Roya Lavasani spent nearly 30 years building a home and business for her family on a Malibu street just off the Pacific Coast Highway. She and her husband, Majid Amirani, owned a four-unit condo, living in one unit and renting out the other three furnished spaces for a total of about $150,000 a year.

The building had a shock of pink flowers outside the entrance, orchids potted inside and out, and a mix of fruiting trees around the property, including apple, loquat, nectarine, peach, and avocado surrounding the building that Ms. Lavasani was known to climb and prune.

Years of careful attention and consistent income were lost last week when the Palisades fire burned down their property. The fire, now among the most destructive in California history, was one of multiple blazes that have swept through communities across Los Angeles County over the past week, putting nearly 200,000 people under evacuation orders.

Many other residents have chosen to leave, chased out by the ash-clogged air or the fear that their homes, even beyond the evacuation zones, were no longer safe. Each evacuee had to make a calculation, weighing physical safety with the financial hits that can come with leaving — and potentially losing — a home.

Some losses are incalculable. For Ms. Lavasani, it’s the photo albums of her two daughters, Xena and Rezvon, both now grown, that she mourns the most. She had hoped to save them as the fire drew nearer.

“I was so scared of losing those memories,” Ms. Lavasani, 57, said. “All memories — gone.”

Tricia Wachtendorf, director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, said researchers think of the financial costs of evacuating a disaster in three buckets. First, before disaster strikes, there’s the preparation phase of getting supplies together. Then, the immediate needs of restocking necessities while being displaced and dealing with potential disruptions to work and income. Finally, there’s the long-term costs that come with recovery — big things like relocating or replacing a houseful of furniture.