Upwardly Mobile Magazine Feature - The First on the Block

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First on the block

IU NP V AE SN TD MOE UNTT A Southern California wildfire victim goes modular and beats his neighbors home.

First on the block

By ARNIE COOPER PHOTOS BY BRENT WINEBRENNER 2

U p wa r d l y

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igh in the hills over Santa Barbara sits the community of Mountain Drive, once an enclave of free-spirits famous for hot-tubbing and naked wine stomps during its heyday in the 1950’s and 1960’s. But beyond its storied past, the area is also ground zero for wildfire.

Thanks to an explosive combination of tinder dry chaparral and hot, moisture-sapping “sundowner” winds, even the slightest provocation can send a fire raging through the canyons in a matter of minutes.

This is precisely what happened back on November 13, 2008 after embers from an improperly extinguished bonfire at a nearby ruin known as the Tea Gardens encountered 70 mile per hour winds. It was just after 6pm when Gary Reisenweber, who was working downtown, received a call from his 17-year-old son Oliver.

“They’re asking me to evacuate. There’s a big fire up here. What do I do?” Oliver nervously asked his father.

“Then evacuate.” Reisenweber told him. “But before you do, grab the important papers underneath my desk. If you have time, check on [an elderly woman neighbor] then get out of there.”

Fortunately, the woman had already been safely whisked away and father and son soon met up at a friend’s house out of the Tea Fire’s reach. For several hours, the flames continued dancing around the foothills, finally quieting down after midnight.

Reisenweber tried to remain hopeful. His house, after all, had survived the Coyote Fire back in 1964. But the almost 2000-acre Tea Fire, which destroyed over 200 homes, was not as forgiving.

When Reisenweber sneaked back up to the property at 6 am—before the security detail had woken up—he stared wide-eyed into the pile of rubble where his three bedroom wooden home had stood for decades. “All I could see was a chimney standing there.”

Just ten months later, Reisenweber and I are chatting in his shiny, new kitchen, admiring the sweeping vistas of the Santa Barbara Channel Islands and surrounding mountains. And though, at this writing, the house was still being finished, Reisenweber’s choice to go modular made him the first on the block—the whole neighborhood really—to return home.

Craig Jensen, a Los Angeles-based contractor and Reisenweber’s friend, says that after a disaster hits, most people want to return to their normal life as quickly as possible.

“When you’ve lost everything and just want to get back, you don’t want to deal with a bunch of contractors and subcontractors,” Jensen says.

So with stick-built homes taking up to a year or longer to complete, a manufactured home provides the quickest and most affordable solution.

What’s more, thanks to the inherent precision of constructing a home in a factory, waste is limited, resulting in not only significant environmental benefits but also the ability to have a budget with fewer hidden surprises.

Good thing. Reisenweber, who was insured with Federal Insurance, a subsidiary of Chubb, learned the hard way that his policy didn’t cover wildfires, except those caused by volcanoes—none of which can be found in Santa Barbara. continued on page 47

The platform base of Reisenweber’s home at the Cavco Litchfield factory.

Within a short time, the home is ready to roll, with the help of the California Highway Patrol (opposite).

Negotiating one of the tight corners.

After careful placement (opposite), the home is now home.

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Says Reisenweber, “I inherited the policy from ex-owners so I figured they knew what they were doing and I never really read the whole thing.” This oftrepeated scenario is something to keep in mind when purchasing any insurance policy.

But the 67-year-old driving instructor wasn’t completely out of luck. The policy included a California Fair Plan extension, which yielded $138,000. Unfortunately, it fell far short of the amount necessary for replacing his modest 1300-square-foot home. Those million-dollar views come with a price—construction costs that would normally run $250 per square foot jump to $350 in hard to access locations like Reisenweber’s.

Luckily, Mr. Jensen came to the rescue. “He brought me to the computer and said, ‘Gary, look at all these Manufactured homes.’ I was like ‘Wow!’ Then I looked at the prices. ‘You gotta be kidding me!’ I told him.”

After exploring the many options, Reisenweber chose a three-bedroom, two-bath double-wide, with a great room and fireplace, built by Arizona-based Cavco Litchfield. (Reisenweber had the company remove one of the bedrooms so the living room could be expanded.) The home also includes a wildfire package that features fire-resistant siding plus double-paned windows with tempered glass on the exterior. And, although the 1213 square foot house is a little smaller than his original house, Reisenweber couldn’t be happier with its bargain basement price of just $89,000.

“It’s built with 2 by 6 instead of 2 by 4 construction so it’s really well put together,” Reisenweber says with a big smile. The city of Santa Barbara was also pleased; unlike some other locales, it was very open to the idea of using a manufactured home for a fire rebuild.

Not that there weren’t challenges. Beyond the 8-month permitting process (due in part to a delay by the fire department), delivery of the home (which came in two sections) required a police escort and some smooth talking by Jensen to convince neighbors that trimming some low hanging oaks was actually in their best interest.

The biggest test came at the hairpin turn that led to Reisenweber’s property. Because of the steep terrain, rails had to be built with 2 by 12 foot boards, so that a special remote-control tractor could inch each 24,000-pound section slowly onto the foundation.

“This is probably one of driver Edgar Smith’s more difficult moves, and he’s done it for fifteen years. It’s amazing what you can do,” say Jensen.

The process, which took two full days to complete, was even covered by the local media.

Says Reisenweber, “We were able to get a message across that people who are financially strapped could go this route. I’m the first to live in a new home in this particular neighborhood. See, this took less than two weeks to build. Everything worked like clockwork.”

[We will follow up on this home on our website once it is complete: www.umhmag.com —UM]

People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.

—R. Buckminster Fuller

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—Laura Ingalls Wilder

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