The elected insurance commissioner of California asked the insurers of the state to make maximum payments for the content of the houses destroyed during the fire disaster in southern California last month without obliging the police holders to provide A complete inventory of everything they have lost.
The office of Commissioner Ricardo Lara encouraged insurers to make payments, saying that companies should present themselves by February 28, that they have accepted the request.
“It is inhuman to demand survivors of forest fires that have lost everything to list all personal property in order to receive the full replacement cost under their policies,” Lara said in a statement on Thursday. “They must focus on the wider task of rebuilding their lives.”
While some owners have said they had already received a maximum of payments for personal property lost in the palisades and Eaton fires last month, others said they had received nothing.
Most of the insured have been invited to provide a detailed inventory of the content of their homes, a requirement that many have had difficulty in taking up, because they deal with a myriad of other challenges, in particular by finding temporary accommodation, by directing cleanings of properties and preparing to rebuild.
The law of the State obliges insurance companies to make at least the initial payments for personal property without completion of an inventory. The amount of this initial payment required can reach $ 250,000 and should not be less than 30% of the residential limit of the policy, said the commissioner’s office.
Insurers are supposed to inform their customers of the requirement. After payment in advance, the law indicates that the insured should receive full value of their property, until their limits of content policy, once they have provided documents.
Several owners of Altadena who lost everything in Eaton’s fire welcomed Lara’s initiative, saying on Saturday that it would be difficult to report on everything they lost.
Daniel Morales, a retired small business consultant, said that it would almost be impossible for him to calculate the value of his property – more than 2,000 pounds, works of art and a collection of memories of world religions, some of the hundreds of years.
“How do you put a value on these things?” It is a judgment, ”said Morales. “Much is intangible.”
Morals said that his insurer had told him that they would pay him 80% of his coverage limit, without documentation, and the rest if he could prove the loss. He said it would be “brilliant” if his carrier, which he refused to identify, would pay him the full coverage. “Because it was a total loss.”
Morales said that he had almost obtained any of his property from his western house in Altadena and that he also lost the desktop computer that stored many of his files.
An Altadena engineer who lost everything in the fire said that he had not yet received payment, or even a promise to pay, for the content of his house. He refused to give his name, saying that his employer would not want him to speak in the fire file.
The engineer said that he had not received anything from the California Fair plan for the content of a house that held $ 40,000 in amateur radio equipment and more than a dozen guitars, many are collection items , including “A ’59 Les Paul, a 2006 Martin, a 1967 Martin D-28, from the last year of Brazilian Rosewood. »»
He praised any pressure to rationalize payment to the owners, like him. “There is so much stress,” he said. “I am facing insurance on all aspects of this.”
Jennifer Gray Thompson, a recovery expert after the fire, praised Lara’s decision to hasten insurance payments.
“Detangling is such a burden that it stalls recovery times for many families,” said Thompson, who founded after the fire in the United States after fire has burned near his home in Sonoma County . “This re-traumatizes them and is intensely laborious.”
Reiterating the advice of insurance companies, Thompson recommended people to make a video of the contents of their homes and apartments.
“Drawers and open cupboards; Garage, outdoor, hangar, ”she said, by SMS. “Because who can remember everything in your house elsewhere?”
California Daily Newspapers
