Two very different activities were going on during 2009. In San Diego, thousands of people were entering their second year of recovery, while hundreds were dealing with their initial year in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Orange County.

San Diego County 
CARe continued it’s free disaster recovery services to hundreds of fire victims and their families in San Diego County through their second year of recovery by identifying and resolving unique recovery problems of the survivors through seminars, handouts and individual claim reviews. While the first year’s process provided success in volume traceable with numbers, this year’s mission was more about helping individuals.

In this second year, almost 200 individual claim reviews were conducted as well as over 50 site visits, hundreds of telephone assistance calls and 10 additional group meetings. In addition, funding provided us to additional outreach mechinisms which introduced over 75 new survivors to our services.

LA County
With the help of the caseworker provided by the California Community Foundation, we worked in conjunction with Los Angeles City councilman’s office, Richard Alarcon, and the Long Term Recovery Team to identify and resolve insurance settlement and Oakridge Mobile Park rebuilding issues. Through these avenues we helped over 80 families in LA County using group meetings, individual, one-on-one consultations as well as phone and email help as the case required.

While working with individuals we revealed the pattern of underinsurance and incorrect interpretation of policy language by the insurance company. The pattern came to the attention of the California Department of Insurance which resulted in an announcement of $46,000,000 in additional insurance funds for the benefit of most of the 360 residents in Oakridge Mobile Park community in Sylmar.

Santa Barbara and Orange County
Although funding was limited, we were still able to hold about a half dozen group meetings in these areas. Beyond that, homeowners were assisted on a one-on-one basis to help them work through their recovery issues. Using modern technology, many times we were able to communicate with homeowners from long distances which helped cut the costs associated with face-to-face contact.