The Brief

How do I get my insurance to pay for testing of my home for toxins after the fires that raged through L.A. neighborhoods in January?

What if my insurance adjuster says they won’t cover a long-term rental?

How can I get help navigating the claims process?

These are some of the questions popping up among people displaced or affected by the Eaton and Palisades fires. LAist talked with professionals in the insurance industry and individuals navigating the claims process to put together this guide to common questions and roadblocks.

Who does what?

Let’s start with the basic layout of the insurance ecosystem, as it relates to the L.A. fires:

Insurance adjuster: Adjusters investigate the damage to your property and injuries to determine how much your insurance company owes you based on your policy.

You are likely to deal with several adjusters as you navigate the claims process, including field adjusters, who actually visit your property to investigate the damage.

You are also likely to interact with independent adjusters, who are hired by insurance companies to help process claims. Because of the huge volume of claims from the SoCal fires, many insurance companies have had to hire independent adjusters from states across the country. They may be on the ground in L.A. for a month or several months, and then a different adjuster will take their place.

And then you have public adjusters, which are very different from the adjusters mentioned above. A public adjuster works on behalf of you, the insured, to help you navigate the claims process and negotiate a settlement. They typically get paid a percentage of the payout you receive from your insurer. Public insurance adjusters, like agents and brokers, are licensed by the state insurance department. (We’ll get back to when and how you might decide to hire a public adjuster.)

Tips on working with insurance adjusters

Make sure you know your policy. Read your policy thoroughly and make sure you understand what coverage you have in all areas, including for specific things like temporary living expenses and debris cleanup.

The nonprofit United Policyholders has an excellent guide on recovering from the 2025 wildfires, which you can download for free from their website. The group also holds online forums and FAQ sessions to help fire victims navigate recovery. (The next one is a survivor-to-survivor forum, at 7 p.m. tonight. Register on the group’s website.)

If you can’t find your policy or don’t remember what company you’re insured with, the state Department of Insurance has an online form you can fill out. Once you do, they’ll forward your information to insurance companies in California so they can search their records.

Know your rights

California law requires insurance companies to offer certain things to fire victims and adjacent communities, including:

• Four months advance payment for living expenses if your home was destroyed.
• Renewal of your insurance policy for a minimum of one year after an emergency declaration (Jan. 7) if you live within or adjacent to the fire perimeter.

Also, check out these tips for wildfire victims from the state Department of Insurance.

Keep up-to-date on public guidance

Pay attention to what public officials are saying, for example, about the cleanup process and related health concerns. You may have more information than your insurance adjuster and can use that to advocate for yourself.

You can sign up for updates from the county here.

Also check out all of LAist’s coverage of the fires and recovery.

Talk to your neighbors and other fire victims

You may be getting different answers about what your insurance company will and won’t cover from someone else in your community with the same insurance plan. That’s why it’s important to compare notes with fellow fire victims, said Kelsey Szamet, a lawyer whose home (which is still standing) is in the Eaton Fire burn area.

You can use that information to pressure your insurance company to offer you what they’re offering someone else.

Consider joining Facebook groups of fire victims and attending community forums.

Document, document, document

Since you may be working with multiple adjusters, it’s vital to document all of your interactions with them. “Because when the next set of adjusters come in, you want to make sure that any agreements that are made at the onset of the claim, they're still going to be an agreement throughout the whole process of the claim,” said Sydney Greenspan, a public adjuster with extensive experience in California wildfire claims.

Ask for names and call-back numbers, and save that information.

Greenspan suggests sending an email to the adjuster after each conversation recapping the topics discussed, any agreements made and asking for confirmation of receipt. And keep those records too.

Szamet said she and her husband are keeping a daily log of conversations with their insurance company in a Google doc and updating it in real time. Even though “we’re all overwhelmed,” Szamet said, “ you have to be your own friend and your own advocate in terms of documenting.”

Advocate for yourself

It may be exasperating and almost certainly is exhausting, but you have to constantly advocate for yourself throughout the claims and, if relevant, the rebuilding process.

And sometimes, if you’re not getting something you know you’re entitled to under your policy, you may need to escalate — but keep your cool. “Essentially, what I like to politely say is, ‘Can I have your manager please?’” Szamet said. “Can I talk to the next person? Can I talk to your supervisor? And just stay at it. Be pleasant, be calm, be friendly, and realize this person is probably just following orders.”

Likewise, if you are not satisfied with the adjuster assigned to work with you, you can ask to work with a different person. For Szamet, just asking the question removed a roadblock. “We had not had our adjuster come visit our property,” Szamet told LAist. “I called and said, ‘I would like a new adjuster’ via voicemail, and I also emailed that to my agent. I got a call back within an hour and someone was at my property within two hours to look at the damage to our house.”

Be proactive with the adjuster

Because you may be dealing with an adjuster from out of state, or with someone who isn't as familiar with your situation as you are, you have to be proactive, said Samuel Bruchey, an insurance lawyer whose home was damaged in the Eaton Fire.

“We have to remember that these adjusters, even if they're well meaning and reasonable, they are overloaded with claims,” Bruchey said. “And so you have to make sure that the details of your claim that you think are important are brought to the attention of the adjuster.”

Check your insurance company’s work

If your insurance company sends its own expert to your damaged home to estimate the cost of clean-up,  ”make sure you get a copy of whatever estimate the insurance company relies upon when it decides how much to pay,” Bruchey said.

When Bruchey did this himself, he found the report had vastly underestimated the square footage of his home. “If that estimate  is a lowball number, it's incumbent upon you to find somebody to prepare an estimate of your own, give it to the insurance company, and insist that the insurance company take it into consideration,” he said.

If your insurer declines, ask them to explain why, in writing. (Again, document everything!)

Don’t move too fast

People whose homes survived the Eaton and Palisades fires may be anxious to move back in, but Greenspan, the public adjuster, urged people to be patient. “Safety should be the most important thing in everybody's mind right now,” she said.

Greenspan said people should probably wait to have their homes cleaned until after debris cleanup in the burn areas is finished since that process could kick soot and toxins back up into the air and into your home.

“ What you don't want to happen is you don't want to move too fast, do the initial cleaning and then not remediate it the right way. And in the summertime, when it's a hundred degrees, all of a sudden your house is smelling like a campfire again,” she said.

Many fire victims who lost their homes have already gotten initial payouts. But rebuilding will take years, and insurance issues are likely to get thornier as people get further away from the initial disaster, experts told LAist.

Be patient, Greenspan said. Right now, we’re still in triage mode.

Feeling overwhelmed and in need of help?

You have options.

Public adjusters: If you just don’t have the substantial amount of time and energy it takes to deal with your insurance company, you could contact a licensed public adjuster.

Public adjusters will handle all the communication and logistics with your insurance company on your behalf. You retain “ the final say on everything,” Greenspan explained.

Check out these tips on hiring a public adjuster from the National Association of Public Insurance Adjusters.

Legal help: If you need help going over the nuances of your policy or have other fire-related legal concerns, many lawyers and groups are offering free legal assistance. Ask trusted neighbors and friends for referrals, or you can start with these well-established nonprofit groups:

• Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles
• Public Counsel
• Disaster Legal Assistance Collaborative
• Bet Tzedek

File a complaint: If you think your insurance company, or someone claiming to work on behalf of your insurance company, is acting unlawfully, you can file a complaint with the state Department of Insurance.

Dan Shimell, an attorney and a new face in local politics, is Santa Ana’s next mayor after a shocking win against incumbent Valerie Amezcua. His win has become one of the most surprising upsets in Orange County’s general election and marks a shift for a city that previously elected its first Latina mayor.

Amezcua congratulated Shimell on social media late Monday night after the last round of election results nearly doubled Shimell’s lead. As of Tuesday night, Shimell held a 5-point lead over Amezcua. Amezcua did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment.

“It has been the honor of my life to serve the people of Santa Ana,” Amezcua said in a post. “Together, we have accomplished great things. We invested in our neighborhoods, expanded opportunity for families, and strengthened the services that make Santa Ana home. Our work was never about one person. It was about all of us moving this community forward.”

Aside from Shimell, progressives Sandra de Anda and Isuri S. Ramos are also projected to win City Council seats, deepening the Santa Ana City Council’s progressive bench.

A flashpoint in Amezcua’s re-election campaign was during the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that rattled much of Southern California, including Santa Ana, Orange County’s only sanctuary city. The raids sparked protests that drew a heavy law enforcement response from Santa Ana police, including rubber bullets and tear gas.

In Amezcua’s first public response, she accused protesters of inciting chaos and violence. She later walked back her comments in a city statement, saying most protesters were demonstrating peacefully and that she did not support the raids.

Shimell told LAist he thinks Santa Ana voters, especially young and first-time voters, went to the polls to vote for those who can't.

“Those who have been or might in the future be impacted by immigration policy and enforcement,” Shimell added. “Taking a bold stance on immigration and police accountability seemed to resonate with voters I spoke with, and stood in stark contrast to the [police]-backed candidates who remained largely silent on those issues.”

What does this say about Santa Ana politics? 

Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento served as mayor of the city from 2020 to 2022, and his current district includes Santa Ana. Sarmiento told LAist that the results were surprising but reflected the change voters want to see in their elected officials.

“I think the underlying message is that money and establishment conventional politics no longer is the formula to success in a campaign in the city,” Sarmiento said. “It's really the influence of people and voters over money. That's really the theme here.”

Santa Ana City Councilmember Thai Viet Phan told LAist that the race results were somewhat surprising — but spoke to a larger trend.

“[In] the election results throughout the country … you saw a very leftward shift, with not just candidates but also just how voters voted,” Phan said. “I think that was reflected here in Santa Ana on the council.”

Amezcua outspent Shimell — by a lot

Shimell raised about $28,500 in his campaign for mayor. Amezcua raised more than $75,000 and received more than $200,000 in outside support — more than half of that came from the Santa Ana Police Officers Association.

Mike Moodian, a public policy professor at Chapman University, told LAist that in many ways, the races capture the zeitgeist of Santa Ana.

“Here we saw that there was a police union-backed group, and there was a resistance to that,” Moodian said. “People might have seen the incumbent mayor as part of a police union-backed establishment."

He explained that voters may have looked at Shimell as a fresh face who can represent more people and that the city is experiencing a deeper progressive shift.

“I find the residents of Santa Ana tend to be much more involved and engaged in local politics than most other cities in Orange County. So you also have a well-informed, engaged citizenry that showed up, and the voices were heard in Santa Ana,” Moodian said.

Moodian said Amezcua may have lost support from some voters because they were unsatisfied with her response to immigration enforcement.

What’s next?

Ballots are still being counted. The OC Registrar of Voters posts updates every day, except Sundays, at 5 p.m. Election results will be certified by Dec. 3. You can find updates on key measures and other races here.

For seven years, Nazmul Chaudhry has been trying to get the city of Los Angeles to fix a broken sidewalk in front of his store.

Chaudhry owns Deshi Food, a restaurant and grocery store in Little Bangladesh. Before I could even begin our interview, he led me to the front of his store to show me the sidewalk that pedestrians sidestep and electric scooter riders slow down around.

He said he’s tried to get the attention of city officials, but nothing has been done.

The broken sidewalk in front of Nazmul Chaudhry's shop in Little Bangladesh.

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Yusra Farzan

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LAist

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He’s hoping that will soon change. He said then-candidate Nithya Raman spent time in the historic enclave just north of Koreatown this fall, talking with community members about their problems. For the first time since he moved to the United States in 1989, Chaudhry is excited about a mayoral election.

“Everybody's happy because we've never seen anyone [come] like that directly to us,” Chaudhry said.

Mayor-elect Raman is of Indian descent and an immigrant. When she takes office, she will be the first South Asian mayor of Los Angeles. Chaudhry is proud of that distinction. But what means more to him is that Raman spent time walking the streets of Little Bangladesh, visiting businesses and speaking to community members about their concerns. Chaudhry said that, because of that, he asked all his customers and family members to vote for Raman. At dinner parties, Chaudhry said, Bengalis would share how they were excited to vote for Raman in this election.

Nazmul Chaudhry and one of his customers, Mohamed Hassen. They both voted for Nithya Raman for mayor.

In the Little Bangladesh area, vote returns to date show Raman with a 2-to-1 margin over Mayor Karen Bass.

 "Hopefully she's gonna take care of the city," Chaudhry said.

His business has been hit hard after federal immigration raids ramped up in Southern California. People are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And for those who do come to his store, he said, they are met with increased prices because of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump's administration on imported goods.

Nazmul Chaudry offers a lunch buffet at his restaurant but he has seen a drop in foot traffic after ICE raids ramped up.

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Yusra Farzan

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LAist

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"Everybody's suffering actually these days," Chaudhry said. “If you see, Nov. 3 is a huge change because people [are] fed up."

Chaudhry also said city services don’t do a good job keeping the streets clean. So he takes it upon himself to pick up trash in front of his shop.

A few weeks before Election Day, Raman posted a social media video from Little Bangladesh addressing the trash along the street.

His relatives in New York told Chaudhry that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, also of Indian descent, has “changed the whole city.” He’s hoping for some of that change in Los Angeles when Raman takes office in December.

Shift away from identity politics

While Raman’s Indian background was a feature of her campaign, it was “not the central thesis,” said Sara Sadhwani,  an associate professor of politics at Pomona College and a senior researcher with AAPI Data.

In 2020, when Kamala Harris, also of Indian descent, was running for vice president, Sadhwani said, she conducted research on Indian Americans who wanted to see more representation in politics. In 2024, some of them turned away from Harris.

“When the economy is bad, identity slips away as the top issue on someone's mind,” she said.

Identity politics, Sadhwani said, was important in 2008 when the nation elected the first Black president, Barack Obama.

Los Angeles mayor-elect Nithya Raman poses for a photograph with family members after casting her vote on Election Day during the midterm elections at the Silverlake Community Church.

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Frederic J. Brown

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“ We're ushering in a new political generation of millennials and Gen Z; diversity is just expected at this point amongst a vast majority of Americans,” she said, highlighting how at the last census more people identified as multiracial.

Nationally too, Sadhwani said, thec ountry is seeing a shift. South Asians have gone from “model minority” to “governing minority.”

”The old script was that for Indian Americans, for South Asians, that being that quiet professional is what success meant,” she said. “When we look at Raman and also Mamdani, they're fighting for executive power in very visible, very messy city politics, and they won not by following the rules, but they won by challenging the status quo.”

South Asians as a political force

That idea resonates with Faizah Malik, managing attorney for housing justice at Public Counsel and a former L.A. City Council candidate.

“When we were growing up, our parents said, ‘Just keep your head down, go to school, get educated, make a nice life for your family, and that's it,’” she said. “Politics was not really part of the conversation, but I think what we're seeing is that we can run for office, we can win by being our full selves.”

This is an exciting time, she said, for “South Asian political empowerment,” with Raman set to join Mamdani in leading the country’s two largest cities.

Malik said that, as a housing advocate, she cares about Raman’s fight “to build more housing around the city that people can afford, her fight to keep renters in their homes, to prevent homelessness, her fight to try and really solve our homelessness crisis but also be efficient with our public dollars.”

Nikita Chaudhry, an actor and political organizer, wants to see Raman revitalize L.A.’s film industry, “to call the city the home of Hollywood again.”

“Having that kind of representation and knowing that it exists is really exciting because I think and hope it will activate South Asian Americans of all ages to get more involved in their communities,” Chaudhry said.

Raman's and Mamdani’s victories were years in the making, Chaudhry said: from organizing in their communities to holding other elected positions to engaging voters who are otherwise ignored by elected officials. And she hopes that it will inspire other South Asians to become more involved in their communities.

“If you're feeling activated, if you're feeling excited, that's great," she said. "Take that energy and the time and the skills and the specificity of what fires you up towards your local organization, towards your neighborhood, towards your community.”

As the race to represent L.A.’s Council District 9 remains too close to call, candidate Estuardo Mazariegos’ campaign has accused the campaign of Jose Ugarte, the front-runner, of potential ballot tampering.

The Mazariegos campaign made the accusations Monday, saying it had filed a complaint with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. In a press release, the campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.

In one case, Mazariegos’ team accused Ugarte campaigners of filling out a ballot on a voter’s behalf without her knowledge of who she was voting for.

“Taking people’s ballots, filling them out, and not following legal voter assistance guidelines in a district that has faced so much disenfranchisement is disgusting,” Mazariegos said in a statement.

Mike Sanchez, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, said his office had forwarded the news release to the district attorney for review. He also pointed to the California Elections Code, which says that a “ballot shall not be disqualified solely because the person authorized to return it did not provide on the identification envelope their name or signature.”

Under California law, a voter can authorize another person to return their mail-in ballot — an approach also called ballot harvesting.

Justin Levitt, a  professor of constitutional law at Loyola Marymount University, told AirTalk Tuesday that there is no legal limit on the number of ballots an individual can turn in on others’ behalf, so long as they aren’t being compensated per ballot returned.

“Even if there were some sort of administrative wrongdoing, as long as there's no indication of fraud with the ballot itself, those ballots will all be counted,” he said.

Levitt said, however, that signing a ballot and then handing it to someone else to fill out would be illegal.

“ To the extent that there are allegations now that the DA may investigate, I suspect that's what they'll be focusing on,” Levitt continued.

The Mazariegos campaign also sent a collection of photos to the press, including one of a campaigner, USC student Amir King, returning a stack of ballots at a ballot drop box.

The Mazariegos campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.

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Courtesy of Estuardo Mazariegos' Campaign

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Ugarte’s campaign responded to the accusations by pointing to a post by King on Instagram in which he accused the Mazariegos campaign of bullying him and making false claims about him.

“Why is he attacking me? For participating in our democracy, as is my right under California state law and for helping others participate in democracy, as is their right under California state law,” King said in the post.

As of Tuesday morning, just under 300 ballots separate Ugarte and Mazariegos, with 44,000 ballots left to count in L.A. County. It’s not clear how many ballots in Council District 9 are left to count.