Cali­for­nia is poised to become the first state in the nation to estab­lish stand­ards for how to make homes and schools safe to inhabit after they’re tain­ted by wild­fire smoke, debris and ash.

On Monday night, the Cali­for­nia Legis­lature passed two bills that ask state agen­cies to study, cre­ate and enforce sci­ence-based stand­ards for remedi­at­ing homes that sur­vive wild­fires but are left con­tam­in­ated by air­borne pol­lut­ants. In the Janu­ary 2025 Eaton and Pal­is­ades fires, roughly one of every two homes inside the des­ig­nated fire peri­meter were left stand­ing, many with smoke dam­age.

Assembly Bill 1642 by Assembly Mem­ber John Harabedian, D-Pas­adena, asks the Cali­for­nia Depart­ment of Toxic Sub­stances Con­trol, in con­sulta­tion with other agen­cies, to pur­sue reg­u­lat­ory stand­ards for how to detect and remove lead and asbes­tos — which are fre­quently com­pon­ents of the ash — by the end of 2028. By the end of 2029, the depart­ment would also be required to pub­lish stand­ards for other types of con­tam­in­a­tion, includ­ing beryl­lium.

Its com­pan­ion bill, AB1795 by Assembly Mem­ber Mike Gipson, DCar­son (Los Angeles County), would man­date that insur­ance com­pan­ies pay the cost of chem­ical test­ing and tem­por­ary liv­ing expenses for homes in ZIP codes that are fully or par­tially within the des­ig­nated fire peri­meter. Insurers would also be required to assume any smoke, ash, soot and char found in homes were caused by the wild­fire itself unless the insurer can prove oth­er­wise.

Jane Law­ton Potelle, an Eaton Fire sur­vivor who foun­ded the group Eaton

Fire Res­id­ents United, said it was a “huge relief ” to see the bills pass. They will impact not just wild­fire sur­viv­ors, she said, but people who own busi­nesses impacted by fires or who send their chil­dren to nearby schools.

“We set out to fix a very clear prob­lem where there were no object­ive stand­ards based on sci­ence that were determ­in­ing whether a fam­ily was safe in return­ing to their home after a wild­fire,” Harabedian told the Chron­icle. “We’re really, really proud of the bill.”

Gov. Gavin New­som has until Sept. 30 to sign the bills to make them law.

The legis­la­tion is the res­ult of advocacy from Los Angeles County wild­fire sur­viv­ors, who widely com­plained insurers were not uni­formly pay­ing the cost to test and remedi­ate their stand­ing homes after the fires. A Pulitzer Prize-win­ning Chron­icle invest­ig­a­tion pub­lished last year found that many insurers declined to pay up-front for expens­ive tests used to detect lead, asbes­tos and other con­tam­in­a­tion inside poli­cy­hold­ers’ homes. In at least a few cases, com­pan­ies hired experts who wrote reports that attrib­uted the soot and ash to candles and fire­places, rather than the wild­fire.

Insurers say they are com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing poli­cy­hold­ers and pur­su­ing stand­ards that are rooted in sci­ence.

“While import­ant imple­ment­a­tion work remains, AB1642 and AB1795 rep­res­ent a mean­ing­ful step toward clearer guid­ance on smoke dam­age claims,” Karen Collins, vice pres­id­ent of prop­erty and envir­on­mental for the Amer­ican Prop­erty and Cas­u­alty Insur­ance Asso­ci­ation, said in a state­ment. “As reg­u­la­tions are developed, it will be crit­ical that stand­ards are groun­ded in cred­ible sci­ence,

valid meth­od­o­lo­gies, and the best avail­able tech­nical expert­ise.”

A year and a half after the fires, many sur­viv­ors with smoke-dam­aged homes are still liv­ing in hotels or rent­als, accord­ing to Law­ton Potelle. Oth­ers moved back in quickly, unsure if it was com­pletely safe to do so, she said.

In the after­math of the dis­asters, her group com­piled the res­ults of res­id­ents who tested the soot and ash within their homes. The test­ing

showed a vari­ety of toxic and at times car­ci­no­genic sub­stances, some of which lingered even after insur­ance-fun­ded clean­ings.

Harabedian said he hoped the legis­la­tion would estab­lish a model for the rest of the coun­try on how to make homes safe to inhabit.

Across the U.S., only Col­or­ado has pur­sued sim­ilar stand­ards, accord­ing to Amy Bach, founder and exec­ut­ive dir­ector of the con­sumer advocacy group United

Poli­cy­hold­ers. While those are still in the works, Cali­for­nia could work faster and become the first state in the nation to reg­u­late how to deal with smoke dam­age and when insurers have to pay for it, Bach said.

In a state­ment, Insur­ance Com­mis­sioner Ricardo Lara cel­eb­rated the pas­sage of AB1795, which he sponsored, for “put­ting health and safety first.”

“Wild­fire sur­viv­ors should never have to fight their insur­ance com­pany just to know whether their home is safe for their fam­ily,” he wrote.

Even if the bills are signed, more work will need to be done to ensure that stand­ards estab­lished by the Depart­ment of Toxic Sub­stances Con­trol take into account a broad base of sci­entific expert­ise, Bach said.

Fran­cois Tis­sot, a geo­chem­istry pro­fessor at the Cali­for­nia Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy who test­i­fied in sup­port of AB1642, has been research­ing the chem­istry of wild­fire smoke since the fires began. His research has found that strong winds can carry particles of heavy metals, such as lead, even sev­eral miles down­wind from the fire.

Sci­ent­ists, includ­ing Tis­sot and his team, are still try­ing to tackle many fun­da­mental ques­tions about the fire, he said — includ­ing what chem­ical form the lead travels in and how it impacts the body. He hopes more research will also help sci­ent­ists, and legis­lat­ors, to bet­ter under­stand how wild­fire smoke moves and who it impacts bey­ond the imme­di­ate fire peri­meter.

The pas­sage of AB1642 and AB1795 is a “crit­ical mile­stone” in mak­ing sure decisions about when and whether to return home are groun­ded in that kind of sci­ence, Tis­sot said.

Law­ton Potelle thanked the gov­ernors’ office for sup­port­ing nego­ti­ations on the bill and the sci­ent­ists, policy advoc­ates and wild­fire sur­viv­ors who ensured it made it to the fin­ish line.

“Our homes didn’t get des­troyed in the fire, but they’re covered in con­tam­in­a­tion that makes them haz­ard­ous to live in. Many of us have been deal­ing with the daily ter­ror of what it means to have to move back with no solu­tion,” she said. “This is a path for­ward that will provide us with a safe recov­ery.”