California-elected insurance specialist has asked the state’s insurance companies to pay for the contents of homes destroyed in the Southern California fire disaster last month without policyholders providing a complete list of everything they lost.
Commissioner Ricardo Lara’s office encourages insurance companies to make payments, saying the companies should report by February 28 so that they meet the requirements.
“It is inhumane to ask wildfire survivors to lose everything to list every piece of personal property in order to get the full replacement fee under their policies,” Lala said in a statement Thursday. “They need to focus on The bigger task of rebuilding life.”
While some homeowners reported the highest payments for personal property lost in the Palisades and Eaton fires last month, others said they got nothing.
Most policyholders are asked to provide a detailed list of home content, which requires many to work hard to address other challenges, including finding temporary housing, guiding real estate cleanups and preparing for reconstruction.
State law requires insurance companies to make at least personal property payments without completing inventory. The Office of the Commissioner said the amount of initial payment required can reach up to $250,000 and should be no less than 30% of the policy’s residence limit.
Insurers should provide their clients with information about the requirements. After advance payment, the law says that once the policy holder provides the document, he should obtain the full value of his property until his content policy limits.
Several Altadena homeowners who lost everything in the Eaton fire welcomed Lala’s initiative, saying Saturday it would be a tough thing to make it clear that everything they lost would be.
Retired small business consultant Daniel Morales said it was nearly impossible for him to calculate the value of his property – a collection of over 2,000 books, artworks and souvenirs from world religions, some of which are hundreds of years old. .
“How do you make a value for these things? It’s a call to judge,” Morales said. “A lot of them are invisible.”
Morales said his insurance company told him they would pay him 80% of its coverage limit without proving the loss, the rest. He said it would be “great” if he refused to confirm that the carrier would cover all the coverage. “Because it’s all the loss.”
Morales said he had barely obtained all his property from his home in Altadena and he also lost the desktop computer that stored many records.
An Altadena engineer who lost everything in the fire said he has not received any payment, or even a promise of payment. He declined to name himself, saying his employer didn’t want him to talk about the fire on the record.
The engineer said so far he has not received content from a home in the California Fair Plan, which holds $40,000 in ham radio and a dozen guitars, many of which are collectors’ items, including “2006” 59 Les Paul, 2006 Martin, 1967 Martin D-28, the last year from Brazilian Rosewood.”
He praised any effort like him to simplify payments to homeowners. “There’s too much pressure,” he said. “I’m dealing with insurance in every aspect.”
Post-fire recovery expert Jennifer Gray Thompson praised Lara’s move to promote insurance spending.
“It is a burden to list items, which puts many families in recovery time,” said Thompson, who established the fire after burning a fire near her home in Sonoma County, the United States. “It recreated them and it was very hard.”
Thompson reiterated the insurance company’s advice to people to create videos of home and apartment content.
“Open drawers and closets; garage, outdoors, sheds,” she said through text. “Because who may still remember everything in your home?”
