David Brancaccio

Three months later, a new surprise, one both delightful and daunting.

Some neighbors asked for first names only for this so they could speak more freely with insurance and other financial matters in flux.

Louie does marketing for one of the cable and streaming TV channels, a man who could see he had a plot twist on his hands.

There's also a dog who might run outside and bring into the house soot containing who knows what.

Remember, this wasn't a forest fire that consumed natural wooden brush.

It was an urban fire where smoke contained, I don't know, SUVs and whatever else was piled up in people's garages and attics.

When the neighbors on my burned-out street gather occasionally in a local park for iced tea and tamales to try to hold each other in the light, we all agree that rebuilding after this fire is like being enrolled at gunpoint in a master's degree program in construction and insurance management.

For Louie and his wife, a shocking year that started with an urban fire driven by hurricane force winds becomes a new year with a bigger family.

The boy is great.

They all live in a rental two towns over.

But given all this, they've now sold their burned property at a price depressed by current conditions.

Insurance money helped pay off the mortgage, but the investment in the house they purchased in 2022 is no more.

The property to Louie's left has also sold, and a house mid-block that survived intact with the fire-bubbled stucco repainted sold just before Christmas for what Zillow calculates as 29 percent less than its pre-fire value.

At the same time, some happy fresh plywood is visible from my burned patch, but with an address one street over.

Erica is an executive producer in the television streaming world.

Right after the fire, she got producing with a contractor who previously built a den for her that became her favorite room in her old house.

Then just after Labor Day, her crew poured the foundation.

When I first visited just before Thanksgiving, her frame was up, including the subfloor and roof joists.

It was to the point her neighbors threw her a party to use magic markers to write hope and love tidings onto the bare wood.

Erica's strategy was to get moving, even with the all-out push for insurance money in progress.