In the wake of the 2003 southern California wildfires, we served hundreds of families and insurance adjusters. The fires occurred in our community; our home office is located in San Diego. We hope that through the communication of our observations, we all will be better prepared to assist families in handling large-scale devastation.

At DMA Insurance Housing Assistants, our housing coordinators work with displaced families on a daily basis. While we are well versed in attending to the details of relocating families, we do not profess to understand the individual feelings of each family member. We have found that people react differently and it is important for us to be compassionate and empathetic, and to understand that everyone's situation is different.

This was especially true handling relocations at the time of the wildfires. A number of the families we worked with had lost not only their residences, but loved ones as well. We knew that the best way to make an impact was to facilitate the process of finding housing for these families in order to help them resume some semblance of normalcy in their lives.