Help A CleanTechnica Brother (+ Family) Recover From Burned Down House

December 14th, 2017 by Zachary Shahan

You’ve probably heard that wildfires have been destroying Californian homes in recent weeks. If not, head on over to Google News and search california fires for more info.

If you’re a regular reader of CleanTechnica, you’ve surely read some great articles written by Kyle Field. For example, he has written many of the EV reviews on CleanTechnica, as well as a lot of other superb content. He’s also working behind the scenes to try to grow our partnerships, revenue, and potential for more and better content.

However, you haven’t seen him here on CleanTechnica for 10 days or so because … his house burned down. Sudden large wildfires swept through Ventura, California, where Kyle’s home was, and the good news is that Kyle and his family (wife and two sons) were able to quickly get out of the home safely. The bad news is that they didn’t have time to take much with them. Also, as noted above, their house — solar panels included — were turned into ash and burnt rubbish. (Pictures above and below. And if you are the super skeptical type, I can tell you that is indeed his house — I stayed there one night following the first Tesla Model 3 reveal.)

Yes, Kyle and family have insurance, which covers the bulk of the financial side of the loss, but they were still on the hook for $5,000 and Kyle hasn’t had the opportunity to do work that he’d normally do for CleanTechnica as a freelancer (and get paid for).

Someone set up a GoFundMe page to funnel some money Kyle’s way to help his family with the recovery. If you can lend a hand and donate some cash, I’m sure Kyle would appreciate it, and I imagine it would help to fuel an enthusiastic return to CleanTechnica once he and his family kind find a place to live in the coming year or so. (That’s quite a challenge since so many homes burned down and there are so many families now urgently looking for temporary homes in the region.)

Tags: California, fires, GoFundMe, Wildfires

About the Author

Zachary Shahan is tryin' to help society help itself (and other species) with the power of the word. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director and chief editor, but he's also the president of Important Media and the director/founder of EV Obsession and Solar Love. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, and Canada. Zach has long-term investments in TSLA, FSLR, SPWR, SEDG, & ABB — after years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in these particular companies and feels like they are good cleantech companies to invest in. But he offers no professional investment advice and would rather not be responsible for you losing money, so don't jump to conclusions.