By Darin Dusan

The Marshall Fire swept through Boulder County, Colorado, on December 30, 2021, consuming nearly 1,100 homes in a matter of hours. The speed and ferocity of the blaze left families with minutes to evacuate, clutching whatever they could carry as flames destroyed their physical homes, their sense of security, their financial stability, and their capacity to envision the future. Watching the smoke plume from Denver, our team knew that hundreds of families would face a reality that defies comprehension: the complete erasure of their physical home and, with it, the dissolution of the spatial framework that organized their daily lives. Three years later, wildfires raged through Southern California and devastated the communities of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, and we are once again confronted with the reality that natural disasters destroy buildings and fundamentally alter the cognitive and emotional landscape of grieving survivors who must somehow navigate the complex process of rebuilding.

The Architecture of Normative Decision-Making

Under typical circumstances, the process of building or buying a home follows a relatively predictable cognitive pathway. Prospective homeowners engage in what psychologists and behavioral economists refer to as "rational choice theory." They gather information, weigh alternatives, assess costs and benefits, and make decisions aligned with their values and financial capacity. The prefrontal cortex, the brain's executive function center, operates efficiently to evaluate options, anticipate future needs, and integrate complex variables into coherent plans. They can mentally time-travel, imagining themselves five or ten years hence, considering how their family might grow, how their work situations might evolve, how their bodies might age. 

This normative decision-making process unfolds across several stages. First comes the research phase, where individuals explore possibilities, visit model homes, interview builders, and develop preferences. Next, they enter a comparative analysis stage, evaluating different approaches, materials, and designs against criteria like budget, timeline, aesthetics, and energy performance. Finally, they move into commitment and execution, making sequential decisions with reasonable confidence, adjusting as needed when unexpected challenges arise. 

Throughout this process, cognitive resources remain largely intact. Working memory functions normally, allowing individuals to hold multiple considerations in mind simultaneously. Emotional regulation enables people to manage the stress inherent in large financial commitments without becoming overwhelmed. The capacity for future-oriented thinking remains robust, supporting long-term planning and delayed gratification. Trust in systems and professionals develops naturally through positive interactions and transparent communication.

How Trauma Disrupts Decision-Making

Trauma fundamentally disrupts this cognitive architecture. When a wildfire, hurricane, or tornado destroys a home, it typically occurs with little warning, creating what trauma specialists call a "discrete traumatic event." When someone experiences this kind of event—watching their home burn, evacuating with minutes to spare, losing their possessions and the physical container of their memories and identity—the brain's threat-detection systems become hyperactivated, while executive function capabilities become compromised. The psychological aftermath involves a complex constellation of symptoms that can directly affect the cognitive functions necessary for rebuilding decisions. 

The neurobiology here is straightforward but profound. Post-traumatic stress doesn't manifest merely as flashbacks and nightmares. It fundamentally alters brain function. The amygdala, responsible for threat detection, becomes hyperactive, maintaining a state of heightened vigilance that diverts cognitive resources away from executive function. The hippocampus, which contextualizes memories and helps distinguish past from present, shows measurable volume reduction in trauma survivors. Most critically, the prefrontal cortex, the very region needed for complex decision-making, exhibits reduced activity and connectivity.

Cognitive load becomes unbearable. A person who has lost their home must simultaneously navigate insurance claims, temporary housing, work disruptions, family stress, financial uncertainty, and the actual rebuilding process. Each decision tree branches into overwhelming complexity. Should they rebuild in the same location or relocate? What building methodology offers the best protection against future disasters? How can they afford upgrades when insurance settlements fall short? The working memory capacity needed to hold all these variables can sometimes exceed what a traumatized brain can manage.

Trust becomes profoundly compromised. When your home, your sanctuary, proves vulnerable, when evacuation warnings come too late, and when insurance processes feel adversarial, the fundamental belief in protective systems erodes. This distrust extends to the building process itself. Many Marshall Fire survivors expressed intense skepticism about contractor promises, building codes, and even their own judgment. They'd trusted their homes to protect them once, and that trust was catastrophically violated.

Time perception distorts under trauma. Some survivors experience a desperate urgency, needing to rebuild immediately to restore normalcy. Others feel frozen, unable to envision a future in the same location where they experienced such loss. Still others oscillate between these states, making progress one week and withdrawing the next. The patience required for thoughtful design and quality construction conflicts with the emotional need for resolution.

One of our Marshall Fire rebuilds in Boulder County was for Karim and Sharon Amirfathi. They recounted how the stress stayed with them and re-emerged long after they had come to terms with their loss. They carried on with their lives, but the impact of trauma was still there, bubbling beneath the surface. “There is definitely post-traumatic stress,” says Sharon Amirfathi. “A year after the fire, when there was another small fire up in the canyon, I was at work, saw the smoke and totally panicked. I completely lost it and didn’t realize how close to the surface that panic was.”

The Financial-Emotional Compound Fracture

The situation becomes exponentially more complex when we consider that natural disasters not only destroy homes but also destabilize entire financial ecosystems. Insurance processes are labyrinthine and frequently adversarial. Homeowners discover that their coverage is inadequate for actual replacement costs, especially in an inflationary construction market. They're simultaneously negotiating with insurance adjusters, securing temporary housing, managing displacement-related expenses, and trying to make decisions about rebuilding–all while processing grief and trauma.

Many affected by both the Marshall Fire and the fires in Southern California faced (or are still facing) "underinsurance" gaps of $300,000 to $1,000,000 or more. They have had to decide whether to rebuild at all, whether to build smaller, whether to relocate entirely—all decisions with profound life implications, made while cognitively impaired by trauma and financially destabilized. The stress of these converging pressures creates what we began to think of as a compound fracture: the psychological injury of trauma is worsened by the material injury of financial precarity, each exacerbating the other.

In this context, every building decision carries disproportionate emotional weight. A choice about window specifications is also a referendum on whether they'll ever feel safe again, whether they can trust their judgment, and whether they're being foolish or wise with limited resources. The stakes feel impossibly high because, in a real sense, they are.

Trauma-Informed Building Practice

Working with rebuild clients has taught us that conventional building practices, which assume a cognitively normative client operating under normal circumstances, fail when applied to post-disaster reconstruction. We've had to develop what Paige Bower, one of our co-founders, has referred to as "trauma-informed building," an approach that acknowledges and accommodates the reality of our clients' situations.

The first principle is recognizing trauma's prevalence and impact. Every homeowner rebuilding after a disaster should be assumed to be experiencing some degree of traumatic stress. This isn't pathologizing; it's simply acknowledging the normal human response to abnormal circumstances. When our company began working with Marshall Fire survivors, we restructured our entire client engagement process around this assumption. 

We implemented what we call "cognitive load reduction" in our consultations. Rather than overwhelming clients with every decision simultaneously, we broke the process into manageable phases with clear, limited choices at each stage, especially early in the process. We are not limiting client agency; we’re protecting their cognitive resources for the decisions that truly matter to them. 

Next, we built extensive redundancy into communication. We confirmed decisions in multiple formats, including verbal, written, and visual. We sent summary emails after meetings. We didn't assume that information conveyed once had been retained. This isn't inefficiency, but a necessary accommodation for trauma-impaired memory consolidation. We never expressed frustration when clients needed to revisit decisions or when they changed their minds. We recognized this as part of the recovery process, not indecisiveness. 

We cultivated trustworthiness through consistency and follow-through. We returned calls within the promised timeframe, even when we didn't yet have answers. We admitted uncertainties rather than offering false reassurances. We connected clients with previous customers who had rebuilt after the fire, creating peer support networks. We recognized that rebuilding trust after a disaster is a gradual process requiring dozens of small, reliable interactions. 

Perhaps most importantly, we prioritized collaboration and empowerment over sales efficiency. Traditional building sales emphasize closing deals and moving projects forward. We maintain extraordinary patience with process ambivalence and revision. Trauma impairs decision-making confidence. Clients second-guess themselves, change their minds, and need to revisit settled questions. Under conventional business models, this would be inefficient and frustrating. In trauma-informed practice, it's expected and accommodated. We build a buffer into timelines specifically to allow for this reality.

The Passive House Advantage in Post-Fire Rebuilding

This is where Passive House principles become both technically advantageous and psychologically meaningful, especially for wildfire survivors. The Passive House standard requires meticulous attention to the building envelope: continuous insulation, airtight construction, and high-performance windows. These are more than energy-efficiency measures; for someone who has watched their home burn, they represent tangible protection.

When working with Marshall Fire clients, we found that they weren't necessarily interested in abstract discussions of R-values or ACH50 metrics, but they listened intently when we discussed how Passive House exterior assemblies resist ember penetration, how triple-pane windows provide barriers against radiant heat, and how mechanical ventilation with filtration can maintain indoor air quality even when outdoor air is hazardous. Rather than empty optimism or therapeutic placebo, this approach delivers functional protection, backed by building science, that also happens to address psychological need.

Sharon and Karim Amirfathi had a few false starts and looked at many options before eventually settling on Joubert Homes as designer and builder. Their Passive House rebuild is currently in the final stages, and they will have moved in before the publication of this article. “Building back better really resonated with us. We didn’t want to rebuild the same thing again,” says homeowner Sharon Amirfathi. “Passive House just made sense. We wanted better energy efficiency, and with winds and fires becoming more frequent, we needed a house that would last.”

California's Turn: Lessons Applied

As we are now working with clients affected by the recent Southern California wildfires—particularly in Altadena, where entire neighborhoods were consumed—we're seeing the same psychological patterns emerge. The acute trauma is fresh; the cognitive impairment is pronounced. Clients are simultaneously dealing with insurance companies, navigating FEMA processes, managing displacement, and trying to make decisions about whether and how to rebuild.

Southern California's housing crisis, along with the uncertainty of tariffs on commodities, add layers of complexity that were not as prevalent in Colorado. Many Altadena residents face the pressures of rebuilding, including the challenges of navigating local regulations, community design standards, home insurance issues, and a construction market stretched beyond capacity. The trauma-informed approach becomes even more critical when systemic stressors compound individual trauma.

We're also seeing community-level dynamics that we observed after the Marshall Fire: the need for collective organizing, the importance of shared information, and how trauma can either fragment or cohere a community, depending on how the rebuilding process unfolds. We've been working with Altadena residents to develop shared rebuilding strategies, to create forums for information-sharing, and to help prevent the isolation that can make trauma recovery so much more difficult.

The trauma-informed approaches we developed in Colorado are directly applicable in Southern California. The need to reduce decision complexity, to provide organizational structure, to communicate with redundancy, to honor the emotional dimensions of technical choices—all of this remains essential. The specific relevance of Passive House resilience is, if anything, even more pronounced in California, where wildfire risk is understood to be increasing and where homeowners are acutely aware that rebuilding to status quo code minimum standards may simply restore vulnerability rather than creating safety. Passive House offers a pathway to rebuild something genuinely more resilient, a psychologically meaningful distinction for those grappling with whether rebuilding in place makes sense at all.

Beyond Building: What This Teaches Us

Trauma-informed building has implications that extend beyond disaster reconstruction. It reveals how much conventional business practice assumes a kind of cognitive and emotional stability that is simply not universal. Life disrupted by disaster is sometimes more visible en masse, but it can also be upended by illness, loss, divorce, job displacement, or any of the myriad ways that life can overwhelm our capacity to cope.

The construction industry has tremendous power to either support or undermine disaster recovery. Predatory contractors who exploit vulnerable survivors, insurance-restoration companies that prioritize speed over quality, and building approaches that simply replicate the vulnerability to disaster all contribute to secondary traumatization. Conversely, builders who embrace trauma-informed practices, who prioritize genuine resilience, and who recognize their role in community recovery become partners in healing.

The Marshall Fire taught Joubert Homes that building methodology matters for energy performance and structural integrity, but also for psychological recovery. It also demonstrates that technical excellence in building—energy efficiency, durability, resilience—cannot be separated from the human context in which buildings are conceived, designed, and constructed. The process matters as much as the product.

As natural disasters become increasingly frequent, more builders will find themselves working with traumatized populations. The question is whether our industry will rise to meet this reality with the sophistication and compassion it demands. Trauma-informed building isn't optional or charitable. It's essential practice for an era when disaster survivors represent a growing proportion of our clients. The trauma-informed strategies we've developed are practical adjustments: reducing decision complexity, building communication redundancy into our processes, accommodating schedule flexibility, recognizing when clients need information repeated without judgment, maintaining consistency in every interaction. When combined with resilient building methodologies like Passive House, these practices create a framework where clients can make informed decisions about genuinely protective construction features. That's what it means to build better in a post-disaster context. Get those fundamentals right, and everything else follows.