Environmental Health / Insurance Regulation
Families could keep insurance help until smoke is cleared
Under AB 1795, a smoke-damaged home would have to pass required testing before coverage tied to temporary living costs can end. The bill also sets up training rules for people who inspect, test and restore affected properties.
For California families, the issue is not just cleanup. It is whether they can get back into their home without a fight over hidden damage.
- CalEPA would have to set statewide smoke-testing standards by June 30, 2027.
- The bill ties those standards to residential insurance claims.
- Insurers would have to cover the required sampling and testing.
- Additional living expense coverage could not end until a home is cleared for habitation.
- The Department of Insurance would train adjusters on the new rules.
When a wildfire leaves a house standing, the damage can still be tucked into the walls, floors and air. Smoke, soot, char, ash and other contaminants can make a home unsafe long after the flames are gone, and they are often hard to see, hard to document and hard to get an insurer to treat as a real loss.
In California, AB 1795 would try to close that gap. The Smoke Damage Recovery Act, authored by Assemblymember Mike Gipson, would add new insurance rules aimed at residential smoke damage and require the California Environmental Protection Agency, or CalEPA, to develop statewide minimum standards for sampling, testing and chemical screening.
A statewide yardstick
By June 30, 2027, CalEPA would have to set requirements for homes that sustained smoke damage from a wildland-urban interface fire or an urban conflagration. The standards would cover testing before remediation, after remediation and before a home is cleared for habitation, with CalEPA working alongside other state agencies and local public health departments.
The bill also gives state and local officials room to treat a heavily affected area as its own smoke exposure zone. CalEPA, the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or a city or county public health or safety agency could designate that zone for a specific fire, and that designation would override the default distance-based zones. The point is to keep a fire’s footprint from being flattened into a one-size-fits-all rule.
The claim that follows the cleanup
AB 1795 would also change how smoke-damage insurance claims are handled. It creates a rebuttable presumption about the property’s impact classification, so the claim starts from a homeowner-friendly assumption unless the insurer can overcome it.
The bill would require insurers to pay for the sampling and testing called for under CalEPA guidance, and it would bar them from ending additional living expense coverage until the home has been cleared for habitation. The Department of Insurance would also have to build training and certification programs for adjusters and public insurance adjusters who inspect, evaluate, sample, test or restore these homes. For families trying to get back inside, that is the difference between a paper dispute and a place that is actually livable again.