Valerie Chan is one of the thousands who lost their homes to the fires of Pallisade. She lived in Bluff with sea vision. She called it “Dream House.”
“You just feel peaceful. Not now,” you know,” she said. She was walking through ashes and shards.
Chang moved to her Pallisard home in 2018 and rebuilt her home in 2020 in hopes that she would survive the fire or at least endure the worst damage. She was built with a steel frame, a sprinkler system and fire safe windows. On January 7th, when she saw the flames moving towards her house, she said she wasn’t too worried.
“The question was, ‘How bad is it?'” Chang remembered asking herself. She said she was sure the firefighters would put out the flames before they arrived in her neighborhood, and thought her home was ready.
She barely evacuated.
When Chang returned to check the status of her home, she saw it standing.
“I remember feeling a glimpse of excitement. Ah, my house still seems to be there,” she said.
But the frame was still there and nothing else.
“My house was standing, the steel frame was still there after the fire, but due to the point of failure, the house burned from within,” Chan said.
She explained, the windows were fire safe, but there was a problem with how they were sealed – the fire entered through the window. “It’s not just the window, it’s the actual seal you have to worry about. The sprinkler system didn’t work because there was no water.”
Chan can recycle and reuse many of the remaining materials, like steel and stone. And the foundations of her home are still intact. She has some new design ideas in mind for this reconstruction.
“There’s probably a concrete floor. It’s on the roof of the house, it’s on the roll bar and shutters,” Chang listed.
She works with Marija Volkman, a licensed architect and owner of Archicraft Studios. She advises people to get permission now before the agency gets flooded.
“There are a lot of scams out there. There were a lot of scams before,” Volkman said. “People are saddened with their homes. They are not ready. They don’t know what to do. They don’t know what they need, they have surveyors, soil engineers, GCs, architects, expeditors, structural engineers, lots of them!”
So Volkmann said he had created a guide to rebuilding it.
“We’re trying to provide a manual so that people can get all the information in one place, see how much work this is and decide what they want to do,” Volkman explained. She offers a free guide to affected homeowners. She said it was a way to give back her favor and help people navigate what can feel like a difficult journey.
Titled “A practical guide to rebuilding your home after the 2025 wildfire,” Volkman said homeowners can access the guide by emailing Rebuildla@archicraft.co.
“We are committed to keeping ourselves up to date by receiving feedback from our partners and receiving feedback from work in our ongoing fields.”
Meanwhile, as Chang begins to rebuild, she encourages others to maintain hope.
“Pallisard is a strong community and there are many people who have plans to come back and come back, so look at the future.”
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