Governor Newsom Signs the Nation's First Comprehensive Wildfire Smoke Damage Standards Legislation to Assess When a Fire-Damaged Home Is Safe to Live In
AB 1642 (Harabedian) creates the scientific, health standards
AB 1795 (Gipson) requires insurance companies to follow them
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
August 31, 2026
Media Contact
Sarah Angel
sarah@joancollaborative.com
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(ALTADENA, CA) California has become the first state in the country to set comprehensive scientific standards for when a wildfire-damaged home is safe for people to live in, after Governor Newsom signed AB 1642 and AB 1795 in Altadena, surrounded by residents impacted by the devastating Eaton Fire on January 7, 2025
AB 1642, authored by Assemblymember John Harabedian (D-Pasadena) and sponsored by Eaton Fire Residents United (EFRU), directs the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), working with the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) and the Air Resources Board, to develop standards and guidance for testing and remediating homes contaminated by wildfire. AB 1795, the Smoke Damage Recovery Act, authored by Assemblymember Mike Gipson (D-Carson), requires insurers to apply those standards to smoke damage claims and sets new deadlines and protections for policyholders.
"Families deserve science-based answers about whether their homes and their schools are safe, and until today no state in the nation had any to give them," said Jane Lawton Potelle, Executive Director of EFRU. "That changes now. California is leading the nation in how to recover safely after an urban wildfire. AB 1642 sets the health standards and AB 1795 requires insurers to follow them, so the answer to whether it is safe to go home comes from science instead of guesswork.”
"Here is what we want every family to hear: if your home was left standing in or near the burn scar, test it for lead and asbestos. Contamination is not something you can see, and it does not stop at the edge of the burn area,” Potelle said.
"Twenty months since the Eaton Fire tore through my community, too many of my neighbors are still asking a basic question: is it safe to return home? I'm honored to have authored first-in-the-nation legislation to help answer that question by giving wildfire survivors scientific certainty in remediating smoke damage," said Assemblymember John Harabedian (D-Pasadena). "AB 1642 will set a new national precedent on scientific standards for clearing a home for occupancy after a wildfire. Science, not an insurance company's opinions, will determine whether a home is safe. Families should not have to fight for the testing they need or be left on their own to determine whether their homes are safe. Thank you to Speaker Rivas for guiding this legislation and to Governor Newsom for signing it into law."
A coalition forced the changes that made this work
Over the course of the session, a coalition of fire survivors from Eaton and the Palisades, organizations across the survivor communities, including EFRU, the Eaton Fire Collaborative and their member organizations, United Policyholders, LA Standing Homes, Dena Rise Up, and other nonprofit organizations, and scientists advocated relentlessly to ensure that legislation addressed the health and safety, as well as insurance reforms that were needed to deliver what fire survivors deserved.
Those changes are now law. AB 1795 creates a rebuttable presumption that smoke damage found in a surviving home inside the impact zone was caused by the wildfire, shifting the burden onto the insurer rather than the family. It bars insurers from cutting off additional living expenses until a property has been both restored to preloss condition and cleared for human occupancy. It makes the insurer responsible for the cost of the sampling and testing needed to get there. It treats recontamination after clearance as a new claim. It sets a 30-day deadline for inspection after a claim is filed and 30-day deadlines for paying undisputed amounts. It requires the Department of Insurance to train and certify adjusters who handle smoke damage claims, and directs Cal/OSHA to propose worker protection standards for remediation crews by July 1, 2029.
"AB 1642 marks a major step forward for wildfire survivors. These protections grew directly out of the experiences and advocacy of Eaton and Palisades fire survivors," said Dawn Fanning, managing director of EFRU. "These first-in-the-nation bills recognize wildfires cause toxic contamination in smoke-damaged standing homes and establish a scientific framework for testing and remediation of that contamination, as well as insurance coverage for those claims."
What changes, and when
Both bills take effect January 1, 2027. From that date, interim clearance standards for lead and asbestos apply inside the wildfire impact zone, pegged to federal lead dust action levels and to California and federal asbestos standards, with any more stringent standard controlling.
Potelle said the new standards also reach renters, who make up an important share of the households displaced by the Eaton Fire.
"Under SB 610 authored by Senator Sasha Renee Perez, landlords are responsible for remediating disaster contamination, and AB 1642 now gives them the standard they have to meet, including the interim standards for lead and asbestos, effective January 1, 2027" Potelle said. "Renters have been the most overlooked people in this recovery, and that ends here."
The permanent standards follow on a longer schedule. DTSC must adopt lead and asbestos regulations by December 31, 2028, and publish guidance covering a wider set of contaminants, including CAM 17 heavy metals, cyanide, lithium, manganese, dioxins and furans, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, by December 31, 2029. The Air Resources Board must publish guidance on indoor air contaminants after residential smoke damage by December 31, 2028, and may issue interim guidance sooner. DTSC must also produce advisory guidance for schools by July 1, 2028, to help districts make closure and reopening decisions after a fire.
The gap this closes
According to data received from insurers, the California Department of Insurance estimates that there are more than 13,000 smoke damaged home claims. EFRU compiled data from 71 Altadena homes that were professionally tested after remediation, drawn from homes where residents sought independent testing. Among those homes, roughly 1 in 3 (36%) still tested positive for asbestos after remediation, and 96% still tested positive for lead. Lead causes serious health problems, especially in children and pregnant women, and a home with high levels of lead is not safe to inhabit. Forty percent of the homes tested for asbestos were tested using incorrect methods, which means the positivity rate could be higher still. The larger finding is that most homes are not being tested at all for contaminants that can cause severe illness or death. Even within this limited sample, the great majority of homes were not safe to return to.
"EFRU's contamination mapping data shows that thousands of survivors would have had a quicker, more effective, and more equitable road to recovery if these protections had been law before the fire," said Nicole Maccalla, Ph.D., EFRU's director of data science. "Today, we acknowledge this historic progress for fire survivors everywhere."
"The standing homes of the Eaton Fire were a curse in disguise. Spared by the flames, the data shows that these homes were pervasively contaminated with asbestos, lead and other toxic heavy metals released by the fire," said Francois Tissot, Professor of Geochemistry at Caltech. "In the absence of mandatory testing and scientific standards to remediate properties, many families were forced to return to still contaminated homes, putting their health at risk. As a victim of the fire and an isotope geochemist who has studied this contamination firsthand, I am thankful that AB 1642 will help protect other communities by creating scientific standards and guidance for safe re-occupancy for wildfire survivors."
Other states have hit the same wall. Colorado's Marshall Fire in December 2021 left more than 1,000 homes destroyed and hundreds more damaged but standing, with no established standard to tell families whether those homes were safe. Homes left standing after a wildfire remain the blind spot of disaster recovery. Disaster aid is built for total loss, leaving insurance as the last line of defense for everyone else, and it has failed to deliver. California is paving the way by recognizing in law that a standing home can be just as devastating as a total loss.
"I think about the Marshall Fire every time someone tells a wildfire survivor, 'At least your house is still standing.' That home may still be standing, but the smoke, ash, char, contaminants, lead and asbestos left behind don't care that the structure didn't burn down," said Jeri Curry, Executive Director of Marshall ROC, Restoring Our Community, the Marshall Fire Long-Term Recovery Group, and Strategic Advisor of United Policyholders. "Federal, state, and nonprofit relief programs are designed to support families whose homes are a total loss. A household whose home is full of contaminants has generally had one place to turn, which is their insurance company, and no independent standard to point to when the insurer said the house was fine. California's AB 1642 and AB 1795 now offer a solution."
Beyond urban wildfires and into urban fires
AB 1795 also requires two studies of the Lineage Logistics warehouse fire that broke out in Boyle Heights on June 17, 2026. The Department of Insurance must examine the coverage gaps the fire exposed, including additional living expenses and business interruption coverage when no mandatory evacuation order is issued to trigger them, and report to the Governor and Legislature by December 1, 2027. The Office of Emergency Services, with the California Environmental Protection Agency, must study how agencies coordinated the response and where jurisdictional authority sat, reporting by July 31, 2028.
The inclusion reflects a pattern the wildfire fight exposed: contamination events leave people in standing structures with real exposure, no clear authority to turn to, and coverage that never triggers.
Interviews
All named individuals above are available for interviews. EFRU can also connect reporters with survivors whose homes were cleared and later found contaminated, and with scientists who have tested affected properties.
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About Eaton Fire Residents United
Eaton Fire Residents United is a coalition of residents formed after the January 2025 Eaton Fire. Its mission is to ensure a safe, just and transparent public health recovery for the affected community. Through organizing, public engagement and education, EFRU works for all communities affected by wildfires, promoting thorough testing, clear remediation guidelines, insurance accountability, and distribution of resources to everyone affected, including children, homeowners, renters, and the insured and uninsured alike.
About Assemblymember John Harabedian
Assemblymember John Harabedian represents the 41st Assembly District, which includes La Cañada Flintridge, Pasadena, Altadena, Sierra Madre, Monrovia, Bradbury, San Dimas, La Verne, Claremont, Upland, Rancho Cucamonga, Oak Hills, Piñon Hills and Phelan.
