Volunteers Needed

Samantha and her husband Bob lived just outside of Santa Rosa in a mobile home park with their 2 children; he worked at a Sonoma County vineyard, while she worked at a small shop in town. When the Tubbs fire started, they had just enough time to grab the kids and the cat and jump into their van, and drive to a motel in a small town 20 miles away. Their mobile home was completely destroyed, as was the car Bob used to get to work. Over the days immediately following the evacuation, they learned that Bob’s vineyard also burned, and he no longer had a job. They couldn’t remember how much the insurance was on the mobile home (or even who the company was), and they really needed to find someplace to live. The bills kept arriving, though – rental of the pad on which the mobile home sat, Bob’s car. They applied for FEMA benefits, but were turned down, and weren’t sure why. Finally, at the Disaster Recovery Center in Santa Rosa, they met volunteer attorneys staffing a table with Legal Aid of Sonoma County. They got legal advice about their bills, and they signed up for a free clinic (with more volunteer attorneys) on how to file an appeal of the FEMA benefits denial. Later, they got help from a different set of volunteers who helped them understand their insurance issues, and get financial help to pay basic living expenses while they looked for a new place to live. Their lives were still hard, but the legal volunteers helped them start to move past the fire, and to begin the long process of recovery.