The Brief

Insurance is meant to be a safety net, but for thousands of survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fires, it’s become a major barrier to their ability to rebuild.

Almost every major insurer — State Farm, AAA, USAA and the California FAIR Plan — has faced lawsuits alleging underinsurance, delays and inconsistent support in the wake of January’s devastation.

Now a group of fire survivors with AAA insurance say they're facing an average gap of $300,000 between the payouts they're due and what it will cost to rebuild. So they're calling on the insurer to allow them to use money set aside to replace their personal property for their rebuilds without completing the full inventory of what they lost.

“The question you have to ask yourself is what is the point of buying insurance if it's not actually going to rebuild your home?” said Andrew King, who lost his home in Altadena.

Andrew King's house in Altadena before the Eaton Fire.

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Courtesy Andrew King

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Andrew King's home after the Eaton Fire.

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Courtesy Andrew King

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He is one of more than 200 survivors with AAA who recently sent a letter to the insurer asking for more flexibility.

“People are really trying to figure out if they're going to have enough money to rebuild, and so if this doesn't get resolved, the reality is you will see a deluge of people selling their homes,” King added.

The insurer has until the end of the month to respond.

The problem

Homeowners who lost their homes in January’s fires still have to pay their mortgages, in addition to rent, while they remain displaced. Temporary housing insurance is meant to help cover rental costs, but as the year anniversary of the fires approaches, those payouts are quickly running out.

Meanwhile, most survivors are still in the traumatic and exhaustive process of compiling lists of the personal items they lost when their homes burned down. While most have been paid 80% of what they’re owed for that insurance, they need to finish the list — and prove they’re going to re-buy much of it — to get the rest.

At the same time, for those who are starting to rebuild, their mortgage companies hold onto their insurance money until they reach certain milestones in rebuilding.

All of this means that a lot of the costs have to come out of pocket, forcing difficult choices for those who can’t wait on insurance payouts.

 ”What family is going to be able to do those things without burning through cash?” King asked. “ Are they going to take out debt more? Are they going to start cutting back on paying their mortgage and therefore just be foreclosed on? Are they going to eat less so their kids can eat?”

Nicole Wirth, who also lost her home in Altadena and faces an underinsurance gap of about $300,000, said getting the full payout for her personal property insurance money without having to complete a full inventory would be a lifesaver.

Her message to AAA: “You underinsured us. Now you’re making us kick and scream and do all this traumatic work” to get the personal property payout. Instead, she and others want the full amounts of personal property money they’re owed so they can use it to help finance their rebuild.

The costs of delays 

At the same time, the longer it takes to rebuild, the higher costs are likely to be, as new federal tariffs hit and demand surges. Wirth and other survivors worry that their insurance gaps will only grow and push back their rebuild timelines.

Even for those who aren’t rebuilding, the gap is a barrier to starting their lives over.

Christie McIntire and her family relocated to Tennessee after the fires. After their home burned, they tried to find a place in the L.A. area they could afford to live with their two children and cats, but most rents exceeded their temporary housing coverage.

“ We essentially felt forced out of California,” McIntire said.

They did receive 80% of their personal property payout, but they’ve decided not to rebuild. Still, they can’t get the rebuild insurance money from their mortgage company, which they need to purchase a new home in Tennessee. In the trauma and stress of figuring out their next steps, they have yet to start their inventory to receive the rest of their personal property payout, which they need for a down payment on a new house.

It’s a Catch-22: AAA says they won’t pay them any additional money until they close escrow on that new home — but the McIntires need that money to close. And they need the personal property money they’re owed from AAA to help with a down payment.

“ They say it's incurred cost and … what if you go into escrow on a house and then you back out and go buy something cheaper? I'm like, why would we do that?” McIntire said.

Why so much underinsurance? 

Two lawsuits filed in June against AAA and USAA allege widespread insurance fraud and the use of flawed software that doesn’t accurately calculate insurance costs.

A recent San Francisco Chronicle investigation into California’s major insurers also identified faulty algorithms as a reason for systemic underinsurance across the state. The Legislature recently passed several bills to address insurance and wildfire losses, as well. They now await Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature or veto.

AAA did not respond to detailed questions from LAist regarding how it calculates insurance coverage and if it might consider releasing personal property payments as policyholders have asked.

“At the Auto Club of Southern California, every claim is handled with care and attention, tailored to the unique circumstances of each member and guided by the terms of their individual insurance policy,” AAA spokesperson Doug Shupe said in an email to LAist. “Just as every home is different, so is every claim — and we treat them as such.”

Nicole Wirth and husband Michael with their dogs, Porkchop and Goose, in front of their home in Altadena before the fire.

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Courtesy Nicole Wirth

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That chronic underinsurance is why survivors like King, Wirth and McIntire say insurance should be more flexible — and that, in the case of total loss, personal property insurance should be paid out without requiring a detailed inventory. King said he already has a list with 2,500 lines and still isn’t finished.

There is precedent: Following 2017 North Bay wildfires, multiple insurers — including parts of AAA, USAA, Farmers, Chubb, Allstate and Liberty Mutua — paid personal property coverage to fire survivors without requiring detailed inventories.

“If people cannot get their personal property coverage to pay for their homes, many of them will ultimately be forced to sell,” King said. “ What I'm hearing from nearly every survivor, including myself to some degree, is we are going to have to use the money to buy our stuff to actually rebuild our home. And most of us will be living in shells just because we need a place to live.”

The Los Angeles Police Department wants 300 new vehicles for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and it's asking the city to pay for them.

LAPD officials say the request for around $30 million to procure the vehicles would help temporarily expand the Police Department's fleet during the summer of 2028, so the police force could patrol Olympic venues while maintaining its presence around the city.

City officials are skeptical. The L.A. City Council discussed the request at a Budget and Finance Committee meeting earlier this month, where councilmembers questioned why the city should cover the cost.

"I'm incredibly uncomfortable with spending $30 million on cars, and the excuse being used that we need them for the Games, when the Games are going to be a month long," Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, the chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, told LAPD officials.

The committee kicked the decision down the road, asking the city administrative ffficer for more information on the financial impact of procuring the vehicles, the different options to pay for them and where else LAPD might find the resources, including from other law enforcement agencies in the state.

But the request highlights an increasingly thorny question around the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games: Who will pay for astronomical security costs?

The price tag for LAPD activity during the Olympics is of huge importance to the city of L.A., which is the financial backstop for the Games. The Olympics are intended to be privately funded and cost-free for the taxpayer.

Private Olympics organizing committee LA28 has not included expenses for police in its more than $7 billion budget, and is banking on the federal government covering security costs.

The Trump administration has allocated $1 billion for security at the Games, but those costs will be distributed among the many cities with Olympic and Paralympic venues, and it's not clear how much Los Angeles will get.

LAPD's vehicle request is one example of the limits of that support, according to Police Chief Jim McDonnell, who wrote in a July letter to the Budget and Finance Committee that he does not expect federal funds to cover the 300 additional vehicles he's requesting.

That's because LAPD is anticipating federal dollars to go toward paying to deploy thousands of officers across the city during the Games.

According to one estimate sent to the City Council by LAPD in May, the department's personnel costs for the Olympics and Paralympics could be more than $730 million, with close to half of that money going to outside law enforcement brought in to fill staffing holes.

As the council delays a decision on new patrol vehicles, the city is moving ahead with a separate request. It already approved $13 million to procure 107 non-patrol vehicles for the Games in its 2026-2027 budget. Those include trucks, prisoner transport vans and unmarked investigative vehicles.

According to the department, vehicles acquired for the Olympics won't permanently expand the LAPD fleet. Instead, new vehicles will replace old ones once the Games are over.

A new NASA space telescope launched Sunday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that will help scientists probe the nature of dark matter, dark energy and other mysteries of the universe.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is about the size of a tour bus, lifted off at 4:26 a.m. PT on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. The 18,000-pound spacecraft is now on a million-mile journey that will take it to its new home in space.

"What a glorious dawn launch," NASA's Jackie Townsend, Roman telescope project manager, said at a press briefing soon after liftoff. "The ride was magnificent. It put us right where we wanted to be."

More good news came shortly after launch as the telescope began deploying its solar panels and other instruments. "Ground controllers at NASA Goddard have been receiving telemetry data from Roman, and apparently all systems are nominal," said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.

The journey to Roman's new home

Roman has an unusual origin story: Initially designed as a spy telescope for the National Reconnaissance Office, the spacecraft was donated to NASA instead. The new telescope is named for Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first chief astronomer who was known as the 'Mother of Hubble' for her championing of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope. Her namesake telescope will have the sharpness of Hubble but a field of view that is at least 100 times larger, allowing it to image huge swaths of the sky at once.

Before it can do that, the Roman Space Telescope will have to get to its new home in the sky about a million miles away. Roman will live at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point known as L2. There, the competing gravitational pulls of the Earth and the Sun help the telescope keep a steady orbit while using minimal fuel. The James Webb Space Telescope orbits at this point, which gives the spacecraft an unobstructed view of the sky.

"It takes us a good three-plus months to get out there, and we're spending that time checking everything out and doing a whole bunch of calibrations and making sure everything is working the way we know it can," said NASA's Jeremy Perkins, an integration and test scientist on the mission. "It's basically like our time to kick the tires and just make sure that the focus is right, the pointing is right."

Uncovering cosmic mysteries

Roman is on a kind of ghost hunt, searching for more evidence of dark matter — mysterious, invisible stuff whose gravitational influence appears to hold galaxies together and define the overarching structure of the cosmos. Roman will study how gravity subtly affects the path of light along great distances throughout a massive survey of the sky. By doing this, the telescope will help map both normal and dark matter, giving scientists a better understanding of just what this elusive substance might be.

Astronomers will also use Roman's observations to uncover dark energy, the strange force that is believed to drive the expansion of the universe. Scientists' understanding of dark energy comes from observations of a kind of exploding star known as a Type Ia supernova. These supernovas appear to shine at known and predictable brightness throughout the cosmos, giving them the nickname "standard candles." By cataloguing even more of these supernovas, scientists hope to develop a better understanding of how dark energy works, which could fundamentally change the way astronomers view the universe.

Roman will also search for planets outside our solar system. Since astronomers confirmed their existence in the 1990s, more than 6,000 exoplanets have been identified. With Roman, NASA expects to identify more than 100,000 of them by identifying dips in starlight caused by a planet passing in front of its own star. The telescope also hopes to find some 1,000 through microlensing — a technique that searches for tiny changes in background starlight caused by the gravity of a far-off planet.

"Why do we care so much about exoplanets? Because one of our main goals at NASA is answering the question: Are we alone in the universe?" Nicky Fox, NASA's associate administrator of the science mission directive, said at the Sunday morning briefing.

The spacecraft is poised to bring scientists a step closer to answering that question: It will demonstrate technology that can take a picture of a planet by selectively blocking out the light from its home star.

"We are going to make this giant leap forward with the coronagraph technology that is going to allow us to look at these distant worlds and start to really resolve the atmosphere around them to let us know if they could be habitable," she said.

A deluge of data

The telescope will beam back 1.4 terabytes of raw science data each day, using a refrigerator-sized high-gain antenna. The data will be available immediately to scientists and the public.

"Roman's database at the end of its prime mission after five years is going to be bigger than your standard music streaming platform," Perkins said.

Because of the massive amounts of data, NASA is making it available to anyone through a cloud-based system called Roman Nexus. For Perkins, that's what makes this mission unique — anyone can look at the raw data and find new discoveries.

"It's all the things that we are not expecting to see," he said. "It's all these one-in-a-million things that we're going to be able to see with Roman that really excites me."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday backed off his proposal to reduce costs for electrical utilities after their equipment sparks wildfires, agreeing instead to a narrower deal after homeowners, insurers and fire survivors argued his original plan would have shifted those costs onto them.

Instead, Newsom and Senate and Assembly leaders agreed on a narrower package of wildfire policies, including prohibiting private equity groups from investing in wildfire claims and denying utility CEO bonuses in the years their companies cause fatal fires.

The deal is a victory for lawmakers who refused to reduce damages to victims and shift costs away from utilities. Opponents included insurance companies, consumer advocates and survivors of the January 2025 Eaton Fire caused by Southern California Edison equipment that killed 19 people in Altadena.

Under the agreement announced Saturday, the state would create a “fast-pay” program for survivors’ property loss, pain and suffering in the wake of a utility-caused fire. It would include deadlines for determining which claims are valid within 60 days of receipt, and settlement offers within 30 days after that, but survivors could still pursue the long process of suing utilities if they choose.

The state also commits to improving its local wildfire mitigation efforts and sharing more data on insurance coverage in areas with fire risk.

The final agreement, which lawmakers will vote on in Senate Bill 492, caps a contentious series of closed-door negotiations between Newsom’s office and legislative leaders on how much utility companies should pay after fires.

Newsom wanted utilities to have to pay less to insurance companies, some wildfire survivors, local governments and corporations claiming damages after a fire. His administration is concerned the mounting costs threaten investor confidence in the state’s three major for-profit utilities: Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. He said that could lead to higher borrowing costs for the companies and higher electricity bills for Californians.

Newsom also argued his plan would prioritize paying survivors who lose their homes. In past fires, investors have funded lawsuits or claims have been sold to hedge funds, increasing the number of third parties seeking to profit from wildfire payouts, Newsom’s office has said.

SB 492 does not include most of the proposals Newsom wanted and does not substantially change how much utilities must pay after fires they cause. California’s $18 billion wildfire fund that utilities draw from to pay fire damages — and which would fund claims in the fast-pay program — is funded 50-50 by utility customers and shareholders. Proponents of Newsom’s proposals remain concerned that another catastrophic fire could drain that money, leaving utilities facing a mountain of costs and another round of potential bankruptcies.

Nine of the state’s 20 most destructive wildfires were caused by electrical equipment or power lines.

“This system needs full structural reform — not a partial one,” Newsom said in a statement Saturday morning. “I urge the Legislature to build on this progress next year and finish the work we started to secure the Wildfire Fund’s long-term durability, stabilize electricity rates, and ensure fire victims are never again turned into unsecured creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding.”

Negotiations may resume next year

Sen. Josh Becker, a Menlo Park Democrat who was closely involved in the negotiations, acknowledged that lawmakers would likely have to return to the issue of utility liabilities under a future governor.

“What I heard very clearly, certainly from senators, from the Assembly and even from all the stakeholders was that they’re willing to do that,” he said. “They’re willing to start getting around the table and looking at some of those structural issues. But that takes time. We ran out of time in this session.”

“We certainly stood with fire survivors,” said Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat who represents Palisades Fire survivors. “Challenges with affordability of electricity (remain). That’s not going away.”

The utilities agreed and said there needs to be a long-term solution.

“While we appreciate the efforts made, we are disappointed that the state couldn’t develop comprehensive wildfire reform,” said Southern California Edison spokesperson David Eisenhauer.

San Diego Gas & Electric would not comment and referred questions to Wildfire Victims First, the utility-backed campaign whose priorities aligned with the governor’s wish list.

Campaign spokesperson Nathan Click said the state still needs to make urgent structural reforms “to ensure a fair recovery system.”

PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo said the company is reviewing the bill and is “focused on helping wildfire survivors recover faster, making communities safer, and protecting customer utility bills.” Company stocks tumbled Friday after reports of a potential agreement that did not include any utility cost-shifts.

Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, the Santa Barbara Democrat whose caucus opposed Newsom’s cost-shifting proposals, said in a statement the agreement “supports survivors in their recovery, curbs Wall Street practices that increase costs on consumers, and mitigates the destruction of these wildfires in the first place.”

Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, an Irvine Democrat who led negotiations for the Assembly, in a statement called the deal “an important step forward.”

“We held the line to protect the people who needed it most,” she said.

The biggest sticking point was the governor’s insistence on eliminating subrogation, which allows insurance companies to sue utilities to recoup their costs for wildfire claims. Lawmakers were staunchly opposed to eliminating that avenue out of concern that it would disrupt the state’s fragile insurance market, raise premiums and cause insurers to flee the state, and they rejected it.

“This outcome keeps costs with the parties responsible for wildfires and helps protect the progress California is making in stabilizing its insurance market,” said Denni Ritter, a vice president at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.

While the deal is a win for the insurance industry, a senator who represents Eaton Fire survivors said it’s important to also hold insurers accountable.

“We know that in many cases, insurance companies delayed and denied fire survivors’ claims and payments, delaying recovery,” said Democratic Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez. “We need all industries to come to the table in a real way.”

State lawmakers also resisted the governor’s effort to limit survivors’ non-economic damages, an important victory for the Eaton Fire survivors who relentlessly campaigned against the proposal.

Fire survivors and consumer advocates credited the Senate, especially Limón, for pushing back on Newsom.

“In the face of extraordinary pressure from some of the most powerful interests in our state, they centered survivors and California families,” said Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network.

Advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which worked in concert with fire survivors, called the negotiations “an exercise in the democratic process.”

“(The Legislature) told (Newsom) they wouldn’t bend in closed-door negotiations,” said Jamie Court, president of the group.

Pérez commended survivors for pressuring lawmakers over the past couple of weeks.

“The fire survivors have shaped this entire conversation,” Pérez said. “They made a tremendous impact.”

For many millennials, '90s Nickelodeon shows such as Hey Arnold!, Doug, and Rocko’s Modern Life represent a golden age of animation, with theme songs and music scores often just as weird and offbeat as the characters and storylines.

Take the theme song of Hey Arnold! — an earworm that introduced a generation of young TV viewers to acid jazz, funk, hip-hop and more, even if they didn’t realize it at the time.

Hey Arnold! composer Jim Lang is taking the show's music on tour, with a few stops in SoCal.

LAist’s Robert Garrova caught up with Lang to talk about the show’s endearing music legacy.

On whether he and the other musicians on the show set out to introduce young people to new musical genres

Lang:  I wish I could take credit for being that intentional about it. But we weren't really hoping to introduce anybody to jazz. That was just a wonderful kinda side benefit of the way the show played out.

Was the music too good for a kids' show? Take for instance the theme music for the fan-favorite Pigeon Man episode

Lang:  I don't think there's any such thing as music that's too good for a kids' show. I think children have the hugest imagination for absorbing things that they've never seen before, for being delighted by the unusual.

Those things [music scores] all work because the writers and the animators and the background artists and everybody did such an incredible job before it ever showed up at my studio. That's it. You just kind of shut up and get out of the way and let the image kind of play through you in a way.

On what it felt like being at Nickelodeon in the '90s when the bosses were saying, 'Hey, yeah, let's do some acid jazz on a kids show'

Lang: Well, the women that started Nickelodeon and that ran that company in that era were a really unusual breed, and they were super adventurous. They didn't discourage, you know, people doing crazy stuff.

On what fans' reactions are at the live shows

Lang: Oh, it's just such a love fest. It is nostalgic. The music is meaningful to them because the show, after five seasons, there was a sound to it, and people found it relatable. So getting to hear a band actually play that stuff live, it sounds familiar to the audience in a way that I think people were just thrilled by.