After talking to residents about the plan it released in July, Edison said it decided to expand the area of homes that are eligible for compensation for smoke damage.

“Expanding the eligibility area is one of the most significant updates made as a result of feedback,” said Pedro Pizarro, the chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company. “The number of qualified properties nearly doubled for those with damage from smoke, soot or ash.”

The utility also increased the amount of compensation it is offering for some victims. For example, each child in a family that lost its home will be eligible to receive $75,000 for pain and suffering, up from $50,000 in the initial plan.

To receive payments under the utility’s Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program, families must agree to drop any lawsuits they filed against the utility for the Jan. 7 fire.

The program also is open to businesses that lost revenues and renters who lost property. And it covers those who suffered physical injuries or had family members who died.

Edison is launching the victim compensation program even though government fire investigators have not released their report on the cause of the fire. The inferno swept through Altadena, destroying 9,400 homes and other structures and killing 19 people.

Videos captured the fire igniting under a century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon that Edison had not used since 1971, and Pizarro has said a leading theory is that the line somehow re-energized and ignited the blaze. Edison said in a federal securities filing this week that “absent additional evidence, SCE believes that it is likely that its equipment could be found to have been associated with the ignition.”

In documents detailing its final compensation plan, the utility included the example of a family of four with a 1,500-square-foot home that was destroyed. The family would receive $900,000 to rebuild, $360,000 for personal property, $140,000 for loss of use and $380,000 for pain and suffering. It also would receive a $200,000 “direct claim premium” for agreeing to settle outside of court.

That total of $1,980,000 is then reduced by the family’s $1 million of insurance coverage, according to the company’s example.

On Thursday, state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena) sent a letter to Edison saying she was concerned about how the utility was requiring victims to waive their future legal rights in order to get compensation. And she called on Edison to provide immediate housing assistance to fire victims.

“Having acknowledged its potential role in starting the Eaton Fire, Edison must do everything within its power to prioritize the needs of survivors and make this commitment a core part of its corporate duty,” she wrote to Pizarro. “This means ensuring fire victims can recover and rebuild their lives with the support they are owed.”

Edison expects to be reimbursed for most or all of the payments it makes to victims by a $21-billion state wildfire fund that Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers created in 2019 to shield utilities from bankruptcy. Administrators of the wildfire fund told members of the state Catastrophe Response Council this week that they expect Eaton fire claims “to be in the tens of billions of dollars.”

In September, Newsom signed a bill that will bolster the money available by another $18 billion for future wildfires. Under that bill, Edison is allowed to raise electric rates for any Eaton fire costs that exceed the original $21-billion fund.

Some Eaton fire survivors told the council, which oversees the wildfire fund, that Edison’s program fails to fully cover damages suffered by victims. Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, recently sent the council a report detailing where her group found shortfalls. For example, Chen said, Edison is deducting a homeowner’s full insurance coverage from the compensation amounts even if the insurer has reimbursed the family for only part of that amount.

“Nine months after Edison’s negligence shattered our lives, the toll is clear,” the group’s report states. “Many have drained retirement savings, maxed out credit cards, or watched marriages and health deteriorate under the strain. “

“You destroyed our homes, lives and community,” the report says of Edison. “Fix what you broke. “

Chen’s group joined with Perez in calling for Edison to provide emergency housing assistance for victims.

Edison said its program is designed “to help the community recover and rebuild faster.” The utility said a report by RAND, the non-profit research group it hired to assess the compensation plan, determined the payment amounts “used modern statistical methods and in our judgment were thoughtfully done and well executed.”

Edison said victims can start filing for claims now and that it expects to get back to them with an offer within 90 days.

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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.

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