At the intersection of Midwick Drive and Sinaloa Avenue in Altadena, neighbors had mobilized to stop a situation almost exactly the same as I had seen playing out across the street from my brother’s home in the Palisades. Flames from a house, fully engulfed, were pouring up and over the fence toward the home of Eric Fiedler and his son Christopher, which had survived the fire that night. With two garden hoses and a ladder, they climbed to the roof to attempt to beat back the flames by wetting the roof and the hedges. It was 9:25 a.m.
One resident who was wearing a cutoff black T-shirt and sunglasses used the shirt to cover his mouth to prevent smoke from asphyxiating him. A fire truck from Riverside County Cal Fire pulled up, resulting in the exalted screams of even the KNBC reporter on the scene, Michelle Valles.
“Thank you so much! Oh, my goodness. Praise the Lord.”
Around the same time the Riverside County firefighters battled the flames on Sinaloa, Ashley, the daughter of Herb and Loyda Wilson, was heading back toward their house two miles away after evacuating for the night to see if McNally Avenue had survived. By the time she and her boyfriend got close, she knew it wasn’t good. She called her parents, in Hawaii, inconsolable.
“It’s gone, Dad! Everything is gone!”
“Relax,” Herb told his daughter in the Hawaiian darkness. “It’s going to be OK.”
Cate Heneghan had been receiving reports from her neighbors, too. One of them, who grew up in the home she still lived in on McNally Avenue, had tried to get close around six in the morning. But she told Cate that when she drove past Fairoaks Burger, less than a tenth of a mile away and just around the corner, all she saw was flames.
Cate attempted to get back to the block as well, but when she was within a half mile, she thought better of it.
I don’t want to be part of the problem. I know it’s gone. It’s gone, Cate. Just let it go.
Even though she saw homes just a few blocks away that were still standing, her gut told her to turn around, so she did.
Nick Schuler of Cal Fire, the state fire agency, had a thought run through his head he had never experienced in all of his years of fighting fires.
God, I hope I don’t die of cancer. This is not a good place to be. Thousands of homes have burned.
He was in the smoldering heart of the Palisades. He and Governor Newsom were driving through the area after a morning fire briefing, trying to find a cell signal for Newsom to reach President Biden. My damn cell phone, the governor thought. He had initiated the call because he was going to elevate the asks about resources, personnel, equipment, and federal reimbursements for what people were already saying could potentially be the costliest natural disaster in American history.
‘Firestorm’ by Jacob Soboroff
As the fire continued to rage both in the neighborhoods and on the ridges of the Santa Monica Mountains, the governor directed his security detail to pull over.
“Guys, turn left. Just stop. Stop.”
He checked the bars on his cell phone.
“No. Jesus Christ.”
He couldn’t get a signal.
“You know, get near the gas station—it worked there last night.”
At 9:41 a.m. we came across Governor Newsom and Schuler outside that gas station. Newsom had declared a state of emergency on Tuesday after the Palisades Fire broke out, and with it deployed hundreds of members of the California National Guard to Los Angeles. Once the Eaton Fire ignited, he knew that a major disaster declaration was needed—and had to be requested of President Biden, who was still in town—in order to mobilize federal resources for the Palisades, Eaton, Hurst, and Woodley Fires, now burning. The Hurst Fire had broken out Tuesday night and was growing in size in the north San Fernando Valley, surpassing five hundred acres Wednesday morning. Smoke plumes were rising from all corners of Los Angeles County. The Woodley fire started early Wednesday, a few dozen acre blaze in the Sepulveda Basin.
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Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, Harvey Rosenfield, author of Prop. 103, Bruce Breslau and Gigi Bannister, whose policies were canceled and face large increases in insurance costs, listen to State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara present reforms designed to rescue California property owners from an exodus of insurance companies before an Assembly Committee on Insurance hearing on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024 at Los Angeles City Hall. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Bruce Breslau, whose HOA in Chatsworth had a 400 percent insurance increase confronts State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara after he spoke before state regulators outlining reforms designed to rescue California property owners from an exodus of insurance companies on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara leaves an Assembly Committee on Insurance hearing on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024 at Los Angeles City Hall. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Assembly members Avelino Valencia and David Alvarez listen to State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara present reforms designed to rescue California property owners from an exodus of insurance companies before an Assembly Committee on Insurance hearing on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024 at Los Angeles City Hall. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara reads a prepared speech outlining reforms designed to rescue California property owners from an exodus of insurance companies before an Assembly Committee on Insurance hearing on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024 at Los Angeles City Hall. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara reads a prepared speech outlining reforms designed to rescue California property owners from an exodus of insurance companies before an Assembly Committee on Insurance hearing on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024 at Los Angeles City Hall. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Bruce Breslau, whose HOA in Chatsworth had a 400 percent insurance increase and Gigi Bannister, who was forced into the FAIR plan for her Crestline home, confront State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara after he spoke before state regulators outlining reforms designed to rescue California property owners from an exodus of insurance companies on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
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Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, Harvey Rosenfield, author of Prop. 103, Bruce Breslau and Gigi Bannister, whose policies were canceled and face large increases in insurance costs, listen to State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara present reforms designed to rescue California property owners from an exodus of insurance companies before an Assembly Committee on Insurance hearing on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024 at Los Angeles City Hall. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Minutes before a top insurance regulator outlined reforms to stem an exodus of insurance companies from California, homeowners and consumer advocates assailed those plans as an attempt to undo the state’s landmark insurance law, Proposition 103.
Speaking on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall, two Southern California residents described how the state’s insurance crisis left them with reduced coverage and increased costs.
State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara “isn’t doing his job,” said Crestline homeowner Gigi Bannister, 64. “He needs to hold the insurance companies’ feet to the fire.”
Jamie Court, pres. of Consumer Watchdog, speaks to state assembly members during an insurance hearing on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024 at Los Angeles City Hall after State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara presented reforms designed to rescue California property owners from an exodus of insurance companies which Court sees as an attempt to undo the state’s landmark insurance measure, Prop. 103. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
In a city hall meeting room, Lara later defended those very reforms, saying that “by mid-2025 in California, we (will) have insurance companies running back in every corner of the state.”
In recent months, Lara has been crisscrossing the state advocating for what he called the state’s biggest insurance reform in three decades. Climate change and massive wildfires kindled an urgent need to bring the state’s rate-review system into the 21st century, he said.
“Massive wildfires are burning just miles from where we sit, fueled by record-breaking heat waves and continued dry winds,” Lara told committee members on the 10th floor of City Hall.
Before the hearing, however, consumer advocates argued that the proposed reforms will gut Prop. 103, the 1988 citizen reform designed to keep California insurance rates in check by forcing insurance companies to publicly justify rate-hike requests.
State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara reads a prepared speech outlining reforms designed to rescue California property owners from an exodus of insurance companies before an Assembly Committee on Insurance hearing on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024 at Los Angeles City Hall. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Consumer Watchdog founder Harvey Rosenfield said the insurance industry spent 36 years trying to undercut Prop. 103, “and they finally found an insurance commissioner willing to do the dirty work for them.”
Rosenfield and others from Consumer Watchdog argued the reforms would allow insurance companies to keep their proprietary catastrophe modeling algorithms private. Another provision allowing for rate hikes to take effect 60 days after they are filed eliminates the ability of public “intervenors” to review the increases.
“Over the last 36 years, one elected commissioner after another (has held) the line,” Rosenfield said. “And now suddenly the dam has burst, and (insurers) are getting everything they’ve asked for.”
Increased risk from fire, floods and hurricanes sparked devastating insurance rate hikes across the country and around the world, Lara countered during the Assembly hearing.
Company filings for homeowners’ insurance rate hikes in California jumped from an average of 120-150 per year prior to 2019 to about 450 in 2022, state officials said.
Bruce Breslau, whose HOA in Chatsworth had a 400 percent insurance increase confronts State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara after he spoke before state regulators outlining reforms designed to rescue California property owners from an exodus of insurance companies on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
During the past 2 ½ years, insurance providers including Allstate, Farmers, State Farm and Travelers announced plans to stop underwriting new policies in California and deny renewal to hundreds of thousands of policyholders in fire-prone areas of the state.
Residents started getting premium hikes as high as 1,000%. Others have been unable to get traditional coverage and have been forced to seek policies from the state’s FAIR plan, which provides higher-cost coverage for customers unable to get traditional policies from private providers.
Lara noted that homeowners aren’t the only ones affected. Condo associations have been struggling to replace fire and casualty coverage, as have homebuilders and affordable housing developers.
The insurance commissioner cited a recent California Association of Realtors survey showing that nearly 7% of home sales fell out of escrow because of insurance issues.
“Insurance touches absolutely every aspect of our life,” he said.
Lara’s proposed reforms would streamline the process for insurance rate reviews and allow insurance companies to take into account cost increases for purchasing “re-insurance” from back-up insurance providers.
The reforms also would allow insurance companies to base rate hikes in part on computer-generated risk projections known as “catastrophe modeling.”
Lara argued that California is the only U.S. state to not use catastrophe modeling in rate-setting decisions.
Insurance companies applauded the proposed reforms, vowing to expand coverage in California if they’re adopted by the end of the year, as planned.
“California’s outdated regulatory environment is in need of some fixing,” said Laura Curtis of the American Property and Casualty Insurance Association. “We support urgent action to streamline the rate-making process.”
Homeowners speaking before and during the hearing only know that they are suffering in today’s market.
Bruce Breslau, a resident of the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, said his 290-unit homeowners association faced a 400% insurance hike for reduced coverage after Farmers Insurance terminated its coverage. The association had to levy a $4,700 special assessment on every property owner to pay for the new $1.7 million policy from various providers.
“We’ve got a diverse community, old, young, all persuasions, and we’ve got many people who are on fixed incomes,” Breslau said. “ … We need a law bringing these regulated insurers back into our marketplace for premiums that are reasonable.”
