More than six years after the Woolsey Fire, the struggle to rebuild continues

Before this year’s Eaton and Palisades fires, the Woolsey Fire was L.A. County’s most destructive. Sparked by Southern California Edison power lines in 2018, it killed three people and burned more than 1,600 homes and businesses in L.A. and Ventura Counties.

Six and a half years later, fewer than 40% of the 488 homes in Malibu that burned have been fully rebuilt, according to city data.

One couple’s rebuild story

Scott and Jimy Tallal bought their dream home in Malibu in 2000 — a gorgeous, Spanish-style two-story house perched on a ridge in the Santa Monica Mountains. The house was old; it needed repairs. But it had good bones and a stunning view.

“ The neighborhood kids called it the Romeo and Juliet house,” said Scott.

“Because it had all the little balconies,” Jimy added.

Scott and Jimy Tallal's Malibu home burned in the 2018 Woolsey Fire. They bought it in 1998 and planned to retire there.

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The property was six acres and full of wildlife, which Jimy especially loved — deer, bobcats, foxes and the occasional mountain lion. She even started a wildlife rescue on their property, nursing orphaned baby squirrels and parrots found around town.

Jimy grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania. Scott in Dallas. For them both, it was a dream to settle in Southern California. Scott owned a small business doing surveys for TV stations and film studios, and founded the nonprofit Malibu Film Society. Jimy worked in human relations and as a local journalist for the Malibu Times.

“ We worked our whole lives for [the house],” said Scott. “Neither of us come from wealthy families.”

The house became home for 18 years.

Scott Tallal looks at photos of his former home that burned in the 2018 Woolsey Fire. Now he and his wife live in an upscale mobile home park in Malibu.

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 "Our plan was to live there until we went out feet first,” said Scott.

The Tallals knew the fire risk when they bought the house. They got insurance through the state’s FAIR plan, the insurer of last resort. They supplemented that with private insurance they thought also covered wildfire damage. They’d later learn it only covered damage from normal house fires.

Over the years, there were some close calls with fires. Still, to the Tallals, the risk was worth it.

In 2018, Scott was 64 and on the verge of retirement. Then came the Woolsey Fire.

A terrifying day

By 11 a.m. on Nov. 9, 2018, the sky was black with smoke. A 17-mile-wide fire front was marching toward Malibu. Some 300,000 people were put under evacuation order, including the Tallals.

They packed a week’s worth of clothes, grabbed computer hard drives and the dog. They took a few valuables, including Scott’s dad’s flute. Scott ran around the house taking photos of everything he could for insurance.

A photo of the inside of the Tallals' former home that burned in the Woolsey Fire in 2018. It's one of many photos Scott took just before evacuating.

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They couldn’t fit much in their small car. One of their biggest regrets ... leaving their photo albums.

“I was not really convinced our house was going to burn,” said Jimy.

As traffic backed up on Pacific Coast Highway, the intensity of the flames created what’s called a “firenado.” Scott and Jimy watched the gas dial go down on their car. They had to keep the windows up and the air on — Scott has a lung issue that makes smoke especially dangerous.

As flames advanced over the mountain, they considered getting out of the car and running for their lives. While they’ve recovered from the acute emotional trauma of that moment, it still returns to them.

It ended up taking them nearly five hours to get to Santa Monica, usually a 30-minute drive.

The next day, on a TV news report, they saw their house had been reduced to a smoldering ruin.

“We were devastated and in shock at the sight,” Jimy later wrote in an essay about the experience.

The Tallals learned their home burned down by seeing it on the local news.

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Picking up the pieces

The next day, the Tallals got past checkpoints to see what was left of the house themselves. There was only rubble.certified

Over the following weeks and months, they went to as many of the city and federal recovery centers and events as they could. They appreciated the donations of clothes and other essentials — Jimy couldn’t bring herself to go shopping. It felt more comforting somehow to go to donation centers launched by the community and with other survivors.

Scott and Jimy Tallal pose for a portrait in the rubble of their home. Their neighbor, Eric Myer, a photographer, took the photo.

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Eric Myer

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“Your friends and your family, they don't know what to say after a fire,” said Scott. “They always say, ‘Well, at least you weren't hurt or worse.’ And that's true. But they don't realize that the home you make is a tangible representation of your lives together. We're together now for almost 40 years.”

“We had inherited antiques from Scott's family, there was a baby grand piano, there was art, there were mementos of all our travels, and just our lives,” Jimy said. “I still think about some of those items today. Almost every day, things will remind me of something I don't have anymore.”

A small bird-shaped vase that was a gift from Jimy's mother survived the fire and now is displayed on a shelf in the Tallals' new home.

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They picked through the rubble to see what they could find. A small antique vase shaped like a bird that was a gift from Jimy’s mother.

 "The colors were much different before it went through the fire," Jimy said. "Now it reminds me that I didn't lose everything."

Another small ceramic antique that was long in Scott’s family. A few coffee mugs and dishes.

Gone was the piano that had been in Scott’s family for 80 years. Gone were the photo albums — pictures of their wedding, their trips abroad. Gone were the art pieces they’d collected from their travels. Gone were many precious gifts from friends.

They had to list all of it in the excruciating process of creating an inventory of every single thing they owned for their insurance claim.

A couple of weeks later, their neighbor, a professional photographer, took a photo of the rubble of their former home. That day, a rainbow stretched across the sky. The photo hangs on the wall of their new home today, an acknowledgement of the day that changed their lives forever.

The Tallals' neighbor, Eric Myer, took this panorama of the rubble of their home in 2018.

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Eric Meyer

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Roadblocks to rebuild

The Tallals couldn’t stay with friends or at hotels for long, and the longer they used insurance for temporary housing, the less money would be available for their rebuild. FEMA ended up giving them nothing — they later learned it may have been due to the Trump administration’s anti-California politics.

Despite their house being destroyed, they still had to pay their mortgage. They had no idea how they’d pay that plus sky-high rents without digging deeply into their retirement savings.

Luckily, a 90-year-old woman who lived nearby heard of their plight and said they could stay in her small guest apartment for free. They ended up staying there for four years as they attempted to rebuild.

Today, six and a half years after the Woolsey Fire, the Tallals' former house remains an empty dirt lot. Their former landscaper lives on the property in a trailer they bought for him. He makes sure weeds and grasses remain cut, per fire requirements.

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The city of Malibu waived permitting fees and other red tape to help speed up the recovery. They hosted events to help people find the resources they needed.

The Tallals went to these rebuild meetings hosted by the city and other government and local entities. The Tallals’ FAIR Plan insurance would cover up to $1.5 million. Their private insurance, it turned out, wouldn’t help them at all — they were not insured for wildfire losses, only typical house fire losses.

They joined a lawsuit against Southern California Edison, hoping the settlement would eventually make them whole for the rebuild. Three years later, they won the money, but federal income tax cut it down significantly (a law passed since exempts such settlements from federal income tax).

Jimy Tallal stands on the lot that was the site of her former home.

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The Tallals soon realized they’d never be able to afford to rebuild their house as it had been. The house was 30 years old and would require a new foundation to be up to new earthquake building codes. Fire officials told them they’d have to widen their driveway and install a water tank more than three times the size of their previous one to meet new fire codes. (In 2020, California passed a law requiring insurers to provide at least 10% additional coverage for new building code upgrades.)

Even with their insurance and settlement money, the Tallals ended up more than $1 million short of what they’d need to rebuild.

“We ended up getting 20 cents on the dollar of what we needed,” said Scott.

So they decided to go with the cheaper option of “pre-fabricated modular housing.” They thought they’d found a contractor they could trust. After they’d planned the house and paid the company, they were abruptly told the road to their property was too narrow and winding. The house couldn’t be delivered.

Instead of digging even deeper into their retirement savings, they realized they needed to give up on rebuilding at all.

Where the Tallals are now

In 2022, the Tallals bought a doublewide trailer in an upscale mobile home park in Malibu. They renovated it, installed solar panels and battery storage because there are frequent power outages in the area. State rebates helped cover the cost.

Their house still has a beautiful view of the ocean. They can see the hill their former home was on from the balcony. They moved in in 2023.

The mobile home where the Tallals now live.

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The Tallals still own the property where their former house was but say they’ll probably sell it eventually. Jimy estimates fewer than half of the homes in their former neighborhood have been rebuilt.

With all the costs, their retirement dreams are now deferred.

“I'll never retire now. I can't afford it,” said Scott. Both Scott and Jimy are now 70.

Scott and Jimy Tallal, with dog Enzo, are grateful to still live in Malibu.

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Their new home is fully insured through a mobile home policy that’s $2,100 a year, but they don’t own the lot, so if it burns down they may not have the choice to rebuild there.

When they had to evacuate again during the Palisades Fire, all of the trauma of the Woolsey Fire came rushing back. Now, more of their friends have lost their homes. The whole experience has led to “empathy overload,” Scott said.

Jimy Tallal shows a family heirloom that survived the Woolsey Fire. They keep some of the other items they managed to salvage in this cabinet.

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Things are forever different — they have a lot less space and miss the rural feel of their former home. Jimy especially misses the wildlife.

But, still, Malibu is home.

“There isn't a day that goes by that we don't appreciate how wonderful it is to live here,” said Scott.

Worse fire, more people affected

The conditions that set the stage for the Woolsey Fire — sparked by power lines after record drought, then driven by Santa Ana winds — is eerily similar to the conditions that drove the fires we just experienced.

Fire season is expanding in California, increasingly coinciding with the peak of Santa Ana wind season in the winter.

“I mean, yes, this has always been a wildfire ecology here, but climate change is just making it so much worse,” Jimy said.

Beyond the Woolsey Fire, the Tallals have experienced this firsthand. When they first moved in in 1998, their former house didn’t have air conditioning.

“The longer we were here, the hotter it would get, and we ended up having to put air conditioning in,” Jimy said. “It's definitely changing. ... I can see it, and it's happening in a very short period of time.”

And policy to help is struggling to keep up.

Jimy Tallal stands on the patio of her house that burned in the Woolsey Fire. That's all that remains of the structure after the fire and debris removal.

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Policy changes since Woolsey

A suite of laws were passed in 2020 to help wildfire survivors in the wake of increasingly devastating fires in recent years.

In 2023, Congress passed a law to exempt federal tax requirements in the case of wildfire settlements, which could help some victims recoup costs if it turns out the Eaton Fire was sparked by Southern California Edison equipment.

Since this year’s fires, lawmakers have introduced more legislation to help survivors, including removing the inventory requirement for insurance claims in the case of a total loss. Other legislation is being introduced to further help wildfire victims and lessons have been learned since Woolsey.

But the biggest issue is the insurance conundrum. Most wildfire victims remain underinsured or not insured at all, and insurers increasingly are refusing coverage in high-risk fire areas. Those areas are only expanding.

Additionally, the Trump administration’s tariffs are expected to raise the cost of the latest rebuild further.

Advice from the Tallals for fire survivors

The Tallals offered the following advice to the state’s newest fire survivors:

• Read your insurance policy closely. Don’t just trust your insurance agent to tell you what it covers.
• Don’t make big decisions quickly. Speak with as many experts as you can.
• Prepare for a longer-than-expected timeline. Start working on rebuild plans sooner rather than later.
• Be prepared to downsize.
• If you choose to join a lawsuit, make sure it is with an experienced lawyer with a background in wildfire lawsuits.