But identifying the ignition source is only part of the story. What the county’s investigation fails to address is a far more pressing question — who in local government is truly responsible for keeping Altadena safe?

The findings don’t explain why so many residents say they received little to no fire preparedness information beforehand. They don’t clarify why emergency alerts failed to reach countless households before flames arrived, how public safety resources were deployed in those critical first 24 hours, or why response efforts were hampered by outdated protocols, murky lines of authority, thin staffing and communication systems that couldn’t talk to one another.

For most Californians, local governance is a partnership between city hall and the county. But Altadena has no city hall. Los Angeles County is its only government.

The community’s town council, though elected, holds no actual municipal power — it can only offer the county advice. Instead, the Board of Supervisors effectively functions as Altadena’s city council, and the supervisor representing the area serves as its “mayor” in name, if not in dedicated attention, given that the position also oversees dozens of other unincorporated communities.

This isn’t a matter of a tiny outpost slipping through bureaucratic cracks. Before the fire, Altadena was home to nearly 43,000 people spread across more than 8.4 square miles — larger in population than 47 of Los Angeles County’s incorporated cities, and bigger in land area than 53 of them.

Yet the responsibility for serving this substantial community is scattered among numerous county departments: the Fire Department, the Sheriff’s Department, the Office of Emergency Management, Public Works, the Chief Executive Office and the supervisor’s office. When responsibility is spread that thin, accountability becomes nearly impossible to pin down after a disaster. If there were failures in service, the public deserves to know which officials and agencies should own them.

I didn’t come to this issue only as a researcher. I lived through the fire alongside my neighbors. My family evacuated, and we suffered damage to both our home and our business. In the weeks that followed, I spent countless hours helping coordinate aid and listening to survivors describe what they experienced.

That experience led our firm to conduct a pro bono study — called ARISE — surveying 1,228 Altadena residents. The results were striking: roughly three out of four households said they received no fire preparedness outreach from the county in the year leading up to the disaster. Fewer than 8% of people who evacuated reported seeing firefighters during their escape.

These accounts, drawn directly from residents, paint a picture of a county government that felt distant and disconnected both before and during the emergency.

The county’s own after-action review acknowledged real problems — outdated and inconsistent policies, confusion over who had authority to act, staffing shortages, insufficient training, weak situational awareness and communication breakdowns. But that review wasn’t designed to assign blame or investigate wrongdoing. Its conclusion that there was “no single point of failure” should not be confused with a conclusion that government didn’t fail. For survivors trying to make decisions about rebuilding their lives, that distinction offers little comfort.

Accountability isn’t a competition with only one winner. The fact that Edison’s equipment sparked the fire doesn’t absolve the county of its responsibilities around preparedness, warning systems, evacuation procedures, emergency response and recovery efforts.

Holding Los Angeles County to account doesn’t mean ignoring the extreme weather conditions that fueled the fire, nor does it mean second-guessing split-second decisions made by first responders in the field. What it does mean is asking whether the county’s agencies were adequately prepared, properly led, and equipped to deliver the services Altadena residents pay for through their taxes — services that, unlike in incorporated cities, come without direct municipal representation.

Currently, the state auditor is reviewing how the Eaton and Palisades fires were prevented and handled, while the state attorney general is looking into possible civil rights violations. That’s a start, but it’s not enough.

The Legislature’s Joint Legislative Audit Committee should launch a broader investigation into how the county spent money and delivered services in Altadena before, during and after the fire. That inquiry should compare Altadena’s preparedness, warning systems, staffing levels, deployment strategies and emergency response to those of similarly sized incorporated cities facing comparable wildfire risk — drawing on spending records, dispatch logs, internal communications and firsthand testimony from residents. The goal should be determining whether Altadena’s unincorporated status left it more vulnerable, both in terms of service and in terms of who is held responsible when things go wrong.

Altadenans deserve more than a report. They deserve an apology and an honest reckoning from Los Angeles County — one that discloses everything the county is legally able to share, acknowledges plainly where its systems broke down, and lays out how the harm done will be addressed.

No resident of an unincorporated community like Altadena should ever again have to dig through organizational charts and hazard mitigation plans just to figure out who is supposed to be keeping them safe.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Did Altadena’s Unincorporated Status Contribute to Safety Failures During the Eaton Fire? appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Two companion bills now sitting on the governor’s desk aim to answer a question that has plagued thousands of Southern California households since January 2025: When is it actually safe to move back home?

The Eaton and Palisades fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures and burned for nearly a month, sending up a toxic haze of burning trees, brush, plastics, metals and other manufactured materials. According to the state Insurance Department, more than 13,000 of the roughly 40,000 claims filed after the fires involved smoke damage rather than total loss.

Nearly two years later, many residents whose homes survived the flames still haven’t moved back in. They describe walking into houses that reek of smoke, coated in ash, soot and char, while they wait — often for months — on test results for lead, asbestos and other contaminants. Getting insurers to pay for cleanup and repairs has, for many, become its own ordeal. Survivors, remediation experts and even insurance representatives have all pointed to the same root problem: there simply are no statewide rules spelling out what constitutes safe, adequate smoke-damage remediation.

Assembly Bill 1642, authored by Assemblymember John Harabedian, a Pasadena Democrat, is designed to close that gap. Harabedian said the measure would establish “a first-in-the-nation standard for testing and remediation” — essentially, clear rules for identifying contamination and fixing it.

The bill works hand-in-hand with Assembly Bill 1795, written by Assemblymember Mike Gipson, a Gardena Democrat, which would require insurance companies to actually follow those new standards once they’re in place. Neither bill can become law without the other, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has until the end of the month to decide on both.

“We were hearing from survivors that they weren’t getting a fair shake from their insurance companies,” Harabedian said. “Kudos to survivor groups that worked with us on this. We hope others don’t have to go through what they went through.”

The two measures are part of a broader package of post-fire legislation aimed at insurance companies, whose handling of smoke-damage claims has drawn scrutiny from regulators and become the subject of lawsuits. State Farm, which covers roughly one-fifth of California’s property insurance market, and the state’s insurer-of-last-resort, the FAIR Plan, have both been accused by the Insurance Department of delaying and denying legitimate smoke-damage claims.

Last week, Los Angeles County sued State Farm, alleging unfair business practices in how it processed claims stemming from the 2025 fires. The lawsuit leaned heavily on findings from the Insurance Department’s own investigation, which found the company had denied or discouraged customers from seeking environmental testing and refused to reimburse policyholders who paid for testing themselves. The county also alleged that for homes still standing, State Farm often sent contractors who used cleaning methods that were inadequate — and in some cases unsafe.

State Farm spokesperson Sevag Sarkissian said the company “strongly disagrees” with the county’s characterization of its claims handling.

Kareem Ali’s home in Altadena is one of the few left standing on his cul-de-sac. But he and his wife still haven’t been able to live there. Since August, they’ve been staying in a donated RV parked on their property.

State Farm covered temporary housing for the couple from January 2025 through this past April, when the insurer stopped reimbursing them for an $8,000-a-month one-bedroom rental — one the company itself had recommended. Ali stopped paying rent after that, and three months’ worth is now overdue.

When it came to testing their smoke-damaged home, State Farm denied Ali’s request for environmental testing, so he and his wife paid $3,000 for it themselves. The insurer wouldn’t reimburse them and has since delayed or denied several cleanup claims — a process complicated, Ali said, by the fact that at least six or seven different adjusters have been assigned to their case over time.

“Every time we got some sort of momentum on our claim, they’d randomly switch,” he said.

Ali said the couple eventually spent through the money State Farm had provided for personal belongings, hiring contractors on their own to clean the home, remove insulation and replace carpeting. When they told the insurer more work was needed but they had run out of funds, the company denied the claim, he said. All the while, they’ve kept paying their monthly premiums. Ali said he’s asked their adjuster directly: “What are we paying for if we’re not going to get coverage?”

Elisa Jacobs Nixon and her family are in a similar bind. Months of disputes with State Farm over smoke-damage testing and cleanup have kept them out of their Altadena home as well.

Nixon paid $6,000 out of pocket for environmental testing in May 2025, results the insurer initially ignored. Her public adjuster — a private professional hired to advocate for policyholders during claims — suggested getting a contractor’s estimate based on those findings. That approach worked: within days, State Farm sent its own industrial hygienist to inspect the property, Nixon said.

Both her original report and the insurer’s follow-up testing turned up similar results, including elevated levels of several contaminants. The more recent test also detected asbestos.

Though her family remains displaced, Nixon said things finally appear to be moving in the right direction.

“This has completely hijacked my life, my kids’ lives, it’s just taken over everything,” she said. “That’s why these parameters (in the bills) are so important. My hope is this will spread across the U.S. and help disaster survivors everywhere.”

Under Harabedian’s bill, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control would be required to develop testing, repair and removal standards for lead and asbestos by the end of 2028, followed by standards for other contaminants — including heavy metals, cyanide and lithium — by the end of 2029.

Gipson’s bill would create a legal presumption that ash, soot, char or other combustion byproducts found in a standing home after a wildfire count as wildfire-related smoke damage for insurance purposes. It would also require insurers to inspect affected properties within 30 days of a claim, cover the cost of testing needed to restore homes to their pre-fire condition, and continue paying for temporary housing until repairs are complete.

Not everyone is on board. Karen Collins, a vice president at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association who also sits on the state’s smoke claims and remediation task force, said the industry remains “technically opposed to the bills.” While she acknowledged the legislation lays out a framework, she argued that any resulting regulations should “remain grounded in science.”

Public adjuster Brian Haden shares some of that skepticism, saying the bills are short on specifics and could end up being used as leverage by both survivors and insurers alike. He predicts litigation will remain the primary way disputes get resolved and questions whether the Insurance Department will have the teeth to enforce the new rules.

Jane Lawton Potelle, founder and executive director of Eaton Fire Residents United — whose data helped shape Harabedian’s bill — agrees the legislation won’t resolve every enforcement question. She also noted the new standards won’t take effect soon enough to help her or many current survivors directly. Still, she believes the mere fact that standards are coming could influence ongoing lawsuits and settlement negotiations.

“Insurers are relying on people not to know information,” she said. “I want people to know how to protect themselves and stop being afraid. Living in a contaminated home can make you sick. And it can devalue your property.”

Lawmakers also passed several other bills this session targeting insurer conduct more broadly, addressing complaints about payment delays and the practice of cycling multiple adjusters through a single claim.

Senate Bill 876 would require insurers to assign policyholders a single point of contact within 30 days of filing a claim, and to provide written notice any time a third adjuster is brought onto a case within a six-month span. It also mandates that insurers submit detailed disaster response plans to the Insurance Department by April 1, 2028, updated every two years or whenever the insurance commissioner requests it.

Senate Bill 877 would require insurers to include all preliminary and final calculations of loss amounts, covered damages and repair costs in claims documents provided to policyholders within 15 days of a request.

Senate Bill 878 would require insurers to pay out the cash value of a destroyed property within 30 days of it being declared a total loss, followed by the remaining replacement cost within 30 days of receiving the necessary documentation. Insurers that miss those deadlines would owe accrued interest on the amount owed.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California May Become First State to Set Smoke Damage Standards for Homes appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Four days before the celebration, the Palisades fire destroyed the house. The couple packed what they could, put their children in the car and left California for Tennessee, where they moved in with family because they had nowhere else to go.

Their home was gone. So was their older son’s preschool, along with the library, restaurants and everyday places that had anchored their family’s life. What remained was a mortgage on a property that no longer existed — and a rebuilding process they say experts have told them could take at least two to four years.

Jonas and Fagnani, who later co-founded Disaster Mortgage Relief, are now among the California fire survivors urging lawmakers to extend mortgage protections for homeowners whose properties were destroyed in major wildfires.

The couple’s advocacy centers on Assembly Bill 1847, a proposal that would expand and strengthen protections created under last year’s emergency fire mortgage relief law, AB 238. That earlier law gave homeowners whose properties burned up to 12 months of mortgage forbearance.

Jonas and Fagnani argue that one year is not enough for families trying to rebuild in areas such as Pacific Palisades and Altadena, where fire recovery has been slowed by debris removal, utility restoration, insurance disputes, permit approvals, contractor shortages and rising construction costs.

Through Disaster Mortgage Relief, the couple says they have heard from hundreds of families trying to understand what mortgage servicers are required to do, how forbearance affects credit and what happens when the relief period ends.

As those forbearance periods begin expiring, they say some homeowners who were current on their loans before the January 2025 fire are seeing steep drops in their credit scores. Others are facing the possibility of foreclosure or large balloon payments, in some cases exceeding $100,000, while they are still trying to finance construction.

The California Bankers Association has raised concerns that AB 1847 could restrict access to credit. Jonas and Fagnani say they understand lenders need stability and clear rules, but argue that the larger risk is a wave of borrower defaults, damaged credit and stalled rebuilding in fire-damaged neighborhoods.

Supporters of the measure say the bill would not erase mortgage debt or eliminate lender rights. Instead, it would allow payments to be deferred during the rebuilding period and moved to the end of the loan.

Jonas and Fagnani point to the federal CARES Act during the COVID-19 pandemic, which provided up to 360 days of relief for borrowers with federally backed mortgages, as an example of a large-scale forbearance system that was workable.

For families who lost homes, they say, the ability to redirect two or three years of principal and interest payments toward construction could determine whether they rebuild or leave their communities permanently.

The couple remains in Tennessee and says they are trying to save enough money to rebuild the home they lost.

Their message to lawmakers is that California’s mortgage and disaster recovery systems must reflect the reality of modern wildfires: entire neighborhoods can be destroyed at once, and families can be displaced for years before they are able to return.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Our house burned down but our mortgage didn’t. California fire survivors need time appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Southern California Edison — the utility that owns the decommissioned power line that may have started the fire — made a sweeping offer on Wednesday to pay families affected by the blaze hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in compensation.

The Eaton fire ravaged Altadena, an idyllic foothill community northeast of downtown Los Angeles, killing 19 people, destroying thousands of homes and damaging thousands more. Although state fire investigators have not officially determined the cause, evidence suggests that the utility’s equipment played a key role.

The company on Wednesday launched its program to compensate victims for rebuilding costs, lost rental income, physical injuries and other economic damages. Altadena residents are also eligible for other payouts for “non-economic losses,” such as pain and suffering and emotional distress, depending on their circumstances. Each adult resident of a house that burned down, for instance, is eligible to receive $115,000 and each child is eligible for $75,000. A surviving spouse of someone who died in the fire is eligible for $2 million.

Survivors have until Nov. 30, 2026, to decide whether to take the utility up on its offer — and forfeit the right to sue — or to hold out for a legal settlement that could be larger but take years to be resolved.

It is a calculation that more Californians could face in the future, as climate change causes utility-sparked wildfires to burn hotter and more quickly out of control.

For each family, the equation is different.

“There have been a lot of people, like lawyers, who are like, ‘I’m going to help you take Edison for everything you can get, like, let’s drag them through the mud,’” said Lauren Randolph, 40, whose home was destroyed in the blaze. “But there’s just so many things to consider, once this is in its final form: Do we take this to get the money sooner? Or do we wait to try to get more? But how much more, in theory, would we actually get, and is that actually meaningful and worth it?”

Ms. Randolph and her husband bought their house in West Altadena in 2018, while she was pregnant with her older daughter, and they poured some $150,000 and countless hours into renovating it.

Then, on the evening of Jan. 7, they debated for hours whether to leave, although they hadn’t been ordered to evacuate.

They eventually went to Ms. Randolph’s mother’s house. When the couple returned, only their side gate was left standing. They only recognized it because they had painted it in rainbow colors for their daughter’s fifth birthday.

For months, whether to take the utility’s money has been a subject of conversation at coffee shops, in WhatsApp groups and among lawyers and their clients.

Southern California Edison leaders announced in July that they were planning a program to compensate wildfire survivors. They said they had enlisted the help of Kenneth R. Feinberg and Camille S. Biros, who were known for designing compensation programs for people directly affected by the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion. This is, Ms. Biros said later, their first time working on a program for survivors of a wildfire.

Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s biggest utility, has paid out billions through similar settlements. A fund to compensate victims of wildfires sparked by its equipment, including the 2018 Camp fire, has paid out $13.7 billion so far, according to a website that tracks its progress.

No compensation fund has been set up for the January Palisades fire, which investigators have not linked to any utility.

In late September, Southern California Edison company hosted community meetings online and in Altadena to gather feedback on its plans. On a Monday night, fire survivors who had been scattered across the region packed into a park gymnasium to hear from company representatives and voice their concerns. Many older survivors brought their adult children or other relatives.

Under the plan, victims would be paid according to the level of damage their home had sustained: destroyed, partially destroyed or damaged by smoke. Survivors could pick from two options: A fast pay option, where they would receive an offer within 90 days of submitting their claim, but with a less detailed review, or a slower option, where they would have to wait for a deeper examination of their losses that could take up to nine months. A fast pay offer would not be reduced by insurance claims, but a detailed review offer would be offset by insurance coverage. Every offer for someone represented by a lawyer would include an extra 10 percent to help cover attorney’s fees.

Utility officials emphasized that the program was voluntary: Survivors could file claims and assess their offer, with no obligation to take it.

People attending the meeting peppered company representatives with questions, which were transcribed in marker on giant sheets of paper: What about a collection of sports memorabilia that was lost? Would West Altadena residents be paid more because of the lack of warning about the fire? What if family members disagreed about whether they wanted to accept the settlement or continue with a lawsuit? The company didn’t have immediate answers.

Some of the survivors said later that they were wary about giving too many details of their cases to the utility; their lawyers had warned them that any information they provided at the meetings could be used against them.

On Wednesday, Southern California Edison released the final details of the program and opened the claims process.

Pedro J. Pizarro, the president and chief executive of Southern California Edison’s parent company, Edison International, said that changes to the initial proposal had been made in response to feedback, including expanding the number of people who could apply for the program and eliminating some documentation requirements.

The total number of eligible parties, which includes households and businesses, is about 18,000, he said.

Company executives have said that the compensation program is not an admission of guilt, and they have not been held liable in court for the fire.

Nevertheless, Mr. Pizarro said that the company has recognized there is “concerning circumstantial evidence” that its equipment sparked the fire, and that “there isn’t another probable cause.” He has warned investors that the company is likely to face losses as a result. Already, the utility has been sued many times over the fire.

“Every month that goes by, you might have more displacement for people who have been impacted, more escalation in construction costs — it just keeps adding up for the victims, as well as for the company,” he said. “For most victims, a standardized program can lead to a fair outcome in very short order, and it really is about having a sense of urgency to get that cash flowing into the community.”

Still, some lawyers and advocates for survivors said that they saw the program as a disingenuous attempt by Southern California Edison to reduce its liability. They said the company would rather boost profits for its executives and shareholders than spend money to mitigate the risk of its equipment starting fires in the first place.

And the size of the compensation offers has signaled to some lawyers that the company knows it could be forced to pay much more in court.

“In almost every case, it’s pennies on the dollar of what we likely — though there’s not certainty — we’ll be able to recover otherwise,” said Kipp Mueller, a lawyer who is representing fire victims.

Angela Giacchetti, one of Mr. Mueller’s clients, initially believed her family had been lucky: Their house was one of few in their neighborhood that was left standing after the Eaton fire roared through.

But she said she quickly learned that dealing with smoke damage is its own nightmare. The roof of the house, built in the 1940s, needed to be replaced. Initial attempts to clean the house left behind a lingering stench. Ms. Giacchetti, 37, her husband and her now 18-month-old son have moved every few weeks or months, as insurance payments have slowed.

She said the cost of fixing her home has been multiple times what Southern California Edison would likely offer her through the program. And the fact that the non-economic damage payments for children were less than for adults was an insult, she said.

“It was like a second grief,” she said. “You could see the dollar amounts these corporations put on our health and well-being.”

Zella Knight, whose family left Mississippi for West Altadena in the Jim Crow era, when she was a young child, said she feared that no amount of compensation would preserve a once thriving Black community whose vulnerable elders were displaced by the fire. Many of those people, she said, may not be able to afford to wait for a possible larger payout down the line, unlike wealthier recent arrivals.

Ms. Knight, 62, said her intellectually disabled brother had continued living in their childhood home, after their parents died. The house was destroyed in the fire, disrupting his routines and care. He died in August. Now, she and her other siblings are deciding whether to sell the property.

“We have lost our extended family, we’ve lost our comfort zones, we’ve lost those mechanisms that build upon generational wealth,” she said. “Nothing can really compensate for that.”

But, she said, the settlements could be a start.

The post L.A. Fire Victims Face a Choice: Take a Settlement or Hold Out for More appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.