Monday, August 31, 2026

County Supervisors, Counsel to Announce Next Steps Monday in State Farm Wildfire Claims Investigation

Los Angeles County Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Lindsey P. Horvath, joined by County Counsel Dawyn R. Harrison, are scheduled to announce next steps Monday morning in the county’s investigation into State Farm’s handling of claims from the January 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires, according to a media advisory.

The announcement is set for the Temple Street steps outside the third-floor entrance of the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, 500 W. Temple St. in Los Angeles. The county has not said in advance what it will contain.

The investigation, opened Nov. 13, 2025 under California’s Unfair Competition Law, followed complaints from residents about delays, underpayments and denials of legitimate wildfire claims. It matters most in Altadena, where the Eaton Fire killed 19 people, according to CAL FIRE, and destroyed more than 9,400 structures. Barger represents the Fifth District, which includes Altadena; Horvath’s Third District includes the Pacific Palisades area.

County Counsel demanded records on rotating adjuster practices, smoke damage payments, additional living expenses and State Farm’s use of artificial intelligence tools in claims review,

Monday, August 31, 2026

Guest Opinion | Robert Staehle, Lori Paul: Piecemeal, Costly Board of Forestry Regulations Fail to Significantly Reduce Fire Risk: We Need a Different Approach.

We live in a designated Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone (VHFHSZ). We support this designation, which is based on reality. You may not live within a VHFHSZ; however, the massive devastation in the Eaton and Palisades fires foretell a VHFHSZ in your future.

We need an affordable approach to preventing, mitigating, and recovering from future wildfires. For those in designated “very high hazard” areas, the Board of Forestry (BofF) has issued new, counterproductive “Zone 0” regulations that will be very costly, damaging to our properties, and that may actually increase fire risk. 

Even if you have a bed of high-moisture succulents and similar plants that protected your house from embers along walls during the Eaton Fire, the new regulations say you will have to remove those plants within 5 feet of your home. Same goes for a green hedge that may have protected your house… and privacy. And for trees that shade and cool your home, requiring additional A/C costs. 

The new regulations fail to consider what your house is made of: Cinder block,

Monday, August 31, 2026

Guest Opinion | Shawna Dawson Beer: We Stopped Something Worse. Please Don’t Call It a Victory for Fire Survivors.

By Shawna Dawson Beer

In the days since Governor Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders announced their wildfire reform rolled into 1700 pages of SB 492, a narrative has taken hold.

Fire survivors won.

I wish that were true.

There is absolutely something worth celebrating here. Fire survivors, consumer advocates, community organizations and legislators fought extraordinarily hard against a proposal that could have done profound damage to the rights of people who have already lost everything. Some of its worst provisions did not survive. But stopping something worse is not the same thing as winning.

Survivor organizations were asked Sunday to sign onto a letter taking a Neutral position on SB 492, in other words, not Oppostion, I think we need to be very clear about the distinction and why Beautiful Altadena will not be signing it.

First Things First. This Is Not An Indictator of Division in Altadena

I want to state this clearly from the outset because disagreement is too easily turned into a story about conflict.

Monday, August 31, 2026

SoCal Cools Monday, Tropical Moisture Could Bring Tuesday Storms

CITY NEWS SERVICE

Southern California will cool down Monday before tropical moisture brings a chance of showers and thunderstorms Tuesday, while forecasters are also watching another possible tropical system for next weekend.

Temperatures Monday are expected to be 4 to 8 degrees below normal in most areas, with highs in the valleys only reaching the mid-80s to lower 90s, according to the National Weather Service.

The cooling will be accompanied by increased onshore flow and a return of marine-layer clouds. Forecasters said low clouds should become more widespread Monday morning, particularly along the Los Angeles County coast.

Temperatures are not expected to change much Tuesday, but conditions will become more humid as subtropical moisture moves into the region.

“This subtropical moisture influx will lead to a 15 to 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms focused over LA County Tuesday afternoon and into the evening,” forecasters said.

In Orange County, increased high cloud cover is expected Tuesday and Wednesday,

Sunday, August 30, 2026

Eaton Fire Survivor Groups Declare Victory in Sacramento Wildfire Liability Deal

Every Fire Survivor’s Network and Consumer Watchdog say the amended SB 492 announced Saturday leaves survivors’ right to sue utilities intact

Two advocacy groups that organized Eaton Fire survivors against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wildfire liability proposals said Saturday that newly published amendments to Senate Bill 492 preserve survivors’ right to hold utilities accountable in court.

Every Fire Survivor’s Network and Consumer Watchdog issued that assessment in a press release Saturday hours after Newsom and legislative leaders announced the agreement.

The measure, which lawmakers are scheduled to vote on Tuesday, carries direct weight in Altadena, epicenter of the Eaton Fire.

Survivors from the community became a visible force in the campaign against the governor’s plan, and ramped up their presence in Sacramento over the past week.

The groups said the amended bill does not cap the economic or noneconomic damages survivors may recover, does not deny recovery to smoke-damage survivors outside what the release called an artificial fire-perimeter line,

Sunday, August 30, 2026

National Day of Prayer for Disaster Survivors Event at Pasadena Church Sunday

Interfaith congregations will gather at 10 a.m. Sunday at All Saints Church in Pasadena for a National Day of Prayer for Disaster Survivors, an observance meant to stand in solidarity with wildfire survivors and to call for federal funding for long-term disaster recovery, organizers LA Voice and Rebuild.Us said in announcing the event.

The gathering falls 600 days after the Jan. 7, 2025, fires, with more than $15 billion in federal long-term recovery funds reported as still unappropriated for Eaton and Palisades survivors.

All Saints has taken part in Eaton Fire recovery since the night the fire started. More than 180 people sheltered at the church overnight on Jan. 7, 2025, and it remained open the next day as an emergency shelter. Seventy-two families in the congregation lost everything.

LA Voice, a multi-racial, multi-faith community organization, says the wildfires displaced 16 of its member or partner congregations and that its Just Restoration campaign provides direct cash assistance to survivors. Rebuild.Us says it delivers money to vetted frontline groups within 48 hours of a disaster.

Sunday, August 30, 2026

Photographer’s Fire-Survivor Portraits Exhibit Closes Today With a Live Performance in Pasadena

“From Ashes We Gather” will feature a performance and closing event for photographer Gayle Nicholls-Ali’s exhibition of portraits of fire survivors at 4 p.m. today at DENA Heals, 300 E. Colorado Blvd., Suite 151, in Pasadena.

Julia Grob and Kahlil Almustafa of Home Microphone will present an in-process script drawn from recorded interviews with community members, according to the event announcement.

Home Microphone began as a pop-up stage curated and produced with Grob and Almustafa at Creative Workers Rising, a resource fair for fire-impacted creatives held May 30 at the Eaton Fire Collaboratory in Altadena. Cornerstone Theater Company co-hosted that fair with the Arts & Culture Coalition of Altadena and said the stage hosted performances from 7-year-olds and 70-year-olds. Cornerstone said of it that “it held a space for wild comedy, gorgeous improvisation, collective joy, and shared mourning.”

Nicholls-Ali lost her Altadena home and the collection of antique film cameras she used to make her work in the January 2025 Eaton Fire.

Sunday, August 30, 2026

Free Cyanotype Sessions Open at Arlington Garden for Eaton Fire Community Artwork

Pasadena artist Kate Lain will hold the first of three free outdoor art-making sessions this fall at Arlington Garden on Sept. 13, inviting people affected in any way by the January 2025 Eaton Fire to help make a 50-foot textile stream that will go on temporary view at the garden in Spring 2027.

The project, called Watershed, is built on the premise that making art in community with others and with the environment can be healing. Participants will use cyanotype — an analog photographic process that uses sunlight and water and typically yields blue-and-white images — to print designs onto smaller fabric pieces that will later be sewn together.

Participants are encouraged to bring a small meaningful object to lay on the fabric — something that survived the fire, something that has brought comfort since, or anything else — which the sun turns into a shadow print, according to Arlington Garden. Objects go home with their owners. All art-making supplies are provided and no prior experience is needed,

Sunday, August 30, 2026

California Lawmakers Strike Wildfire Deal That Leaves Out Most of Newsom’s Big Demands

By Jeanne Kuang and Levi Sumagaysay, CALMATTERS

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.

Saturday, August 29, 2026

Eaton Fire Survivors Await Sacramento Deal as Newsom’s Subrogation Push Falters

Legislative leaders have refused the governor’s terms on insurance recovery from utilities, and the session ends Monday with no published bill text

Gov. Gavin Newsom and Senate Democrats entered the final weekend of the legislative session without an agreement on wildfire liability, after the governor’s push to eliminate insurance subrogation collapsed in a late-Thursday-night closed-door meeting.

The stakes are local in Altadena and Pasadena, where state and Los Angeles fire investigators found that Southern California Edison’s equipment — a decades-old decommissioned transmission tower — was responsible for igniting the blaze.

Subrogation is the legal right of insurance companies that pay homeowners’ claims after a utility-caused fire to recoup a portion of those costs, typically 40 to 60%, from the responsible utility.

Newsom’s stymied package sought to limit or eliminate it as part of a broader effort to reduce the liability of California’s three investor-owned utilities: Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.