I am so sorry that this happened to you. My husband used to live in the area, so we were watching the news and trying to determine which neighborhoods these fires were affecting. There is nothing anyone can say that makes any of what has happened to you and your family any better. Loss is loss, and it shouldn't be minimized. The only good thing, as far as I can see, is that you, your family and your pets are all alive and uninjured.
I honestly don't know which is worse; the floods or the fires. I live in Houston and we had an absolutely catastrophic flood here from Hurricane Harvey. I believe my neighborhood got 51 inches overall, but 47 inches came in less than 24 hours. I only got water in my studio; about 4 inches. I only lost cardboard and paper things that were still on the floor, and as I thought this could happen I had picked almost everything up. Of course, the sheetrock, insulation and wood trim had to be replaced a few feet up, but my inconvenience and damage was really minor. Two blocks from me is where the catastrophic flooding begins and goes on for a 1/2 a mile on either side of the bayou. These folks got 2 to 3 feet of water in their houses. The worst damage of all is near Addicks/Barker dams; they released water from those dams that flooded the surrounding neighborhoods for 11 days. It is safe to say that 100,000's of homes here flooded; the shear magnitude of the damage is overwhelming.
Unless something can be wiped down with fungicide, disinfectant and/or bleach, the water is so contaminated with sewage and environmental waste that it isn't recommended to keep it. So folks try desperately to clean up and salvage things that they often end up throwing away anyhow. I have driven through entire neighborhoods here with everything from inside the house piled up in mountains by the curb. You look at these mountains and know that these were folks' entire lives. We have had so many Chicken Little weathercasters that we have gotten in the habit of minimizing anything they say as they have overhyped and dramatized minor things too many times in the past. So almost all of these people were in their homes when this happened. I suppose they were like me with a plan to go in the attic with a hatchet if it got too high.
I know what you mean about the trauma. I went though a tornado/hail storm nearly 20 years ago and I still get panicky when the weather gets really bad. During this storm, watching the water come up to the door sill, subside, come up again, etc. was worrying, but not the same as the panic that came with the tornado. But it was like a war zone here for days after this flood; the National Guard and everyone else were flying over rescuing folks with helicopters in adjoining neighborhoods.
Fire seems cleaner in a way; you aren't trying to hold on to things that you can't or shouldn't. I helped one friend that lived by the dam that had water in the house for more than a week and was having to be ruthless with her and her things. The only thing that we really tried to salvage were her microscopes; the jury is still out on whether or not they can be reconditioned or repaired.
Insurance seems to pay out better for fire than it does for flood, perhaps because the government is running the flood program. I hope that you get enough of a payout from your insurer that you are able to replace most of what you lost. It's hard sometimes to remember that we are not our things, but a sum total of our experiences and the love that we have for people and that they have for us and that nothing can take that away. I hope you can get back to something near normalcy soon.
Debbie K