California couple fights for insurance coverage 1 year after Eaton Fire
By Sarah McGrew
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SACRAMENTO, California (KCRA) — The night of Jan. 7, 2025, Tim Szwarc decided to stay up reading a book he’d just received for Christmas. A fire had started in the mountains behind the home he shares with his wife, Claire Thompson, and he wanted to make sure he was awake to monitor its progress.
“We saw it out our windows, and we saw it coming down the hill and figured that would be a good time to evacuate,” Thompson recalled.
There hadn’t been an evacuation order, the couple decided to self-evacuate out of an abundance of caution. Szwarc thought they’d be back home in just a few hours.
It’s now been a year and the couple haven’t spent a night in their Altadena home since the Eaton fire tore through their city and neighborhood.
“It just felt like a whole other world, and it all changed overnight,” Szwarc said.
Although houses on their block were completely burned down, Szwarc and Thompson’s house remained standing. In the days after the fire, they thought they were one of the lucky ones. But hidden in their walls, their clothes, and their family heirlooms was contamination from the hundreds of structures and cars that burned around them.
In June of 2025, the couple had their home tested by the industrial hygienist firm Kaizen. Their results showed elevated levels of lead, beryllium, and other toxic metals. All of those contaminants can cause serious health issues. Beryllium is a known carcinogen and hasn’t typically been found in wildfire smoke damage, but as wildfires become more and more urban, they’re also becoming more and more toxic.
“As much as I want to call this home, it’s not safe yet,” Szwarc said.
Szwarc and Thompson said their insurance company is now pushing back on the findings from Kaizen. They were told their insurance company would send out its own industrial hygienist, but the couple is still waiting.
“The thing at the top of our list that matters more than anything else is, can we get the remediation necessary to make it safe?” Szwarc said.
The Department of Angels, a nonprofit created after the LA fires aimed at providing resources for fire-impacted communities, found that most fire victims in Altadena and Pacific Palisades have struggled with their insurance coverage. Residents report poor communication and estimates below actual costs as some of the issues.
“That uncertainty over whether this is ever going to be a safe and clean place to live is really hard to deal with,” Szwarc said. “I just hope that insurance will take our health and needs seriously. We’re not asking for gifts or handouts. We’re just asking for what we signed up for and paid for with our premiums each month. To think that there’s still so much uncertainty over whether we’ll be able to live here safely now, a year in, and still not look at much progress is really concerning.”
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