It’s been a year. There are plans for many events today in the Palisades, so expect to see a lot of media coverage.
The struggle to return is a constant battle. From my own experience, I have spent over 1,000 hours navigating the complex and deliberately confusing insurance process, assisting neighbors and friends, and working to find solutions to the difficult and distressing personal issues faced by those directly impacted. This has been the hardest year of my life.
For my family, I’m pleased to say we were finally assigned an insurance adjuster capable of saying something other than “no.” He is our fifth adjuster. I know others who are on their seventh or eighth—let’s just disregard the California insurance code that limits the number of adjusters a company may assign to the same claim.
It’s been a year, and only in the last few days have we received post-remediation environmental testing results indicating it is safe to return to the house. Even so, it’s not completely clean and we may perform one more test. We have done four separate environmental tests to date, which have cost approximately $35,000 (paid by insurance, though many others are still struggling to obtain approval for testing).
As a simple example of the struggles impacted standing homes face: our previous environmental test showed two areas of the home that needed a second round of cleaning. The industrial hygienist who wrote the report specified a particular cleaning regimen for the remediation firm to follow. Cleaning those two areas cost approximately $79,000. The remediation company took about 3.5 days with roughly four employees to perform this work. You do the math. While I’m glad insurance paid without question and the subsequent test results were good, it illustrates the profit margins and costs involved with this type of work during a disaster. Many have illegally profited from those suffering. Total remediation cost for the home—just the cleaning, not any repairs—is now approximately $250,000 (I still need to add it all up).
We have been advised to discard all soft goods. Insurance has approved replacement of all electronics. We removed all carpet. These are just a few examples. And we are not yet done with identifying items that need replacement, and are currently waiting on our insurance to approve…and we can't start the repair inside the house until all of these items are approved and paid.
I have friends who lost their homes who have said that while losing everything was extremely traumatic and distressing, they believe having a standing home with smoke damage is worse. When you lose your home to fire, you grieve, catalog your contents, review your insurance policy, perhaps have some arguments with your carrier, decide whether to hire a public adjuster, receive funds to rebuild, and hope you have enough money. With smoke damage, it’s up to the homeowner to prove something is unhealthy or damaged while the insurance brings in their experts to claim everything is fine.
Our first adjuster examined the home with me and, while at the house, said the ~$80,000 they were offering was “a lot of money” and that she had other clients who were taking that amount and cleaning themselves. This was before any environmental testing was performed or any objective third-party review of the damages. Deplorable. The first environmental test showed our home had toxic metals and harmful chemicals, yet the insurance didn’t want to believe it, so they hired another firm to test—which had similar results. Only after those test results did the insurance begin to realize we weren’t going to walk away and accept their absurd offer.
Your insurance is not your friend, regardless of their marketing.
If you're interested in more, see the links below for community survey results publicly released yesterday.
