California Wildfire Survivor Who Watched His ‘House Burn’ Uses Experience To Help L.A. Victims Navigate Rebuilding Their Lives

The fires that continue to burn in Los Angeles are bringing back frightening memories for Mike Yurochko—but he’s using that experience to help victims who have lost everything.

His Sonoma County home in Northern California was severely damaged by the Kincade fire of 2019, but he wasn’t home to try to save it.

“We were out of town visiting my daughter up in college,” Yurochko exclusively tells Realtor.com®. “We got sent a video, a live broadcast by a vlogger on the ground that was following firemen. And so the first sort of visuals that we got was watching our house burn, and the firemen actually fighting the fire.”

Yurochko learned firefighters were able to save the main house, which suffered heavy smoke damage, but adjacent structures, including a guest house, were destroyed.

In the weeks to follow, his family’s nightmare continued.

“We got a call from the Sheriff’s Department. The sheriff was on site in the house itself, and gave us the news that we were vandalized and looted,” Yurochko recalls. “Basically, the looters had moved in for a good three days, by best guesstimate, and had parked a moving van inside of the garage and looted the place, and not just furniture and housewares, but they were pulling copper, electrical fixtures, plumbing fixtures, etc.”

Those moments, compounded with the fire, started their journey to the unknown of what it takes to rebuild one’s life—apart from the memories lost and a physical structure reduced to rubble, the monumental task of paperwork, calls, permits, and waiting, among many other obstacles, in the years to come.

Yurochko explained the fire damage and the looting required different insurance claims.

“Each claim on its own was very complicated, and then the confluence of both of them together, where the way insurance companies are structured, they actually are managed through very different departments, how they were different states, the teams that I was dealing with really created a very complicated situation, organizationally, and of course, you have the whole emotional thing sitting on top.”

Yurochko, a tech creator and Stanford grad, turned his energy to helping others by creating a resource to help people navigate the aftermath of surviving a fire. Loti was an idea years in the making, but it launched right before the Jan. 7 fires started.

“We had an emergency meeting, and I’m like, ‘We’ve got to help these folks. We’ve got to get this thing out there,'” says Yurochko right after the fires broke out. “Literally, in the middle of that meeting, I got connected to a victim immediately, that very morning. She’s just in tears, lost everything, wonderful woman. And it was just like this is no longer a PowerPoint, what we’ve been working on for years. This, this is it. This is how we help people.”

Guide to navigating wildfire damage

Yurochko created Loti as a place to find answers during an overwhelming time. The free platform offers content in three phases: Early Steps, Recovery, and Life 2.0.

“I just believe every customer can basically rise out of the muck and be reborn and better stronger than before. So rebuild faster, recover stronger. That’s sort of our mantra,” says Yurochko.

Their goal is to help fire victims or victims of a disaster take control of their lives.

A “Recovery Roadmap” guides users on what to expect at each step, as early as the evacuation process. The interactive site even has a glossary of terms so people feel empowered when they’re faced with legal documents or claim forms.

It was designed by industry experts who understand firsthand what it means to be a fire victim.

“We’re just trying to get this information into victims’ hands. There’s no money, there’s no services, none of that stuff. It’s just get the word out.”

As the L.A. wildfires continue to burn, Cal Fire reports more than 40,000 acres have been scorched and at least 12,300 structures destroyed. The L.A. County Medical Examiner confirms 27 deaths.

Fire season

The Kincade fire started on Oct. 23, 2019, in Sonoma County, CA. It burned for 13 days and destroyed nearly 78,000 acres, with 434 structures destroyed or damaged. No deaths were attributed to the fire, but more than 186,000 people were evacuated from their homes.

Pacific Gas and Electric was hit with a $125 million penalty for starting the blaze that investigators with the California Public Utilities Commission said was caused when a worn jumper cable installed in 1973 snapped from a transmission tower.

Meanwhile, scientists at the University of California, Irvine, explained in a climate change report that the “annual burn season has lengthened in the past two decades and that the yearly peak has shifted from August to July.”

The findings stated, “From 1920 to 1999, California’s only hot spot with ‘very high wildfire density’ was Los Angeles County. In the past 20 years, that designation has expanded greatly in Southern California to include Ventura County, and portions of Riverside, San Diego and San Bernardino Counties.”

For Yurochko, who hailed from New Jersey before setting down roots in Northern California for over 26 years, has no plans on leaving his beloved state.

“California is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and we love it here,” says Yurochko. “We want to actively help fellow victims navigate disasters like these, so we can all recover stronger together and help rebuild our community for everyone to enjoy.”

Realtor.com is partnering with the REALTORS® Relief Foundation to raise funds to support victims of the January 2025 Southern California wildfires. The foundation provides urgent housing-related assistance to homeowners affected by disasters.