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user-inactivated  ·  2605 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: California wildfires kill 21 including elderly couple

Yea, it sucks. There are people talking about "disaster relief tourism" for Puerto Rico, an island that as of right now has only restored 9% of the power grid. It's a lovely idea, and on paper a great way to get the economy unfrozen, but the magnitude of what the destruction did to a modern society is simply too big to really comprehend.

For the record, my uncle did not fully move back into his house for almost five years. He had to fight the insurance to pay full replacement on his cars, he had to produce a ton of records on income and expenses (most of his paperwork was in the house after all) and It took 6 months to get the insurance appraisals and then another 4-6 months to get payouts and FEMA help. Then it took the city almost a year to repair the roads, water, electrical to the point where they could offer building permits. This was in the city of San Diego proper where the city put a committee together and expedited everything.