First, they lost their home insurance. Then, the LA fire burned their homes

Last year, Francis Vichetty said he learned that the annual cost of homeowner insurance purchased from Farmers Insurance for Pacific Palisades homes would soar from $4,500 to $18,000.

Nor was he able to sign up for the low-benefit California fair plan, as the 55-year-old private secretary said 10 trees around the roof line had to be cut down to lower the risk of fires that were too costly to manage.

So he decided to take a job called 'bare' where he didn't buy coverage for his home in the community's Elmedio neighborhood. He thought that if he water his home year-round, he would be protected enough because it was located south of Sunset Boulevard.

That was not the case. The home he lived in for nearly his entire life burned Tuesday, along with more than 10,000 other homes and structures damaged or destroyed in the worst fire event in Los Angeles history. Sixteen deaths have been confirmed across the county.

"It was surreal," he said. "I've been growing up here and there for 50 years. I've never experienced anything like this here."

Farmers Insurance declined to comment, saying it does not discuss individual policyholders.

"A train accident coming down the track."

As the only homeowner living in Pacific Palisades, Altadena or fire-prone hill areas, Vichetty struggled with sharp rising costs and many insurers' decision to reduce exposure to catastrophic wildfire damage by not renewing long-term customers' insurance. Many fire victims reported that insurers terminated their insurance last year.

The fire, which is expected to be one of the biggest natural disasters in U.S. history, has intensified the crisis in the U.S. housing insurance market, which was already reeling before the damage was done.

READ MORE: Winds lengthen fire risk, investigators investigate electric towers as cause of Eton fire

State Farm General, the state's largest home insurer, announced in March that it would not renew its 30,000 homeowners and condominium policies, including 1,626 in Pacific Palisades, when they expire.

Chubb and its subsidiaries stopped writing new policies for high-priced homes at high wildfire risk in 2021. Allstate stopped writing new policies in 2022, and Tokio Marine America Insurance and its subsidiary Trans Pacific Insurance withdrew from the state last year, but Mercury Insurance offered to gain customers.

Liberty Mutual was sued last month by a homeowner who accused the insurer of dropping him over false claims of mold on the roof.

"On the back of a desire to maximize profits, non-life insurers ... are on a troubling trend to abandon California homeowners' insurance policies like flies," a complaint filed in San Diego County Superior Court said. A spokesperson for Liberty Mutual declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The failure to secure coverage is reflected in the number of policies collected by FAIR Plan in California, which has about 452,000 policies as of September, up from just over 203,000 four years ago. About $6 billion in insurance is being claimed in Pacific Palisades alone, according to FAIR Plan's website.

READ MORE: Insurance Commission issues moratorium on cancellation of housing policy in fire zones

"The situation has been a train wreck down the track for a while," said Rick Dinger, president of Crescenta Valley Insurance, an independent brokerage in Glendale.

We don't have enough insurance money to rebuild

Peggy Holter spent decades working as a television journalist, traveling around the world, but there was one place she always came back from calling home: the Pacific Palisades condo, which she moved into on Jan. 1, 1978. After Tuesday's firestorm, everything changed when her condo burned down along with 36 other units in the Palisades Drive Complex.

Halter, 83, who retired only last year, is now facing uncertainty after the state farm said it did not renew individual condo insurance, citing roof conditions.

However, after losing the documents, I wasn't sure if my insurance was expired or when, and I haven't got a new carrier yet. It usually covers personal belongings and the inside of the unit, and offers benefits such as living expenses when the condo becomes unavailable.

"I'm not really good at taking care of things, but it was full of pictures, albums, and family photos from everywhere I've been. When I was 52, I had a picture of my mother riding a camel in front of a sphinx," Halter recalled. "The only thing I'm worried about is the future, because that's exactly what you have to do."

Her biggest question is whether she can rebuild. The Homeowners Association implemented FAIR Plan's master policy, which totaled only $20 million. If the complex is not rebuilt, it could only pay about $550,000 each, well below the $1 million it recently won in sales. The land could be sold to a developer.

Halter, who now lives with his son in Hollywood Hills, paid off his condo.

After the fire was extinguished, she returned to the complex to take a closer look at the damage. There was nothing left in the unit, but the complex's koi pond and fish survived.

State Farm declined to comment on the non-renewable in a recent statement: "Our top priority at the moment is the safety of our customers, agents and employees affected by the fire and helping our customers in the midst of this tragedy."

'We don't deal with anything in California.'

Matt Knight considers himself lucky: He and his family could have lost everything in the Eton fire, just like Vissette and Halter in the Palisades.

The problem began last year when Safeco Insurance received a notice from him that the insurance policy at his Sonoma Drive home in Altadena, where he lives with his wife and three children, would not be renewed because of a tree hanging in his garage, he said.

The 45-year-old Covina Elementary School teacher said he faithfully trimmed the tree, but was also told the ivy growing in the garage was a problem. He said he was told to fix the damaged stucco after removing it, and he had to paint the house and replace his old roof in the process. But he said he still couldn't get insurance after spending $30,000 on repairs.

A spokesperson for Safeco, a subsidiary of Liberty Mutual, said the carrier does not comment on individual policyholders.

"So we'd go around companies and say, 'No, California doesn't guarantee anything.' Some people said, 'We don't have a new policy.' Some people said, 'No, we don't do 91001,' and we thought, 'That's crazy.'

A day before it expired last summer, Knight said he was finally able to get similar coverage with Aegis. However, in a rush to implement it, the home he has lived in for 16 years failed to get insurance under $300,000, which is likely to fail to pay for reconstruction. The home is valued at $1.13 million in Zillow.

When the power outage began on Tuesday evening due to the ferocious winds that caused the Eton fire, Knight decided to take the children to their parents' homes on the other side of Altadena, where they could do their homework. There, he hugged a mountain near what appeared to be a wire and saw the fire start on the street.

"We were occupying the hillside in a matter of minutes. It was incredible," he said.

His parents' house on Roosevelt Avenue came out of ruins, and he drove away to check on the house overnight. By 6 a.m., he had joined the landlord brigade to put out the flames on Sonoma Drive. "The whole neighborhood was holding hoses and putting out the fire," he said.

In the late afternoon, he told both the homeowner and the firefighter that he and his neighbors had to pack up and leave. He was sure he would lose his home, but the wind died down.

"I think it was the ultimate luck," he said, but the other neighbors were not very lucky.

Vietti wasn't lucky either.

On Tuesday, Vicheti stayed behind to continue building his home - grass, roof, rafters and walls - as fires began to burn on the hill and all the Palisades' neighbors began to pack their cars.

"I thought everything would be relatively safe," he said. "I kept standing to protect my house with water."

Gradually, he changed and started to pack his guitar, tax papers, property certificates, and computer hard drives. He left his computer at home with an amplifier, music equipment, and tools.

By 5 p.m., his entire street had become a ghost town. By then, Vichetty had already been watering his house several times. It was dust and smoke, and his voice in his head said it was time to go to him. "I'll be back tomorrow," he thought. "I don't want to burden the car."

Read more: All the wildfires currently burning in California

It didn't work out like that.

Vichetty was driving near Palisades High School when he saw a house on a street corner start to burn. He then hit black smoke while trying to get to El Medio Avenue, and flames soared on both sides of the car. He started to panic and realized he couldn't get through.

After arriving at my sister's house in Mar Vista, I learned from a neighbor that all the houses in the neighborhood had been leveled.

Vichetty said the siblings lost family memorabilia and photos, and thousands of dollars worth of tools and instruments. They also spent nearly $4,000 on renovating their homes to rent some rooms.

Vicheti and his family joined the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Disaster Relief Fund and are working to help clear their property, which they said could cost at least $10,000.

"I was preparing for this," he said of the one-man firefighting effort. "That was the last hurrah."

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This story was originally published in the Los Angeles Times.