Purchase a used motor home or trailer, and keep the wheels on so it is temporary and not needing a permit, and live in it while the yard gets cleaned up, then plan on the new digs. With eased restrictions, likley will nt take years to approve the new building. Might consier hitting up the mortage holder for a loa, as their collateral also improves.
The irony is these very hot fires incinerate everything on site including anything that might have been toxic, so the chances of finding any remaining toxic waste are very low. But here's the Nervous Nellie Pantywaist Liberal writing at the "Los Angeles Public Press" on toxic waste at burn sites:
Environmental health experts have a clear message to Angelenos returning to the blackened remains of their homes and businesses: protect yourself from harmful toxins in the ash and air.Copper pipes are toxic? The same copper pipes that we get our drinking water from?“Burn sites can be a kind of toxic waste dump,” said Chris Field, the Perry L. McCarty director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “Even treasured possessions can become dangerous after they’ve been through a fire.”
While typical wildfires eat up natural undergrowth, urban fires tear through manmade materials with all sorts of dangerous and often carcinogenic substances. Think transformers containing PCBs. Typical household items containing heavy metals like lead. Copper piping. Building materials with asbestos. Electrical wires coated in toxic polyvinyl chloride. Cars with lithium-ion batteries. Furniture full of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and other household products made with volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
In the "Author is an uninformed idiot" category, he wrote "Think transformers containing PCBs." He is just shooting from the hip, dredging that up from the cobwebs of his mind.
In 1979, EPA banned the manufacture, processing, and distribution of PCBs under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The ban allowed for the continued use of PCBs in existing electrical equipment, such as transformers, until the end of their useful life.
TSCA was passed FORTY SIX years ago. Most utilities have had programs for years to either replace the entire transformer or refill it with non-toxic fluid. The EPA database of PCB filled transformers shows no such transformers in California.