it was
you know, Niagara Falls, that would be one thing, clearly,
But a wall or curtain of water it's not the
most efficient use of water because water is really If
you ask any firefighter, you know they constant trade those
streams of water, not on the tops of upper flames usually,
but at the base of the fire where it's actually
(03:08):
uh you know, where where the actual consumption of materials
is taking place, the actual ignition is taking place, and so,
you know, a curtain of water again, it's sort of
like our previous caller talking about an automatic system too,
to spray the gel fire gel on the house. A
(03:31):
water hose in the hands of a of an experienced
human being, focusing the water where it counts the most
on a fire is going to be far more efficient
than a curtain of water. Now, could you get lucky
and turn that on before you evacuate and and not
(03:53):
run out of water by the time the fire reaches Sure,
that's all possible, but generally speak, we're talking about areas
where there's a lot of cost involved. It affects the
function of your home, undoubtedly on some level, and will
it be there to help when the moment arrives. So
(04:13):
I'm not going to say no, I'm just going to say,
you know, be informed. I think far wiser is to
listen to the advice of people like John White, experienced
firefighters who are telling us that, hey, do those at events,
(04:34):
clear the defensible space around your home, get the junk
away from your house, all of those kinds of things,
because this is the stuff they deal with all the time.
They see how it is that fires go down and
affect structures. So that's my encouragement to you, Richard. Thanks
for the question, Thanks for hanging in there. And yeah,
(04:54):
so that's where we're at. Everybody, all right, So here
is where we turn next. It's an interesting situation. Interesting.
I don't mean that to downplay the situation at all.
It's interesting and a very different kind of scenario when
you've had a wildfire that has done something like the
(05:17):
Palisades Fire and the Eaten fire have done like the
Paradise fire did just a few years back in Paradise, California.
Any fire that gets into an actual residential and urbanized
area and clears it out what happens next, How does
that change the rebuilding timeline? What can you expect? So
(05:39):
I want to speak to that, and I also want
to speak to the basics of what do you do
after you've evacuated and then you have found out that
you've lost your home to a wildfire? What is next?
Speaker 3 (05:53):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI Am six forty.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
We've just finished up talking about hardening your home. What
those options are. Now I want to transition and talk
about the very unique situation that the Palisades and the
Eaten fire presented for us here in southern California. This
is not like it's unheard of. You know, Paradise fire
went through this entire town was essentially leveled in that fire.
(06:21):
What are the expectations. We've got kind of two prongs
on this fork. One is what are the normal things
that will happen by way of fire damage anytime anybody's
house burns to the ground. And number two, what happens
when it's not just your house, but an entire neighborhood
or a region that has burnt to the ground. How
(06:42):
does that affect the rebuilding process and all the decisions
that come next. Okay, so let's start with that first
of all, always first steps. I mentioned this yesterday. I'm
going to repeat myself here for those listening right now.
First steps, get out, get safe, and get rested, and
take a breath. That's what you need. And who do
(07:03):
you have. You've got friends, You've got relatives, You've got
loved ones who are reaching out and offering help. You
have FEMA. Make sure if you have lost your home
in these fires, that you have registered with and made
contact with FEMA. There are potential money. Now, FEMA is
(07:25):
not there to rebuild your house, but they're there to
help with emergency costs and expenditures along the way. It
will help. Nothing cures, but it will help. The Red Cross,
of course, is available. There are shelters, there's food, there's water,
there's rest areas, there's medical attention. All of that has
(07:48):
to happen in order to get you, you and your
loved ones safe and away from the danger. Okay, now
now comes insurance. Insurance is a sticky wicket. It just is.
I've spoken on this before and we're going to be
speaking about it again in the next few weeks. Insurance
(08:12):
is a strange thing. Because you enlist the help of
an insurance company to protect your home and your property,
you pay them premiums. Those premiums sometimes are very, very costly,
and then when the event happens, you know, it's kind
(08:33):
of like a legalized gambling situation when the event actually
occurs and the loss is suffered. And this is everything
from you know, broken pipe in your kitchen to your
whole house burning down. When that happens, the insurance company
who bet that nothing would happen to your house in
order to make the profits that they wanted to make
(08:56):
from your premiums not going you know, unpaid. That company
now has approached you from the perspective. Now I'm not
saying that they are that they're being nasty with you.
I'm just saying that their perspective is their priority is
minimizing loss, financial loss on their part. Okay, So does
(09:21):
that put you in an adversarial position with your insurance company.
The reality is yes, yes it does, and at a
time when you need it, that situation laid on your
doorstep the least. But it's just the way this business works. Okay.
So here's the first thing that you need to know.
(09:42):
You need to make a claim. And it's not about like, oh,
there's plenty of time, nothing's happening over No, you make
a claim, okay, especially in a massive disaster, because some
insurance companies may not survive this disaster. They will pay
out until they can payout, and so you make your claim.
(10:02):
Make your claim. That also gets certain balls rolling in
the state of California. It is my understanding, okay, and
correct me if I'm wrong about this, but it's my
understanding in the state of California. If your house is
completely destroyed in an event that resulted in a state
of emergency being declared, and which these fires were a
(10:25):
state of emergency officially declared by the Governor's office in
the state of California, in those events, your insurance company
is required to immediately pay you a minimum of one
third of the estimated value of your personal belongings that's
known as contents in your policy, and a minimum of
(10:45):
four months worth of rent for the local area in
which you live. That's cash that's available to you right now,
and those payments are required of them, whether an adjuster
has inspected your home or not. Do you understand that
those are just automatic payments. So this is why you
make your claim. Okay. You can also in some situations
(11:06):
ask your insurance provider for cash advances for living expenses
such as renting out furniture. And there are companies out
there if you did not know, that can come to
your temporary residence, your temporary home that you just rented
and furnish it, furnish it. I mean, if you've lost
everything in the fire, you don't have much other than
(11:28):
maybe what you got in your car and the clothes
on your back. There are companies that will furnish that
rental home, that temporary residence, down to the towels and
kitchen utensils, Okay, all the way through. Okay, so understand
that that is at your disposal. Secondly, okay, the next
(11:48):
thing that and I know this is a difficult thing
as well, especially in a time of stress, but secondly,
it's time to start what's called a recovery diary. Okay.
All I'm saying is it's not dear diary, I had
a bad day today. No. A recovery diary is just
a book or a set of records in which you
begin to take detailed notes on people that you've talked
(12:12):
to when you talk to them, the phone numbers that
you called, who has called you, what was said. Keep
your paperwork organized. Take photos of receipts, hotel bills, you know,
pet receipts, boarding receipts, so you can have them all accessible. Okay,
now the other thing is this is no I know
(12:35):
I've been talking about after you've left and your home
is burnt down. But one more item of advice for
those of you who are in a you may evacuate
situation soon. You haven't been ordered to evacuate yet, but
you've been told that it may be coming. You've got
time right now to do one of the most important
(12:56):
things for your financial future, and it's in your hands,
probably in your pocket, your cell phone, your camera. If
you have not evacuated yet but are on the edge
of potentially evacuating, you need to take video and photos
of everything everything. Everything in your home, your valuables, your electronics,
(13:19):
stuff in your drawers, everything in the kitchen, all the appliances,
everything inside the cupboards. I mean literally, somebody somebody video
and the other person walk in front like a host
tour guide and just walk through the house and point
out here are our two sofas. Here's our leather recliner,
(13:40):
here's our seventy two inch flat screen TV. Here's this,
here's that, And document your possessions, everything that may not
survive that fire, because when it's ash, it's hard for
anybody to walk up and say, oh, and I also
had a you know, five thousand dollars gold necklace in
(14:01):
this drawer. Uh, how do we know? Document it? Document
it all? Does that make sense? I hope?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
So.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Okay, that's again I'm jumping back to before you've evacuated,
After the evacuation, after you've learned that your home has
been descinated, there's going to be a point in which,
at some point you are allowed to return to the
property when you do photos and video. Again, what's the
(14:34):
best way for me to communicate this. I want you
to treat your property like a crime scene, Okay, like
the police treat a crime scene. And what I mean
by that is, don't go in there and just start
shoveling and removing stuff. Okay, there's going to be a
time for that, but go in and simply, without disturbing
(14:56):
as much as possible, go in and document everything you can,
everything that you can on site. Without just starting cleanup
and throwing stuff away. Okay, document, document, document everything possible, visibly, photographs, video,
(15:17):
You get the idea. Okay. All of this leads up
to the beginning of negotiations with your insurance company, and
when we come back from break, I'm going to talk
to you about what that expectation is going to be
and what other resources are at your disposal in order
(15:41):
to make that as beneficial for you as possible, because honestly,
insurance companies make billions of dollars. I want to now
focus on you getting what you need out of that
disastrous situation. And you may need some help. You probably
will need some help. Where will you find it? Talk
(16:03):
about that right after.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on Demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I've been a general contractor and a builder for decades.
I know your home. I know my home inside and out,
and if I were to lose everything on my property
to a wildfire and had to deal with my insurance
company straight up, I would probably seek out this help,
(16:33):
even for myself. So that's the kind of underscore I'm
placing under this advice, Okay, And what kind of help
is available to you. Well, there's two kinds in general.
One is a public insurance adjuster. The other is a
attorney who specializes in damage law. How public insurance adjuster
(16:58):
is It sounds like they would not work for you personally,
but that's exactly what that title means. A public insurance
adjuster is an experienced insurance adjuster, very likely somebody who
has worked as an insurance adjuster for an insurance company
but now works directly with you for you, solely on
(17:19):
your behalf. And it puts them in a position, because
of their experience, to negotiate with your insurance company on
your behalf. Now, what kind of value does your insurance
company have to listen to them? Yes, if you sign
a contract with a public insurance adjuster, who, by the way,
gets paid a percentage of your recovery of loss, your
(17:43):
loss recovery, and by and large, in my experience, they
are more than worth it because the money that you
will pay out to them will be from a return
of lost value far greater than if you were to
simply deal with your insurance company directly yourself right to
well worth the money spent. It's kind of like, should
(18:05):
I have an agent if I'm in the movie business
or the entertainment business. Well, they cost money to have
an agent, but they can get you a deal far
better than you can negotiate on your own. That's the idea. Okay,
So a public insurance adjuster has that experience, and yes,
your insurance company is legally obligated to deal with them
(18:26):
because they become upon you signing that contract, they become
your agent in regards to loss mitigation for your property.
The same is true of an attorney that specializes in
damage law. They're not that common, to be quite honest
with you, and you want to be careful, and you
want to make sure you're dealing with an attorney who
(18:47):
really does specialize in I'm going to make a recommendation
for you right now. If you live in the Greater
Los Angeles area, which you know, if you've been affected
by these fires you do, I want you to go
to my friends at Damage Law. This is a pair
of attorneys who decided that their entire practice is going
to be focused solely in this area. They are great guys.
(19:09):
They're actually going to be on the show in early February. Okay,
in just a couple three weeks. I'll have them on
our Sunday program to talk at length about this, but
just for the moment and let them know that I
sent you Damage law dot Com. What will an attorney
do essentially kind of fulfill that role of the public
(19:31):
insurance adjuster, with the addition that there's one thing they
can do that a public insurance adjuster can't do, and
that is they can threaten a lawsuit if they feel
like the insurance company is not treating you right. Okay,
and sometimes quite honestly, it's necessary. And so these are
the two main forms of professional assistance that you can
(19:53):
have that you're not left to your own devices. You
don't need to just deal with the insurance companies recommended contractors.
And we've talked at length about that before. And I
don't want to get into the weeds on that because
there's more that I want to cover with you, But
that's essentially where what you're looking at. These are the responses. Now,
what's the expected timeline for all this? Well, if you
(20:16):
just lost your house from a house fire and your
neighborhood is intact, then the amount of claim and the
beginning to rebuild can happen almost immediately, almost immediately that's
what's different about this situation, because we're not talking about
just an isolated house lost in the middle of a
(20:40):
functioning neighborhood. How is the timeline affected when the entire
neighborhood goes down. It is affected in the extreme. And
so that's why you do these things that I'm suggesting
you get them moving as quickly as possible. But also
I want you to realize, and this is why you
get the adjuster and or an attorney really advocating for you,
(21:01):
that there are some law you're going to need some
long term payouts just in the area of you know,
temporary housing when it comes to this, because this is
not a four month process. This is not a seven
month process. This is going to be easily easily a
year plus process of just getting to the point where
(21:25):
rebuilding is feasible and you making the decision if you're
going to rebuild. Yet, are you hearing me? The reason
is this The very first thing that the city is
going to have to deal with is they are very likely,
in a devastating event like this, going to take point
on general cleanup. Now I don't mean that they're going
to be going in and cleaning every area of your property,
(21:47):
but general cleanup from a devastation like this is something
the city has an interest, a vested interest in handling.
Number One, there's a lot of toxicity in those neighborhoods
right now in the debris, because we're not just talking
about pine trees and chaparral brush burning in a brush fire.
We're talking about chemicals and glues and furniture and clothing
(22:10):
and synthetics and petroleum by all sorts of things have
been altered chemically as a result of the fire and
exposed to the environment. And so there's going to be
a cleanup effort not left to individual homeowners, and it
could be limited or more extensive. We'll have to wait
and see exactly what the situation calls for. But the
(22:32):
very first thing is that the city will likely take
point on general cleanup. And then before you are allowed
to even get started with anything, then there are infrastructure concerns.
Infrastructure meaning not just your house being burnt to the ground,
but the neighborhood being affected. The heat of the flames,
the amount of water poured upon them and gotten into
(22:55):
certain systems, has likely affected roadwork, asphalt, It has affected
all the visible structures clearly. But the heat from the
fire has damaged power lines, water lines, gas sewer lines
running in. All of these things are going to have
to be pulled, tested, examined, repaired, replaced Before a single
(23:21):
home gets reburnt. It gets reburned, sorry, rebuilt in a
devastated neighborhood. In other words, imagine you've all driven by
home developments before, right, just regular home developments where a
developer is building a new neighborhood full of homes. You've
seen that for months. First there was grading and heavy
equipment out there moving soil around. Then there were streets
(23:45):
that got laid in, and underneath those streets were power
lines and gas service and electrical service to those new
homes that are about to be built. All of that
infrastructure has to be done before a single house individually
starts to be built in a new development. Well, here,
we've got all of that stuff in place, and yet
(24:06):
it's damaged. And if you can imagine the likelihood of
the city and all of the local power utilities jumping
in and getting it all reworked in the first few weeks,
you know that that's not the case. We have a
long wait ahead. While just the basic cleanup and infrastructure
(24:28):
gets rebuilt so that an individual home could potentially start
that process, and then there are questions that people have
about those individual homes. My home burnt to the ground, Okay,
my slab seems to be intact. Can I rebuild my
home on my old existing slab. I'm going to tell
(24:52):
you that chances are eighty percent no, and eighty percent no,
not because the concrete necessarily although concrete can be damaged
from high heat exposure, but it's not necessarily that. But again,
it's like I said out in the street, it's not
just the fact that the slab and the footings are
(25:13):
still intact. It's that there are plastic drain lines that
run underneath your slab that the heat has melted and affected.
There are electrical conduits potentially running underneath your slab that
have been affected. Now, if you look in any building
code post fire in La County, building code is no
(25:36):
exception to this. They'll say things like they may allow
a conduit that underneath a slab that has been through
a fire to remain in place and be reused, but
the conductors, the wires themselves, they have to be pulled.
They may have melted in place. There's all sorts of
trouble that fires cause below ground where we can't see it,
(26:01):
as well as above ground. So the likelihood of your
slab being kept no, And this is another one of
those areas where we make sure that that cost is
being reimbursed in terms of insurance because most of these
home slabs, most of these properties will have to be
scraped bare and started fresh and anew. And then if
(26:25):
you think that for a thousand homes that the local
building and Safety department is going to be able to
expedite and get those permits done quickly, you need to
have another thought about that because a lot of people
are under the the misunderstanding that well building safety will
(26:46):
just they'll push fast permits forward. If there's been a
little bit of damage to a house and it's a
minor non structural issue that needs to be paired, building
safety is happy to push those forward. But we're talking
about building a new home. The local department of Building
(27:07):
and Safety in charge of that is not going to
rush that process. It's going to be treated just like
a regular plan check and process for these new homes.
So understand the most the city could do is prioritize
your permit application over you know, somebody on the other
(27:32):
side of town who just wants to, you know, remodel
their house. Those may get put on hold to prioritize
permit applications when the time comes if it's a fire
devastated related rebuild. But they aren't going to speed up
the process of actually going through and making sure your
home is planned properly and is being built properly. That's
(27:55):
the facts, and so we have a long road ahead.
I wish I had better news for you, but that's
the truth of it. There's a long road ahead, and
we'll have to take it step by step. All right,
let's hear some news and then we'll come back and
wrap this all up for today.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Welcome home. We have come to the end of a weekend.
A lot of fire coverage this weekend, A lot of conversations,
none of it happy stuff, none of it positive. Hey, great,
you know, I hope you're having a great day kind
of stuff, but necessary, necessary conversation. So I hope that
(28:40):
they have been beneficial to you. I want to touch
on one last thing that I promised I would speak to.
It is not directly related to fire hardening your home,
but a lot more people on the outskirts of these
fires have experienced power outages, lots and lots of power
out and as a result have been left with you know,
(29:04):
susceptible too, Like when maybe you've got medical equipment and
things that need power to run. You know, power went out,
hasn't gone on for three days, and now all the
food in your fridge needs to be tossed out and
that kind of stuff, and a lot of questions. Every
time this happens, whether there's wildfire happening or not. Every
time an extended heavy Santa Ana windstorm starts knocking out power,
(29:29):
there's a run on generators. You know, home depots got
no generators today. You know that they ran out on Thursday,
and everybody in town who normally carries them. So a
quick note on emergency power. There are basically three approaches
to this that are running on the top of my
mind right now, and I'm just kind of riffing from
(29:51):
my experience on it. There are three approaches to it.
Number one, if you've got a solar system, then you
should consider or you may have solar backup batteries. It's
never a bad idea for that to be the case
because those are emergency power supplies when power goes down. Now,
(30:12):
different batteries, the amount of the energy they can provide
to the house, that's all something that has to be discussed.
The cool thing about solar backup batteries is that they
are being without fuel cost, being restored and recharged on
a daily basi as long as the sun is out
and on windy firestorm windstorm days, guess the sun is
(30:36):
out because if it was cloudy outside, there would be
that way because there's no wind all right, and chances
are your power hasn't gone down. So it's a good
thing to have or to consider a backup battery that's
tied into your solar system if you have solar plus
these days, the way that energy is measured and handled
(30:59):
in the state of California with your solar energy, a
smart backup battery is a great way to continue to
save the most amount of money and have your solar
system be as efficient as possible. So there you go,
solar and or solar powered or solar rechargeable generators or
backup batteries. The second way to go is to have
(31:23):
a whole house generator installed that runs off of natural gas.
Some are dual fueled, but most runoff of natural gas,
and they kick in immediately as soon as the power
goes down and are capable of powering most, if not all,
of most sized homes. That's the second way to go. Now,
(31:47):
it's an expense, it's less expense, about half the price
of getting a solar battery, but they don't recharge. They
are dependent on natural gas. But typically in everything except
maybe an earthquake scenario in southern California, at least the
natural gas supply to homes is strong and consistent, even
(32:10):
if the power company is shutting down power to be safe,
or that transformers are being blown over, and so on
and so forth. The final way to go, if you
don't have thousands and thousands of dollars to invest on
these systems, is simply a good quality, portable inverter style generator.
It's quiet. It can run either plugged into your house
(32:32):
through a transfer switch that you can have an electrician
rig for you, or you can simply run extension cords
into your home. I'll just tell you this. It is
a worthy investment to have a backup generator. A generator.
I prefer the ones that run off of propane because
it's safer to store, and they they run longer. Like
one canister of propane for one of my inverter generators
(32:56):
will run it at twenty five percent draw for like
thirty six hours, so they go a long ways and
they're easy to store. And the kind of generator I'm talking,
I've got like a twenty five hundred watt Champion generator
that's whisper quiet because it was actually designed for RVs
for camping. It's whisper quiet, twenty five hundred watts. It
(33:19):
can be linked together with another one to give five
thousand watts of emergency power, and it's like a six
hundred dollars generator, right, And it's not cheap, but it's
also not expensive in the long run. So these are
your areas of consideration. Just think it through.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
It's lovely to think, Hey, I've got this whole system
in place where as soon as the power goes out,
my house comes back on and I don't have to
think about a thing or alter the way I behave
at all. But you pay a mint. For that kind
of scenario, a small generator can literally get you through
and radically change your ability to either stay in the
(33:58):
house while the power is down or have to go elsewhere.
All the difference maker could be a small, portable generator.
So give it thought. All right, That's all I got
for today for y'all. Remember we're on social media. We're
there for you on Facebook, TikTok x, Instagram, Home with Dean.
(34:19):
The house Whisper podcast is everywhere your favorite podcasts are found,
and if your home is in need of some personal
house Whisper attention, you can book an in home design
consult with us at house Whisper dot Design. I'm hoping
that next weekend we can return to uplifting moving forward topics.
(34:39):
That's the plan we'll see because our first priority and
always priority, is to give you what you need at
the time that you need it. That being said, I'm
going to leave you with this thought today. These fires
remind us that it's hard to let go of things
(35:00):
that feel permanent. They also remind us that the things
that feel permanent and actuality aren't. So let me tell
you a little story. The small valley that I call
home was first settled by humans some twelve thousand years ago.
That was a time when mammoths and saber toothed cats
(35:23):
and giant cave bears and one hundred and fifty pound
four foot tall dire wolves very likely roamed through what
is now my backyard. It's hard to believe, but it's true.
The humans who settled this area came to be known
as the chew Mash or the bead Makers. They spread
(35:44):
their villages along the California coast from what is now
northern Los Angeles to more Obey. I live a short
walk from the site of a chew Mash village known
as Sapwee, which means house of deer. By the way,
if you live in this area, and even if you don't,
there are still some Chumash place names that you might recognize.
(36:06):
I bet you will, names like Napomo, Ohai, Pismo, Piru, Lompoc, Sadakoi, Somus,
see me, and yes, Malibu. For twelve thousand years, tens
of thousands of people were born and lived and died
(36:28):
where I drink my coffee. Twelve thousand years. That's four
hundred generations of joy and fear, pleasure and pain. Four
hundred generations of loving families and intimate friendships, the memories
of four hundred consecutive lifetimes, tens of thousands of lives.
(36:50):
And here's the thing. I'll never know a single one
of them, and they will never know me. They were
all gone long before I was born, and long before
I arrived here. Their settlements, their huts, are all gone
now and now my house is here. And this feels
quite permanent to me, this place, but I'm sure it
(37:12):
did to four hundred generations of Chumash and the mammoths
and the bears and the dire wolves. True. Also, the
truth is it won't be long before I am gone.
It won't be long before my house is gone. It
won't be long before all that remains of my life,
my friends and family, my entire generation, is nothing more
(37:35):
than a curiosity of history. There's a line from a
movie that I love, and it's true. It goes like this.
All these moments will be lost in time, like tears
in the rain. It's not a happy thought. It's hard
to let things go that seem permanent. It's even harder
to acknowledge that I am not permanent. So as someone
(38:00):
tearfully asked me earlier this week, Dean, what is the point.
The only answer I have for that question is, however
impermanent life may be, life is a miracle. Even if
there are billions of civilizations spread throughout the universe, life
is still incredibly rare, and you and I we have
(38:24):
it right now. It doesn't matter how long it lasts,
or if anyone will ever remember it. Life is miraculously rare,
and you and I, against all odds, are part of that.
Trouble sometimes comes, sometimes the things we count on, the
things that seem so permanent to us, Sometimes those things
(38:46):
burn to the ground. The trick is to hold it
all loosely, hold yourself loosely, and live the miracle that's
in your hands for as long as you are. We
are all my friends, sand castles, here one moment and
gone the next. That doesn't make this moment meaningless. It
(39:08):
makes this moment miraculous. It has meaning because it means
something to you, and it means something to me. And
that's enough. So don't miss the miracle, don't let the
moment pass, live it and use it to build yourself
a beautiful life. I hope that comforts you in some way. Today.
(39:33):
Take that thought with you this week, and we will
be right back here for you next weekend. This has
been Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper. Tune into
the live broadcast on KFI AM six forty every Saturday
morning from six to eight Pacific time, and every Sunday
morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime on
(39:53):
demand on the iHeartRadio app
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The
House Whisper on demand of the iHeart Radio app. Hey,
did you know that this very program is also the
House Whisper podcast that you can listen to anytime anywhere
on demand, including today's program, today's episode. If you missed
(00:20):
any of it, you need say what did he say
about this? In regards to fire? As well? About an
hour after we go off the air of our live broadcast,
that episode is Boom, part of the House Whisper podcast
and it lives in perpetuity wherever your favorite podcasts are found,
of course on the iHeartRadio app, but also Apple Podcasts, Spotify.
(00:42):
Wherever you listen to your podcast, you can find us.
You just search for Home with Dean Sharp, or you
can search for The House Whisper. You're gonna find us.
You're gonna find me. There you will find it, and
you will find eight seasons, eight years, hundreds of episodes,
all all listed by topic, all waiting for you when
(01:03):
you want to hear them. And if you're thinking, well,
that's all great, but what we really need is Dean
and Tina in our house. And you're joking about that, well,
you can do that too. You can book an in
home design consult with me and Tea. You just go
to house whisper dot Design. There are contact forms there
to fill out very easily, very quick, and more information
(01:26):
for you house whisperer dot Design. All right, I want
to take one, maybe two more calls from our callers
today and then move on to how do you rebuild
and what the expectation is after a whole neighborhoods have
been wiped away? So for now let's talk to Richard. Hey, Richard,
(01:46):
welcome home.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
My question today was about the water curtains, and you
kind of answered it, but John brought up about the
limitations of a private water system, which I could actually
give you some numbers on that.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Okay, So do you have a question left about the
water curtain idea around the house or I.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Was actually interested in your opinion at them, but you
kind of gave it during the program.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah, I mean so again real quickly again, like John said,
is it a bad idea? No, you know, I mean
the idea of a curtain of water falling from the
eaves of your home all around it, the idea of
a water curtain. But I will tell you this, that's
not how fires are most effectively fought with a wall
(02:45):
or a curtain of water. I mean, if it was
you know, Niagara Falls, that would be one thing, clearly,
But a wall or curtain of water it's not the
most efficient use of water because water is really If
you ask any firefighter, you know they constant trade those
streams of water, not on the tops of upper flames usually,
but at the base of the fire where it's actually
(03:08):
uh you know, where where the actual consumption of materials
is taking place, the actual ignition is taking place, and so,
you know, a curtain of water again, it's sort of
like our previous caller talking about an automatic system too,
to spray the gel fire gel on the house. A
(03:31):
water hose in the hands of a of an experienced
human being, focusing the water where it counts the most
on a fire is going to be far more efficient
than a curtain of water. Now, could you get lucky
and turn that on before you evacuate and and not
(03:53):
run out of water by the time the fire reaches Sure,
that's all possible, but generally speak, we're talking about areas
where there's a lot of cost involved. It affects the
function of your home, undoubtedly on some level, and will
it be there to help when the moment arrives. So
(04:13):
I'm not going to say no, I'm just going to say,
you know, be informed. I think far wiser is to
listen to the advice of people like John White, experienced
firefighters who are telling us that, hey, do those at events,
(04:34):
clear the defensible space around your home, get the junk
away from your house, all of those kinds of things,
because this is the stuff they deal with all the time.
They see how it is that fires go down and
affect structures. So that's my encouragement to you, Richard. Thanks
for the question, Thanks for hanging in there. And yeah,
(04:54):
so that's where we're at. Everybody, all right, So here
is where we turn next. It's an interesting situation. Interesting.
I don't mean that to downplay the situation at all.
It's interesting and a very different kind of scenario when
you've had a wildfire that has done something like the
(05:17):
Palisades Fire and the Eaten fire have done like the
Paradise fire did just a few years back in Paradise, California.
Any fire that gets into an actual residential and urbanized
area and clears it out what happens next, How does
that change the rebuilding timeline? What can you expect? So
(05:39):
I want to speak to that, and I also want
to speak to the basics of what do you do
after you've evacuated and then you have found out that
you've lost your home to a wildfire? What is next?
Speaker 3 (05:53):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI Am six forty.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
We've just finished up talking about hardening your home. What
those options are. Now I want to transition and talk
about the very unique situation that the Palisades and the
Eaten fire presented for us here in southern California. This
is not like it's unheard of. You know, Paradise fire
went through this entire town was essentially leveled in that fire.
(06:21):
What are the expectations. We've got kind of two prongs
on this fork. One is what are the normal things
that will happen by way of fire damage anytime anybody's
house burns to the ground. And number two, what happens
when it's not just your house, but an entire neighborhood
or a region that has burnt to the ground. How
(06:42):
does that affect the rebuilding process and all the decisions
that come next. Okay, so let's start with that first
of all, always first steps. I mentioned this yesterday. I'm
going to repeat myself here for those listening right now.
First steps, get out, get safe, and get rested, and
take a breath. That's what you need. And who do
(07:03):
you have. You've got friends, You've got relatives, You've got
loved ones who are reaching out and offering help. You
have FEMA. Make sure if you have lost your home
in these fires, that you have registered with and made
contact with FEMA. There are potential money. Now, FEMA is
(07:25):
not there to rebuild your house, but they're there to
help with emergency costs and expenditures along the way. It
will help. Nothing cures, but it will help. The Red Cross,
of course, is available. There are shelters, there's food, there's water,
there's rest areas, there's medical attention. All of that has
(07:48):
to happen in order to get you, you and your
loved ones safe and away from the danger. Okay, now
now comes insurance. Insurance is a sticky wicket. It just is.
I've spoken on this before and we're going to be
speaking about it again in the next few weeks. Insurance
(08:12):
is a strange thing. Because you enlist the help of
an insurance company to protect your home and your property,
you pay them premiums. Those premiums sometimes are very, very costly,
and then when the event happens, you know, it's kind
(08:33):
of like a legalized gambling situation when the event actually
occurs and the loss is suffered. And this is everything
from you know, broken pipe in your kitchen to your
whole house burning down. When that happens, the insurance company
who bet that nothing would happen to your house in
order to make the profits that they wanted to make
(08:56):
from your premiums not going you know, unpaid. That company
now has approached you from the perspective. Now I'm not
saying that they are that they're being nasty with you.
I'm just saying that their perspective is their priority is
minimizing loss, financial loss on their part. Okay, So does
(09:21):
that put you in an adversarial position with your insurance company.
The reality is yes, yes it does, and at a
time when you need it, that situation laid on your
doorstep the least. But it's just the way this business works. Okay.
So here's the first thing that you need to know.
(09:42):
You need to make a claim. And it's not about like, oh,
there's plenty of time, nothing's happening over No, you make
a claim, okay, especially in a massive disaster, because some
insurance companies may not survive this disaster. They will pay
out until they can payout, and so you make your claim.
(10:02):
Make your claim. That also gets certain balls rolling in
the state of California. It is my understanding, okay, and
correct me if I'm wrong about this, but it's my
understanding in the state of California. If your house is
completely destroyed in an event that resulted in a state
of emergency being declared, and which these fires were a
(10:25):
state of emergency officially declared by the Governor's office in
the state of California, in those events, your insurance company
is required to immediately pay you a minimum of one
third of the estimated value of your personal belongings that's
known as contents in your policy, and a minimum of
(10:45):
four months worth of rent for the local area in
which you live. That's cash that's available to you right now,
and those payments are required of them, whether an adjuster
has inspected your home or not. Do you understand that
those are just automatic payments. So this is why you
make your claim. Okay. You can also in some situations
(11:06):
ask your insurance provider for cash advances for living expenses
such as renting out furniture. And there are companies out
there if you did not know, that can come to
your temporary residence, your temporary home that you just rented
and furnish it, furnish it. I mean, if you've lost
everything in the fire, you don't have much other than
(11:28):
maybe what you got in your car and the clothes
on your back. There are companies that will furnish that
rental home, that temporary residence, down to the towels and
kitchen utensils, Okay, all the way through. Okay, so understand
that that is at your disposal. Secondly, okay, the next
(11:48):
thing that and I know this is a difficult thing
as well, especially in a time of stress, but secondly,
it's time to start what's called a recovery diary. Okay.
All I'm saying is it's not dear diary, I had
a bad day today. No. A recovery diary is just
a book or a set of records in which you
begin to take detailed notes on people that you've talked
(12:12):
to when you talk to them, the phone numbers that
you called, who has called you, what was said. Keep
your paperwork organized. Take photos of receipts, hotel bills, you know,
pet receipts, boarding receipts, so you can have them all accessible. Okay,
now the other thing is this is no I know
(12:35):
I've been talking about after you've left and your home
is burnt down. But one more item of advice for
those of you who are in a you may evacuate
situation soon. You haven't been ordered to evacuate yet, but
you've been told that it may be coming. You've got
time right now to do one of the most important
(12:56):
things for your financial future, and it's in your hands,
probably in your pocket, your cell phone, your camera. If
you have not evacuated yet but are on the edge
of potentially evacuating, you need to take video and photos
of everything everything. Everything in your home, your valuables, your electronics,
(13:19):
stuff in your drawers, everything in the kitchen, all the appliances,
everything inside the cupboards. I mean literally, somebody somebody video
and the other person walk in front like a host
tour guide and just walk through the house and point
out here are our two sofas. Here's our leather recliner,
(13:40):
here's our seventy two inch flat screen TV. Here's this,
here's that, And document your possessions, everything that may not
survive that fire, because when it's ash, it's hard for
anybody to walk up and say, oh, and I also
had a you know, five thousand dollars gold necklace in
(14:01):
this drawer. Uh, how do we know? Document it? Document
it all? Does that make sense? I hope?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
So.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Okay, that's again I'm jumping back to before you've evacuated,
After the evacuation, after you've learned that your home has
been descinated, there's going to be a point in which,
at some point you are allowed to return to the
property when you do photos and video. Again, what's the
(14:34):
best way for me to communicate this. I want you
to treat your property like a crime scene, Okay, like
the police treat a crime scene. And what I mean
by that is, don't go in there and just start
shoveling and removing stuff. Okay, there's going to be a
time for that, but go in and simply, without disturbing
(14:56):
as much as possible, go in and document everything you can,
everything that you can on site. Without just starting cleanup
and throwing stuff away. Okay, document, document, document everything possible, visibly, photographs, video,
(15:17):
You get the idea. Okay. All of this leads up
to the beginning of negotiations with your insurance company, and
when we come back from break, I'm going to talk
to you about what that expectation is going to be
and what other resources are at your disposal in order
(15:41):
to make that as beneficial for you as possible, because honestly,
insurance companies make billions of dollars. I want to now
focus on you getting what you need out of that
disastrous situation. And you may need some help. You probably
will need some help. Where will you find it? Talk
(16:03):
about that right after.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on Demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I've been a general contractor and a builder for decades.
I know your home. I know my home inside and out,
and if I were to lose everything on my property
to a wildfire and had to deal with my insurance
company straight up, I would probably seek out this help,
(16:33):
even for myself. So that's the kind of underscore I'm
placing under this advice, Okay, And what kind of help
is available to you. Well, there's two kinds in general.
One is a public insurance adjuster. The other is a
attorney who specializes in damage law. How public insurance adjuster
(16:58):
is It sounds like they would not work for you personally,
but that's exactly what that title means. A public insurance
adjuster is an experienced insurance adjuster, very likely somebody who
has worked as an insurance adjuster for an insurance company
but now works directly with you for you, solely on
(17:19):
your behalf. And it puts them in a position, because
of their experience, to negotiate with your insurance company on
your behalf. Now, what kind of value does your insurance
company have to listen to them? Yes, if you sign
a contract with a public insurance adjuster, who, by the way,
gets paid a percentage of your recovery of loss, your
(17:43):
loss recovery, and by and large, in my experience, they
are more than worth it because the money that you
will pay out to them will be from a return
of lost value far greater than if you were to
simply deal with your insurance company directly yourself right to
well worth the money spent. It's kind of like, should
(18:05):
I have an agent if I'm in the movie business
or the entertainment business. Well, they cost money to have
an agent, but they can get you a deal far
better than you can negotiate on your own. That's the idea. Okay,
So a public insurance adjuster has that experience, and yes,
your insurance company is legally obligated to deal with them
(18:26):
because they become upon you signing that contract, they become
your agent in regards to loss mitigation for your property.
The same is true of an attorney that specializes in
damage law. They're not that common, to be quite honest
with you, and you want to be careful, and you
want to make sure you're dealing with an attorney who
(18:47):
really does specialize in I'm going to make a recommendation
for you right now. If you live in the Greater
Los Angeles area, which you know, if you've been affected
by these fires you do, I want you to go
to my friends at Damage Law. This is a pair
of attorneys who decided that their entire practice is going
to be focused solely in this area. They are great guys.
(19:09):
They're actually going to be on the show in early February. Okay,
in just a couple three weeks. I'll have them on
our Sunday program to talk at length about this, but
just for the moment and let them know that I
sent you Damage law dot Com. What will an attorney
do essentially kind of fulfill that role of the public
(19:31):
insurance adjuster, with the addition that there's one thing they
can do that a public insurance adjuster can't do, and
that is they can threaten a lawsuit if they feel
like the insurance company is not treating you right. Okay,
and sometimes quite honestly, it's necessary. And so these are
the two main forms of professional assistance that you can
(19:53):
have that you're not left to your own devices. You
don't need to just deal with the insurance companies recommended contractors.
And we've talked at length about that before. And I
don't want to get into the weeds on that because
there's more that I want to cover with you, But
that's essentially where what you're looking at. These are the responses. Now,
what's the expected timeline for all this? Well, if you
(20:16):
just lost your house from a house fire and your
neighborhood is intact, then the amount of claim and the
beginning to rebuild can happen almost immediately, almost immediately that's
what's different about this situation, because we're not talking about
just an isolated house lost in the middle of a
(20:40):
functioning neighborhood. How is the timeline affected when the entire
neighborhood goes down. It is affected in the extreme. And
so that's why you do these things that I'm suggesting
you get them moving as quickly as possible. But also
I want you to realize, and this is why you
get the adjuster and or an attorney really advocating for you,
(21:01):
that there are some law you're going to need some
long term payouts just in the area of you know,
temporary housing when it comes to this, because this is
not a four month process. This is not a seven
month process. This is going to be easily easily a
year plus process of just getting to the point where
(21:25):
rebuilding is feasible and you making the decision if you're
going to rebuild. Yet, are you hearing me? The reason
is this The very first thing that the city is
going to have to deal with is they are very likely,
in a devastating event like this, going to take point
on general cleanup. Now I don't mean that they're going
to be going in and cleaning every area of your property,
(21:47):
but general cleanup from a devastation like this is something
the city has an interest, a vested interest in handling.
Number One, there's a lot of toxicity in those neighborhoods
right now in the debris, because we're not just talking
about pine trees and chaparral brush burning in a brush fire.
We're talking about chemicals and glues and furniture and clothing
(22:10):
and synthetics and petroleum by all sorts of things have
been altered chemically as a result of the fire and
exposed to the environment. And so there's going to be
a cleanup effort not left to individual homeowners, and it
could be limited or more extensive. We'll have to wait
and see exactly what the situation calls for. But the
(22:32):
very first thing is that the city will likely take
point on general cleanup. And then before you are allowed
to even get started with anything, then there are infrastructure concerns.
Infrastructure meaning not just your house being burnt to the ground,
but the neighborhood being affected. The heat of the flames,
the amount of water poured upon them and gotten into
(22:55):
certain systems, has likely affected roadwork, asphalt, It has affected
all the visible structures clearly. But the heat from the
fire has damaged power lines, water lines, gas sewer lines
running in. All of these things are going to have
to be pulled, tested, examined, repaired, replaced Before a single
(23:21):
home gets reburnt. It gets reburned, sorry, rebuilt in a
devastated neighborhood. In other words, imagine you've all driven by
home developments before, right, just regular home developments where a
developer is building a new neighborhood full of homes. You've
seen that for months. First there was grading and heavy
equipment out there moving soil around. Then there were streets
(23:45):
that got laid in, and underneath those streets were power
lines and gas service and electrical service to those new
homes that are about to be built. All of that
infrastructure has to be done before a single house individually
starts to be built in a new development. Well, here,
we've got all of that stuff in place, and yet
(24:06):
it's damaged. And if you can imagine the likelihood of
the city and all of the local power utilities jumping
in and getting it all reworked in the first few weeks,
you know that that's not the case. We have a
long wait ahead. While just the basic cleanup and infrastructure
(24:28):
gets rebuilt so that an individual home could potentially start
that process, and then there are questions that people have
about those individual homes. My home burnt to the ground, Okay,
my slab seems to be intact. Can I rebuild my
home on my old existing slab. I'm going to tell
(24:52):
you that chances are eighty percent no, and eighty percent no,
not because the concrete necessarily although concrete can be damaged
from high heat exposure, but it's not necessarily that. But again,
it's like I said out in the street, it's not
just the fact that the slab and the footings are
(25:13):
still intact. It's that there are plastic drain lines that
run underneath your slab that the heat has melted and affected.
There are electrical conduits potentially running underneath your slab that
have been affected. Now, if you look in any building
code post fire in La County, building code is no
(25:36):
exception to this. They'll say things like they may allow
a conduit that underneath a slab that has been through
a fire to remain in place and be reused, but
the conductors, the wires themselves, they have to be pulled.
They may have melted in place. There's all sorts of
trouble that fires cause below ground where we can't see it,
(26:01):
as well as above ground. So the likelihood of your
slab being kept no, And this is another one of
those areas where we make sure that that cost is
being reimbursed in terms of insurance because most of these
home slabs, most of these properties will have to be
scraped bare and started fresh and anew. And then if
(26:25):
you think that for a thousand homes that the local
building and Safety department is going to be able to
expedite and get those permits done quickly, you need to
have another thought about that because a lot of people
are under the the misunderstanding that well building safety will
(26:46):
just they'll push fast permits forward. If there's been a
little bit of damage to a house and it's a
minor non structural issue that needs to be paired, building
safety is happy to push those forward. But we're talking
about building a new home. The local department of Building
(27:07):
and Safety in charge of that is not going to
rush that process. It's going to be treated just like
a regular plan check and process for these new homes.
So understand the most the city could do is prioritize
your permit application over you know, somebody on the other
(27:32):
side of town who just wants to, you know, remodel
their house. Those may get put on hold to prioritize
permit applications when the time comes if it's a fire
devastated related rebuild. But they aren't going to speed up
the process of actually going through and making sure your
home is planned properly and is being built properly. That's
(27:55):
the facts, and so we have a long road ahead.
I wish I had better news for you, but that's
the truth of it. There's a long road ahead, and
we'll have to take it step by step. All right,
let's hear some news and then we'll come back and
wrap this all up for today.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Welcome home. We have come to the end of a weekend.
A lot of fire coverage this weekend, A lot of conversations,
none of it happy stuff, none of it positive. Hey, great,
you know, I hope you're having a great day kind
of stuff, but necessary, necessary conversation. So I hope that
(28:40):
they have been beneficial to you. I want to touch
on one last thing that I promised I would speak to.
It is not directly related to fire hardening your home,
but a lot more people on the outskirts of these
fires have experienced power outages, lots and lots of power
out and as a result have been left with you know,
(29:04):
susceptible too, Like when maybe you've got medical equipment and
things that need power to run. You know, power went out,
hasn't gone on for three days, and now all the
food in your fridge needs to be tossed out and
that kind of stuff, and a lot of questions. Every
time this happens, whether there's wildfire happening or not. Every
time an extended heavy Santa Ana windstorm starts knocking out power,
(29:29):
there's a run on generators. You know, home depots got
no generators today. You know that they ran out on Thursday,
and everybody in town who normally carries them. So a
quick note on emergency power. There are basically three approaches
to this that are running on the top of my
mind right now, and I'm just kind of riffing from
(29:51):
my experience on it. There are three approaches to it.
Number one, if you've got a solar system, then you
should consider or you may have solar backup batteries. It's
never a bad idea for that to be the case
because those are emergency power supplies when power goes down. Now,
(30:12):
different batteries, the amount of the energy they can provide
to the house, that's all something that has to be discussed.
The cool thing about solar backup batteries is that they
are being without fuel cost, being restored and recharged on
a daily basi as long as the sun is out
and on windy firestorm windstorm days, guess the sun is
(30:36):
out because if it was cloudy outside, there would be
that way because there's no wind all right, and chances
are your power hasn't gone down. So it's a good
thing to have or to consider a backup battery that's
tied into your solar system if you have solar plus
these days, the way that energy is measured and handled
(30:59):
in the state of California with your solar energy, a
smart backup battery is a great way to continue to
save the most amount of money and have your solar
system be as efficient as possible. So there you go,
solar and or solar powered or solar rechargeable generators or
backup batteries. The second way to go is to have
(31:23):
a whole house generator installed that runs off of natural gas.
Some are dual fueled, but most runoff of natural gas,
and they kick in immediately as soon as the power
goes down and are capable of powering most, if not all,
of most sized homes. That's the second way to go. Now,
(31:47):
it's an expense, it's less expense, about half the price
of getting a solar battery, but they don't recharge. They
are dependent on natural gas. But typically in everything except
maybe an earthquake scenario in southern California, at least the
natural gas supply to homes is strong and consistent, even
(32:10):
if the power company is shutting down power to be safe,
or that transformers are being blown over, and so on
and so forth. The final way to go, if you
don't have thousands and thousands of dollars to invest on
these systems, is simply a good quality, portable inverter style generator.
It's quiet. It can run either plugged into your house
(32:32):
through a transfer switch that you can have an electrician
rig for you, or you can simply run extension cords
into your home. I'll just tell you this. It is
a worthy investment to have a backup generator. A generator.
I prefer the ones that run off of propane because
it's safer to store, and they they run longer. Like
one canister of propane for one of my inverter generators
(32:56):
will run it at twenty five percent draw for like
thirty six hours, so they go a long ways and
they're easy to store. And the kind of generator I'm talking,
I've got like a twenty five hundred watt Champion generator
that's whisper quiet because it was actually designed for RVs
for camping. It's whisper quiet, twenty five hundred watts. It
(33:19):
can be linked together with another one to give five
thousand watts of emergency power, and it's like a six
hundred dollars generator, right, And it's not cheap, but it's
also not expensive in the long run. So these are
your areas of consideration. Just think it through.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
It's lovely to think, Hey, I've got this whole system
in place where as soon as the power goes out,
my house comes back on and I don't have to
think about a thing or alter the way I behave
at all. But you pay a mint. For that kind
of scenario, a small generator can literally get you through
and radically change your ability to either stay in the
(33:58):
house while the power is down or have to go elsewhere.
All the difference maker could be a small, portable generator.
So give it thought. All right, That's all I got
for today for y'all. Remember we're on social media. We're
there for you on Facebook, TikTok x, Instagram, Home with Dean.
(34:19):
The house Whisper podcast is everywhere your favorite podcasts are found,
and if your home is in need of some personal
house Whisper attention, you can book an in home design
consult with us at house Whisper dot Design. I'm hoping
that next weekend we can return to uplifting moving forward topics.
(34:39):
That's the plan we'll see because our first priority and
always priority, is to give you what you need at
the time that you need it. That being said, I'm
going to leave you with this thought today. These fires
remind us that it's hard to let go of things
(35:00):
that feel permanent. They also remind us that the things
that feel permanent and actuality aren't. So let me tell
you a little story. The small valley that I call
home was first settled by humans some twelve thousand years ago.
That was a time when mammoths and saber toothed cats
(35:23):
and giant cave bears and one hundred and fifty pound
four foot tall dire wolves very likely roamed through what
is now my backyard. It's hard to believe, but it's true.
The humans who settled this area came to be known
as the chew Mash or the bead Makers. They spread
(35:44):
their villages along the California coast from what is now
northern Los Angeles to more Obey. I live a short
walk from the site of a chew Mash village known
as Sapwee, which means house of deer. By the way,
if you live in this area, and even if you don't,
there are still some Chumash place names that you might recognize.
(36:06):
I bet you will, names like Napomo, Ohai, Pismo, Piru, Lompoc, Sadakoi, Somus,
see me, and yes, Malibu. For twelve thousand years, tens
of thousands of people were born and lived and died
(36:28):
where I drink my coffee. Twelve thousand years. That's four
hundred generations of joy and fear, pleasure and pain. Four
hundred generations of loving families and intimate friendships, the memories
of four hundred consecutive lifetimes, tens of thousands of lives.
(36:50):
And here's the thing. I'll never know a single one
of them, and they will never know me. They were
all gone long before I was born, and long before
I arrived here. Their settlements, their huts, are all gone
now and now my house is here. And this feels
quite permanent to me, this place, but I'm sure it
(37:12):
did to four hundred generations of Chumash and the mammoths
and the bears and the dire wolves. True. Also, the
truth is it won't be long before I am gone.
It won't be long before my house is gone. It
won't be long before all that remains of my life,
my friends and family, my entire generation, is nothing more
(37:35):
than a curiosity of history. There's a line from a
movie that I love, and it's true. It goes like this.
All these moments will be lost in time, like tears
in the rain. It's not a happy thought. It's hard
to let things go that seem permanent. It's even harder
to acknowledge that I am not permanent. So as someone
(38:00):
tearfully asked me earlier this week, Dean, what is the point.
The only answer I have for that question is, however
impermanent life may be, life is a miracle. Even if
there are billions of civilizations spread throughout the universe, life
is still incredibly rare, and you and I we have
(38:24):
it right now. It doesn't matter how long it lasts,
or if anyone will ever remember it. Life is miraculously rare,
and you and I, against all odds, are part of that.
Trouble sometimes comes, sometimes the things we count on, the
things that seem so permanent to us, Sometimes those things
(38:46):
burn to the ground. The trick is to hold it
all loosely, hold yourself loosely, and live the miracle that's
in your hands for as long as you are. We
are all my friends, sand castles, here one moment and
gone the next. That doesn't make this moment meaningless. It
(39:08):
makes this moment miraculous. It has meaning because it means
something to you, and it means something to me. And
that's enough. So don't miss the miracle, don't let the
moment pass, live it and use it to build yourself
a beautiful life. I hope that comforts you in some way. Today.
(39:33):
Take that thought with you this week, and we will
be right back here for you next weekend. This has
been Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper. Tune into
the live broadcast on KFI AM six forty every Saturday
morning from six to eight Pacific time, and every Sunday
morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime on
(39:53):
demand on the iHeartRadio app
Home with Dean Sharp News
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