00:00:20.630 - 00:00:36.860

larry and Judith Carlin lived in the Fountain Grove neighborhood of santa rosa. They were practically neighbors to their daughter, jennifer rosset and her husband paul and their two boys the night of the fire. Both families fled and found refuge at the Finley center. Both families had

00:00:36.860 - 00:01:15.810

lost their homes literally and I know this is strange because the house is supposedly for walls. I've often felt like I needed to apologize to the house dumb but because I've always felt when maybe not so much in the early apartments when we were first married

00:01:15.810 - 00:01:31.880

and moving every couple of years, but the places we stayed in longer as we got further along that there was always a chemistry that you picked up when you went into a house or an apartment that it was right for you that you could live there.

00:01:32.430 - 00:01:52.380

And I had that the minute I walked into the door with that house with the Malibu house and I know it's in adamant but so be it. We had survived six fires, 66 or seven evacuations in Malibu over 25 years. We were, we were, our hope

00:01:52.380 - 00:02:16.530

wasn't gonna burn down. That was pretty pretty much it. And then and then jen my daughter who lived uh above us, somebody had, I think somebody had text uh texted her a picture of her house and like at 1 30 or so in the morning, two

00:02:16.530 - 00:02:31.990

o'clock, she knew her house, you know, I was checking my phone for our alarm system because I wanted this, I knew my alarm system could take pictures and I was taking trying to take photos of the house and I looked up at my husband and he

00:02:31.990 - 00:02:49.990

was all of a sudden he literally turned white and he was holding his phone. It said alarm triggered motion detector and then it went off again and I got seven or eight in or out, bing, bing, bing, bing. Uh it was glass break, that's the message,

00:02:49.990 - 00:03:07.260

glass break, family room, glass break, kitchen, glass break, dining room, uh motion detected front door. And I was like, oh my God, my house is dying. And he's going like, like this like now now and I run over to him and it took three minutes from

00:03:07.260 - 00:03:19.750

the point that started to the point there's like power, the panel failed and it was gone and I was desperately trying to get a photo to take but nothing didn't do it. But I could see it just moved through the house and just stop when the

00:03:19.750 - 00:03:44.680

panel melted. I suppose that's when it felt real. I was like, oh ship our house is gone. I was too naive to really know what was going to be ahead. This is hopefully a once in a lifetime experience and I didn't see any further than where

00:03:44.680 - 00:04:04.140

we were going to stay and making sure that we had some clothes on our backs. I mean you have nothing. So you need everything and that is really time consuming and really preoccupying and there were these mad shopping expeditions to bed bath and beyond in Costco

00:04:04.660 - 00:04:24.530

and target and throwing stuff into, you know the carts. There's a lot of stuff in the beginning. That's actually a really good distraction that prevents you from sort of sitting in the corner and rocking, you know, whatever I bought I was gonna wear and live with

00:04:24.840 - 00:04:43.150

and um it's really only been recently that I actually went out because it's been six months and some of what I got was like you were grabbing stuff that looked like it would fit you. And like now we're settled, my parents are settled were settled and

00:04:43.150 - 00:05:00.820

now there's this kind of long road ahead of us of rebuilding and all of the ups and downs that come with that and right, we just passed the six month mark and there was a lot of information that came out about how at six months it

00:05:00.820 - 00:05:18.870

can get really, really hard emotionally. And at the time I was like, huh? That's interesting. And now I'm like deep in it. I mean I feel like I'm in a really rough place. Um, and there aren't the distractions kind of life has resumed its new normal

00:05:18.880 - 00:05:40.980

pace for now. It's like the reality of the whole thing sets in and I think you realize the magnitude the enormity of what you've gone through and what you're still facing. I mean will the insurance money cover the rebuild. Um, I don't know when we're gonna

00:05:40.980 - 00:06:03.890

have the answer to that. I mean on the plus side we have the builder and we have the plans. It just kind of is an unknown. That's very scary because if you don't have the money to rebuild, the housing that's available is crazily priced and we're

00:06:03.900 - 00:06:30.630

basically retired. It's just our older son did didn't exhibit a lot of behavioral symptoms or anything after the fire. Our younger one did. It was really really hard for him. Are older one seemed like he was okay until this last week when his behavior was questionable

00:06:30.640 - 00:06:48.350

and instead of just kind of reacting to him, I asked him if he was okay, he's nine. And I asked, I said are you ok? What? You know how are you doing? And he just broke down sobbing and said I'm sad about the fire, I'm sad

00:06:48.350 - 00:07:02.790

that our house is gone, I just want my life back and I think that's kind of how we all feel like we're in this limbo. We know we're not going to be in it forever but you just want your life back