Families could keep insurance help until smoke is cleared

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.