California Wildfire Resources: Guides for Survivors and Families

Key Takeaways

Each resource covers a different part of a wildfire loss, and none of them replaces the others.

• Federal disaster assistance under 42 U.S.C. § 5174 may provide help with housing for displaced households and with medical, dental, child care, funeral, personal property, transportation and other serious needs after a major disaster. It addresses immediate needs a household cannot meet through other means. It does not decide who caused the fire.
• 42 U.S.C. § 5155(a) bars duplication of benefits. Federal aid does not cover any part of a loss already paid for by insurance or another source.
• California Insurance Code § 2060 sets minimum periods for additional living expense coverage after a covered loss tied to a state of emergency.
• California Insurance Code § 2061 lets a policyholder with a total loss request an advance payment for living expenses. It also sets rules on the inventory a policyholder submits for contents.
• Two federal tax provisions may apply. Under 26 U.S.C. § 165(i)(1), a taxpayer may elect to take a disaster loss into account in the prior tax year. Under 26 U.S.C. § 139(a), qualified disaster relief payments are excluded from gross income.
• A civil claim is separate from aid and insurance. It is based on whether another party was legally responsible for the fire and the harm it caused.

Knowing which resource answers which loss matters because the pieces interact. Aid may be reduced by what insurance has paid. A signed settlement may end claims its terms describe. Our attorney can talk through how a family's aid, insurance and possible civil claim relate to one another. The site's overview of California wildfire claims explains the civil side in more depth.

When a Wildfire Displaces Your Family: Federal Disaster Assistance

Federal law allows aid to reach households directly after a declared major disaster. Under 42 U.S.C. § 5174(a), the President, in consultation with the Governor of a State, may provide financial assistance, and direct services if necessary, to individuals and households who have necessary expenses and serious needs as a direct result of a major disaster. That aid is available where those households are unable to meet such expenses or needs through other means. The same subsection says a household is not denied certain assistance solely because it has not applied for or received a loan or other financial help from the Small Business Administration or another federal agency. This provision can open the door to federal help after a declared disaster. It does not, by its own text, promise any household a particular form of aid, because it says the President "may" provide it.

Housing is the most urgent need for many families. Section 5174(b) allows assistance for households displaced from their predisaster primary residences, or whose primary residences were rendered uninhabitable by damage from a major disaster. It also covers residences rendered inaccessible or uninhabitable for individuals with disabilities. The type of housing help is determined based on cost effectiveness, convenience to the household and other factors, and more than one type may be made available. This provision can address where a displaced family lives. It does not rebuild the home or compensate for its loss.

Other needs fall under section 5174(e). The President may provide financial assistance to an adversely affected household for disaster-related medical, dental, child care and funeral expenses. Assistance may also address personal property, transportation and other necessary expenses or serious needs resulting from the disaster. This provision can help with costs that follow a fire, including a funeral after a death. It does not take the place of a wrongful-death or injury claim against a responsible party.

One limit runs through all of it. Under 42 U.S.C. § 5155(a), no one is to receive federal disaster assistance for any part of a loss already covered by financial assistance under another program, from insurance or from any other source. This rule prevents double payment for the same loss. It does not bar aid for losses that insurance did not cover.

What California's Insurance Code Requires After a Declared Emergency

California law sets specific living expense rules when a covered loss relates to a state of emergency, as that term is defined in Section 8558 of the Government Code.

Under California Insurance Code § 2060, an insurer must give a homeowners' policyholder who has claimed additional living expenses a list of items the insurer believes may be covered. That list may state that it includes only commonly claimed items. After a covered loss relating to a state of emergency, additional living expense coverage lasts no less than 24 months from the inception of the loss, subject to other policy provisions. The insurer must grant an extension of up to 12 more months, for a total of 36 months, if a policyholder acting in good faith and with reasonable diligence meets reconstruction delays caused by circumstances beyond the policyholder's control. Those circumstances include, but are not limited to, unavoidable permit delays, lack of necessary construction materials and lack of available contractors. Further six-month extensions are provided for good cause.

The same section bars a policy from limiting recovery when the home is rendered uninhabitable by a covered peril. However, an insurer may instead provide a reasonable alternative remedy that addresses the condition preventing habitation. Living expense coverage under this section does not include a utility public safety power shutoff. For a loss not otherwise covered by those paragraphs, where a state of emergency comes with a civil-authority order restricting access to the home related to a covered peril, coverage lasts at least two weeks, with two-week extensions for good cause, subject to policy provisions. Section 2060 can set a floor for how long living expense coverage runs. It does not create coverage a policy does not otherwise provide.

California Insurance Code § 2061 applies to residential property claims arising on or after January 1, 2021. Where a policyholder has claimed living expenses related to a total loss, the insurer must, on request, advance no less than four months of living expenses, with further payment due upon proper proof after that period. For a contents claim after a total loss of a primary residence, the insurer may not require its own inventory form if the policyholder provides a form with substantially the same information. The insurer may still seek additional reasonable information. The insurer must also accept an inventory that groups categories of property, including clothing, shoes, books, food items, CDs, DVDs or other categories for which listing each item would be impractical. Section 2061 can ease the paperwork and timing of a total-loss claim. It does not set the value of what was lost.

The California Department of Insurance's catastrophe page says families should prepare in advance for a major disaster. It also says different types of insurance can help alleviate the financial burdens of rebuilding a home or business or replacing possessions. When a family is unsure whether an insurer's response matches what these sections require, the policy, the claim correspondence and the dates involved are the materials an attorney would typically review.

Tax Relief Available to Wildfire-Affected Households

Two federal tax provisions speak directly to disaster losses. This section describes what each statute says. It is not tax advice, and it says nothing about how any particular return is prepared.

The first is an election about timing. Under 26 U.S.C. § 165(i)(1), any loss occurring in a disaster area and attributable to a federally declared disaster may, at the taxpayer's election, be taken into account for the taxable year immediately before the year the disaster occurred. The condition is in the text: the loss must occur in a disaster area and be attributable to a federally declared disaster. This election can change the tax year in which a qualifying loss is counted. It does not, on its own, determine whether a loss is deductible or by how much.

The second is an exclusion. Under 26 U.S.C. § 139(a), gross income does not include any amount an individual receives as a qualified disaster relief payment. This exclusion can keep a qualified relief payment out of taxable income. It does not reach every payment a household receives after a fire, only those that meet the statute's definition of a qualified disaster relief payment.

These provisions matter because a family coping with a destroyed home is also facing a tax year that looks nothing like the one before it. They sit apart from any civil claim. How a later settlement or judgment is treated for tax purposes is a separate question this page does not address.

Whether Your Wildfire Loss May Support a Civil Claim

No single checklist decides whether a wildfire loss may support a civil claim. If you are trying to judge whether your family's loss is more than an insurance matter, a handful of facts usually shape the answer.

Where the fire started and how it reached the property is often the first of them. Investigators' findings about origin and cause, and the path the fire took, frame every later question about responsibility. The nature of the harm comes next: a burned home, damaged land and trees, a business interrupted, a physical injury suffered while escaping, or a death. Timing matters as well, both when the fire occurred and when the household learned what may have caused it. Finally, the documentation of the loss affects how clearly it can be described.

If you were displaced or injured, the records that usually matter include:

• Medical records from emergency care and later treatment.
• Photos and video of the property before and after the fire, and of the fire itself.
• Fire, incident and police reports.
• Insurance correspondence, including claim letters and any living expense list an insurer provided under section 2060.
• Property records, such as deeds, permits and appraisals.
• Receipts for emergency housing, travel and replacement items.
• Contents inventories, which section 2061 allows to be grouped by category after a total loss.

Families also often keep the names of neighbors and others who saw the fire's early stages.

None of these items is a test a household passes or fails. They are the materials from which a clearer picture of what happened, and what was lost, is usually built. For a family living out of a hotel room, records surface over months rather than days, and a partial file is a common starting point. Our attorney can help sort out how the facts of a particular fire and loss line up with the legal elements described in the next section.

Who May Be Responsible for the Fire That Reached Your Property

If you are asking who started the fire, the answer usually traces back to a source of ignition and a question of control. Wildfires that lead to legal claims can start in several general ways:

• Electrical equipment, such as power lines, poles or transformers, can spark or fail.
• Vegetation near equipment or on a property may not have been managed.
• A product or piece of machinery may have failed.
• Work on land or equipment may have been performed in a way that created a fire risk.

These are general mechanisms. A fire itself does not prove that anyone was careless or that any product was defective.

Potential defendants are identified by their role, not by name:

• A utility operator that owns or runs electrical equipment.
• A landowner or property owner responsible for the land where a fire began.
• An equipment manufacturer whose product may have been involved.
• A seller that distributed that product.
• A maintenance company hired to inspect, repair or clear vegetation around equipment.

More than one party can share responsibility for a single fire, which means a family's claim may reach more than one of them.

For a family weighing a claim, a negligence case, the most common kind, comes down to four questions about the party involved. Did it have a legal obligation to act with reasonable care (duty)? Did it fail to meet that obligation (breach)? Did that failure actually cause the fire and the harm to your home or family (causation)? And what losses resulted (damages)? Whether those elements are met depends on the facts of a specific fire and a specific loss, and often on investigation findings that take time to emerge. That is why the origin-and-cause reports described above often carry so much weight.

A civil claim is separate from insurance and government aid. An insurance claim rests on the contract between policyholder and insurer. A civil claim rests on another party's legal responsibility. A household may pursue more than one, and the site's page on wildfire claim services describes how they can run side by side.

What Losses a Wildfire Claim May Cover for Your Family

The harm a wildfire causes reaches well beyond the structure that burned, and civil law describes it in categories.

• Property loss refers to the home, outbuildings, vehicles, possessions, landscaping and trees destroyed or damaged by the fire.
• Loss of use means being unable to live in or use a property while it is unusable, such as the months a family spends in temporary housing.
• Medical expenses are the costs of treating injuries, including burns and smoke-related harm suffered during the fire or an evacuation.
• Lost income covers wages or business earnings lost because of the fire or an injury.
• Pain and suffering refers to the physical and emotional harm an injured person experiences.

Wrongful death is a distinct claim. It allows certain family members to seek damages when a person's death was caused by another party's wrongful act or neglect. It belongs to the surviving family, not to the estate's property claim, and it addresses the loss of the person themselves. For a family grieving someone lost in a fire, this category is often the hardest to think about. It is also the one most different from anything an insurance policy addresses.

What damages the law may allow in any given matter depends on the facts, the evidence of each loss and what California law permits. Nothing on this page describes what any household will receive. For a family, these categories are a way to see which parts of a loss an insurance payment may leave unaddressed, such as an injury or the loss of a person. Federal aid and insurance payments also bear on the picture, because section 5155(a) limits aid for losses insurance has already covered.

Which Legal Rules Apply to a Fire That Burned in California

If the fire that reached your home burned in California, a civil claim about it is generally decided under California law, whether the source was a utility line, a landowner's property or a product made elsewhere. Federal law shapes the aid and tax rules described above, but the question of who is responsible for your loss generally turns on California's rules of liability. This page presents no other state's rules as its own.

Depending on how the fire started, a family's claim may rest on one or more California frameworks:

• If the fire began on land or equipment someone controlled, premises liability asks whether the person or business that owns or controls the property used reasonable care in how it was maintained, including the vegetation and equipment on it.
• If a product was involved, products liability asks whether those who made or sold it are responsible for harm caused by a defect in it.
• If more than one party contributed, comparative fault is the principle that responsibility for harm can be divided among them. A claimant's own share of fault, if any, may affect what the law allows.

Whether any of these applies depends on what happened and who controlled what.

A statute of limitations is the law's time limit for filing a civil claim. After it runs, a claim can be barred, which is why timing can matter as much as the facts. Different kinds of loss can carry different periods, and claims against public entities can involve a separate requirement to present a claim first. When a period starts, and whether any exception applies, depends on the facts. This page does not compute anyone's deadline. The site's guide to California wildfire claim deadlines sets out the periods themselves. Families in particular counties can read about Los Angeles wildfire claims or San Diego wildfire claims.

If you would like to talk through how a limitations period may apply to the dates of your fire and loss, you can request a case evaluation.

Questions Worth Asking Before Accepting a Settlement or Signing a Release

A release is a document in which a person gives up claims in exchange for a payment. Depending on its wording, it can end claims a family has not yet fully understood. As general information, families in this position often weigh several questions:

• Has every category of loss been documented, including loss of use, injuries and losses that appear only during rebuilding?
• Has the possibility of a civil claim against a responsible party been looked at, separately from the insurance claim?
• Does the document cover only the insurance policy, or does its language reach other parties and other claims?
• Does it address future losses, such as costs that arise after rebuilding begins?
• Has federal disaster aid been applied for? Will the payment affect that aid, given the duplication rule in section 5155(a)?
• What happens to living expense coverage, including the periods section 2060 sets and the advance section 2061 allows?

These questions describe what a document does, not what any family should decide. A release from an insurer under a policy and a release of a civil claim are different instruments, and the scope of each turns on its terms.

The weight of these questions is real. A family worn down by months of displacement may be offered a document at exactly the moment it most wants the matter to be over. A conversation with our attorney can help a family work through what a specific document does and does not decide. This page does not give medical or tax advice, and it does not interpret any particular policy or settlement.