A few weeks ago, I wrote California Is About to Change the Rules for Wildfire Smoke Claims. California has officially enacted the nation’s first comprehensive statutory framework for determining whether homes with wildfire smoke damage are safe and how insurers must handle covered claims involving those homes. The newspaper headlines understandably focused on Governor Newsom and the legislators. But these laws did not originate solely in Sacramento, and they certainly did not pass because insurance companies suddenly decided that more claim requirements sounded like fun. They were driven by wildfire survivors who tested their homes, collected the results, organized their neighbors, testified, called lawmakers, and traveled to Sacramento to demand change.

They literally got on buses. In May, more than 80 Eaton Fire survivors and community advocates traveled from Pasadena to Sacramento for a press conference and meetings with legislators. In August, more than 100 survivors, residents, workers, faith leaders, and community advocates boarded buses for another trip to the Capitol. AB 1642 was among the legislative priorities they carried with them. Those trips were organized through the Dena Rise Up coalition and supported by a broad network that included Eaton Fire Residents United, the Eaton Fire Collaborative and its member organizations, the Pasadena Community Job Center, My Tribe Rise, the NAACP Pasadena Branch, and other community groups.

That grassroots history deserves to be remembered because legislation does not climb onto a bus and drive itself to Sacramento. Eaton Fire Residents United (EFRU) deserves special recognition. Residents formed EFRU after the Eaton Fire and sponsored AB 1642. Its members did not begin with a lobbyist’s talking points. They began with contaminated homes, conflicting testing results, and insurance companies telling families that their homes were clean enough to occupy.

Jane Lawton Potelle, EFRU’s executive director and one of its founders, became one of the most visible survivor voices behind the legislation. Her own home remained standing after the fire, but she developed physical symptoms when she returned. After an insurer’s representative suggested the debris was essentially harmless carbon from burned vegetation, she hired an independent industrial hygienist who found lead and other toxic metals. Her experience helped launch EFRU’s effort to encourage neighbors to test their homes, collect the results, and demonstrate that this was a community-wide problem rather than a collection of isolated insurance disputes.

Dawn Fanning, EFRU’s co-founder and managing director, helped turn those survivor experiences and testing results into an organized legislative campaign. Fanning has described preparing testimony, position letters and floor alerts, meeting with legislators and their staff, analyzing proposed amendments, and participating in negotiations to coordinate AB 1642 with AB 1795. That is the unglamorous work behind legislation that the public rarely sees. It is also the work without which good ideas frequently die in committee.

The resulting data were difficult to ignore. EFRU reported that many independently tested homes still showed lead or asbestos after remediation. The group turned individual testing reports into community data that legislators, scientists, and public-health officials could evaluate. A family’s frightening experience became evidence. Evidence became organized advocacy. Advocacy eventually became law.

United Policyholders also played an important role. Amy Bach formally supported AB 1642 and continued UP’s decades-long work to help wildfire survivors obtain proper testing, remediation, and restoration of standing homes.

Jeri Curry brought another essential perspective. Curry served as executive director of Marshall ROC, the long-term recovery organization formed after Colorado’s Marshall Fire, and as a strategic advisor to United Policyholders. Colorado survivors had already confronted the cruel phrase, “At least your house is still standing,” only to discover that a standing home contaminated by smoke, ash, lead, and other combustion products may not be a safe home. Curry brought those lessons to the California effort and worked specifically on standing-home contamination and insurance reform.

The wider coalition included Eaton and Palisades fire survivors, the Eaton Fire Collaborative, Dena Rise Up, LA Standing Homes, other Palisades survivor organizations, the California Community Foundation, scientists, public-health professionals, and many other nonprofit and community organizations. Approximately 90 organizations reportedly supported the legislation at various stages. This was a community campaign backed by science, not simply a bill drafted inside the Capitol.

Assemblymember John Harabedian authored AB 1642, which provides the scientific and public-health foundation. Assemblymember Mike Gipson authored AB 1795, the Smoke Damage Recovery Act, which connects those health standards to residential insurance claims. Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara sponsored AB 1795. Senator Ben Allen served as the principal Senate coauthor of AB 1642 and presented both bills on the Senate floor.

The laws take effect January 1, 2027. That does not mean every promised standard will be ready that morning. Interim lead and asbestos clearance standards will apply, but California agencies will develop the broader regulations and guidance in stages through 2028 and 2029.

Among the most important protections is a rebuttable presumption that smoke, ash, soot, char, and combustion byproducts found in a surviving residential property within the designated wildfire-impact zone came from the wildfire. That does not automatically establish coverage or determine how much an insurer owes, but it should stop some insurers from forcing homeowners to spend months proving the painfully obvious.

The legislation also makes insurers responsible for necessary sampling and testing on covered claims, subject to the policy’s terms. It protects additional living expense benefits until the home has been restored to its pre-loss condition and cleared for human occupancy, although policy limits still apply. If an insurer elects to inspect the property, it generally must do so within 30 days. The law establishes deadlines for paying undisputed amounts and preserves the policyholder’s right to select the restoration contractor.

Even the insurance industry recognizes the need for clearer rules. Karen Collins, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, said the two laws “represent a meaningful step toward clearer guidance on smoke damage claims.”

When policyholder advocates, wildfire survivors and the insurance industry agree that the old system lacked adequate guidance, we should pay attention. Collins also emphasized the need for credible science and valid testing methodologies. On that point, she is right. Standards should protect families because they are scientifically sound, not merely because they are inexpensive for insurers or profitable for remediation companies.

The new laws are not magic dust sprinkled over every wildfire claim. The principal testing, payment, and restoration provisions apply prospectively to residential claims occurring on or after the operative date. The protections are generally tied to a statutory wildfire-impact zone based on ZIP codes intersecting the mapped fire perimeter. Smoke, of course, has never shown much respect for ZIP codes, legislative boundaries, or insurance company coverage positions.

Disputes will remain. What sampling is necessary? What establishes a reliable pre-loss baseline? When has a property actually been restored? What happens when contamination travels into a ZIP code outside the statutory impact zone? Will insurers treat the new standards as the minimum protection required or as the maximum amount they are willing to provide?

Passing the laws was the first major step. The next battle will concern the standards themselves and whether regulators enforce them.

Senator Ben Allen deserves credit for helping carry these bills through the Senate. Good legislation usually requires pressure from people outside the Capitol and lawmakers inside who are willing to carry it. These bills had both.

Merlin Law Group is hosting a gathering this Friday in support of Senator Allen’s campaign for California Insurance Commissioner. The gathering will be held Friday, October 2, 2026, from noon until 2:00 p.m. at The Langham Huntington, 1401 South Oak Knoll Avenue in Pasadena. We urge you to support Ben Allen and hope you can attend this event.

The larger lesson is that policyholder protections seldom begin as gifts from government or the insurance industry. They begin when people suffering from the same problem find one another, collect the evidence, and refuse to be dismissed. The survivors behind these laws did all three—and then they took a bus to Sacramento.

Thought For The Day

“We will not tolerate barriers that prevent survivors from receiving what they’re justly owed.”
—Ben Allen