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this was the home of sally and Shane were both of them are accomplished artists and their, their work is shown in galleries and museums across the United States and in europe they lost a great deal of their art. Also, their records and photographs and all the

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relevant art documentation. One of their greatest challenges has been to document to their insurance company just precisely what their losses were. They do intend to rebuild. The really, really worst thing is that the insurance company has made it so difficult to um Well, first of all,

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we were under insured like everybody else, the costs in California have gone up skyrocketing and even since the fire even more so the cost per square foot of replacing anything near what you had is is out of out of whack, I guess you might say. So

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the insurance company is trying to say that it's all our fault that we didn't raise our insurance rates. And of course they know very well what the insurance world is like and what's happening in California. So we're we've we're trying to get at least a re

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buildable amount back from them, which is a fair amount, you know. Um But the other, the other problem is the personal property part of the thing, you'll probably hear about this a lot if you interview people with state farm insurance because they're not um they're niggling

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over pennies and dimes and making us go over every single object in our house and it's just very painful and unnecessary, as far as I could tell, you could see. We lost everything and we thought we were insured. So it's not fair. Other insurance companies have

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just given 100% of the personal property amount and state farmers saying no no no we won't do that. It's an odd story. Um I was at a wedding in Iowa and relatives wedding and I had gone home when the kids started dancing because I was there

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alone, Shane was here and the neighbor's son called me from UC Davis and said you know what's happening with my father I can't get him on the cell phone. And um I said why what's got and he said well there's a huge fire coming and I'm

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very worried and um I said fire oh my God and I had no idea. So I turned on the tv in my motel room and there it was fire over and over fire. Same huge walls of fire. I was in bed and sally rang me and

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she was in Iowa at a wedding and I was quite amazed and only rarely realized how bad it was when we that that next day the sun went down over the Golden Gate Bridge and it was sort of as though the world was coming to an

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end because there was so much smoke. It was extraordinary photograph and then coming up here seeing how people escaped by the skin of their teeth. That was another realizing how bad it was how fierce I was so relieved that he wasn't here. I didn't mention that.

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But our daughter lives on the east coast and he was actually at Sfo delivering her for a midnight flight because she'd been out here, she's a choreographer and she was working with a dance company in the city and so she had to take a red eye

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back and he just said I'm not gonna drive back up, I'm gonna stay in Oakland for the night after dropping her off at the airport. And that's why he wasn't here. He might have been here very easily. You know, working in the studio. Um the sadness

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I think of losing all that stuff and the sadness also of the burden on sally she I'm deaf now and a little bit scattered and she's been an incredible tare strength. So is the community to people have been very kind. The other day I was in

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a a store and I said, what's it like up here after the fire? And he said people are nicer. That was a thing. I was good, good comment. I think it's it's really interesting in a way to have everything wiped out, you know, all the memorabilia

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from your life um which you might cling to um in times of grief or sadness and so it's not there, you know, and what really matters is your life and then the future. So I think that's the main thing to concentrate on what what your values

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really are. No, it cuts it down to being a pretty simple proposition.