GeorgiaDuck and I have a friend who's home burned down to ashes on Tuesday morning. Lost virtually everything including pets. Went to work early, got a message that there was a fire and raced home to find out he couldn't get up the hill to his house. Its all gone.
He bought the house 10-12 years ago. It sits right on the canyon in PP with a view to Malibu on the right and beautiful view to the East toward the UCLA area. His location is right in the middle of the most severe damage. They had big plans for the house. It wasn't a tear down at all, but they wanted to knock down some walls and put wall to wall disappearing glass sliders on the back of the house on both floors so they could enjoy open air living. One problem: The permit office told them they were backlogged for 8-12 months. They were upset, lived in the house and waited. They got started and got to an inspection point. They were told the inspector was backlogged 2 months. They were upset but lived in the house with naked walls made of 2x6's and no dry wall. It came to plumbing and electrical and the inspectors took more than a month each to come inspect. Final inspection took weeks. They went to install a sprinkler system and the CA equivalent of the EPA required money to do some sort of environmental impact. That took months. What should have taken 6 months at most, took over 2.5 years to complete.
Imagine what the rat run government is going to do to those that want to re-build. It will take years upon years and tons of red tape. If I were them I would run as fast as I could, just get the fuck out of there.