When Fire Behaves Differently

Thursday, September 10th, 2026 — On December 30, 2021, a grass fire started in the foothills west of Boulder, Colorado, on a day with wind gusts over 100 miles per hour and almost no snow on the ground. In about six hours it crossed open fields, jumped a six-lane highway, and burned through the suburbs of Superior and Louisville, destroying more than 1,000 homes. It was winter. The homes sat in subdivisions with lawns and cul-de-sacs, miles from any forest. Most of the homeowners had never considered themselves at wildfire risk, and neither had most of the carriers insuring them.

Eighteen months later, a wind-driven fire destroyed most of Lahaina, Hawaii, killing 102 people and burning about 2,200 structures in a coastal town. In January 2025, the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles County destroyed more than 16,000 structures in some of the most expensive residential real estate in the country, producing insured losses that estimates place well above $30 billion. In each case the fire arrived faster than evacuation plans assumed, spread from structure to structure rather than tree to tree, and left standing homes downwind filled with smoke and ash.

The industry's models, building codes, and most adjusters' experience were built around a different wildfire peril, one that burned forest and the occasional cabin. This article is a field guide to the claims that the new one produces, organized by the type of file.

What changed about fire

Three things, mainly.

Fire season is longer. Across the West, the season now runs weeks longer on each end than it did in the 1980s, and in grassland regions like Colorado's Front Range and the Texas Panhandle, the concept of a season has largely dissolved. Dry fuel and high wind can coincide in any month.

Fire has moved into the wildland-urban interface, the zone where housing meets undeveloped land. Roughly one in three homes in the United States now sits in the WUI, and the number has grown steadily for decades. Once a fire enters a subdivision under high wind, the houses become the fuel. Embers land on roofs, in gutters, in attic vents, and against wooden fences, and each ignited house casts embers on the next. Firefighters describe it as an urban conflagration, and the physics have more in common with the Chicago fire of 1871 than with a forest fire.

Smoke and ash travel farther and settle on more homes. A fire that destroys 1,000 structures produces smoke damage claims from many thousands more, downwind homes that did not burn but filled with the combustion products of everything in a modern house, including plastics, treated lumber, electronics, and vehicles. These claims are numerous, slow, expensive, and contested, and they are where much of the friction in recent fire events has been.

The total loss file

A wildfire total loss is one of the most straightforward coverage determinations in property insurance and one of the most complicated claims to handle well. The house is gone. Fire is a covered peril. The dispute, if there is one, is about how much, and about the process of getting there.

Scoping a house that no longer exists. The adjuster's job is to establish what was there. Sources include the county assessor's records, the last appraisal, listing photos from the most recent sale, permits for additions and renovations, the policyholder's own photographs, aerial imagery, and in newer subdivisions, the builder's plans. Expect the policyholder's memory to be a poor source in the first weeks. They have lost everything, and a request to describe the kitchen finishes is hard to answer. Ask, but ask later, and build from records first.

Contents without an inventory. The standard approach to a contents claim, an itemized inventory with values and documentation, is close to impossible after a total loss fire. Everything that would have supported it burned. Colorado and California have both enacted laws requiring insurers to pay a substantial percentage of the contents limit on total losses in declared disasters without an itemized inventory, and many carriers now do so voluntarily everywhere. Where the carrier's practice allows it, advance a significant portion of contents early and let the itemization follow. The families who are asked to list every sock and spoon in the first month describe it as the cruelest part of the process.

Additional living expense for the long haul. A total-loss rebuild after a major fire takes two to four years, sometimes more. Debris removal alone takes months. Permitting in a jurisdiction processing thousands of applications at once takes more. Contractors are booked. Materials are scarce. Standard ALE limits of 12 or 24 months run out before the foundation is poured. California extended the minimum ALE period after declared disasters to 24 months with extensions to 36 for good cause, and Colorado followed with similar legislation after Marshall. Adjusters should know the applicable minimum, set the policyholder's expectations about it in the first weeks, and document every extension request carefully.

Underinsurance. After the Marshall Fire, Colorado's Division of Insurance reviewed claims and concluded that most of the destroyed homes were insured for less than the cost to rebuild them, many by hundreds of thousands of dollars. The same has been true after every major fire since the Tubbs Fire in 2017. Construction cost inflation, demand surge, and code upgrades all push the rebuild cost above the policy limit, and the adjuster is the one who explains that the limit is the limit. Extended replacement cost endorsements, ordinance or law coverage, and inflation guards help. So does explaining early and clearly what the policy will pay and what it will not, so the policyholder can plan a rebuild within the number rather than discovering the gap at the framing stage.

The standing home downwind

The homeowner whose house did not burn has a different problem, and increasingly a harder claim.

Wildfire smoke carries soot, char, ash, and a chemical load that includes volatile organic compounds, heavy metals from burned electronics and vehicles, and in older neighborhoods, asbestos and lead. It enters homes through every gap, settles in HVAC systems, penetrates soft goods, insulation, and porous surfaces, and produces odors and residues that can persist for months. The policyholder can smell it. The question is whether it constitutes direct physical loss and what remediation is owed.

Practical realities on these files:

• Testing matters and is contested. Industrial hygienists can sample surfaces and air for combustion byproducts, and the results support or undercut the remediation scope. Carriers and policyholders disagree about which tests, which thresholds, and which labs. Know your carrier's protocol and whether the state has weighed in. After the January 2025 Los Angeles fires, the California FAIR Plan's handling of smoke claims drew formal scrutiny from the state insurance commissioner over the standard it applied, which is a reminder that regulators are watching this category closely.
• Remediation ranges from cleaning to gutting. A light smoke exposure may require HVAC cleaning, surface wipe-down, and laundering. A heavy exposure may require removal of insulation, sealing or replacement of drywall, replacement of soft contents, and extended air scrubbing. The scope should follow the testing and the visible evidence, and the file should show the reasoning.
• Contents cleaning versus replacement is a recurring fight. Textiles, mattresses, upholstered furniture, and anything porous absorb smoke. Some can be cleaned by specialty vendors. Some cannot. Document the attempt and the result.
• Health concerns are real and are not the adjuster's to dismiss. Policyholders with children, asthma, or other conditions will be frightened about residues, and the adjuster who waves that off creates an adversary. Take the concern seriously, order the testing, and let the results carry the conversation.
• Volume is enormous. For every total loss there are many smoke claims, and they arrive over months as people return home. Triage protocols and consistent standards across the adjusting team matter more here than on any other fire file type, because inconsistency between neighbors produces complaints, and neighbors compare notes.

The partial loss

Between the total loss and the standing home is the house that burned partly. A garage lost to embers, a roof breached, a deck and one wall consumed before the fire department arrived. These claims combine fire damage, water damage from suppression, smoke damage throughout, and the code-upgrade questions that any significant repair triggers. They are scoped like any fire loss, with attention to hidden damage in framing and wiring, and they raise the repair-versus-replace question in a market where both are more expensive than the estimate database says. They also tend to be the files where the policyholder feels least served, because the neighbors with total losses are getting large checks and the partial loss is getting a scope dispute.

The split policy

In high-risk fire regions, a growing share of homeowners no longer have a single homeowners policy. They have a state FAIR Plan policy for fire, lightning, and smoke, and a separate difference-in-conditions policy from a private carrier for everything else. California's FAIR Plan grew from about 140,000 policies in 2018 to more than half a million by 2025 as admitted carriers pulled back, and other western states have seen the same shift on a smaller scale.

For the adjuster, a split policy means two carriers, two adjusters, and two sets of limits on the same loss. The FAIR Plan handles the fire and smoke damage. The DIC carrier handles water damage from suppression, theft from the evacuated home, liability, and often additional living expense, depending on how the DIC policy is written. Coverage limits on FAIR Plan policies are frequently lower than the rebuild cost, contents coverage is often actual cash value rather than replacement cost, and the policyholder may not understand which carrier owes what. As with NFIP on a flood file, get the other adjuster's name on day one, agree on the allocation in writing, and do not let the policyholder carry messages between you.

Debris removal and the government cleanup

After major fires, the debris removal process is often run by government. In Los Angeles, the EPA handled hazardous materials and the Army Corps of Engineers handled structural debris for property owners who opted in through a right-of-entry program. Homeowners who opted in paid nothing directly, and the government sought reimbursement from insurers for the debris removal coverage in the policy. Homeowners who opted out hired their own contractors and claimed the cost.

Adjusters need to know which path the policyholder took, what the policy's debris removal provision provides (commonly a percentage of Coverage A, plus an additional amount if limits are exhausted), and how the government's reimbursement request will be handled. Confusion about who pays for debris removal has been a major source of delay and complaint after every large fire, and it is avoidable with a clear explanation early.

Safety on the fire ground

Burned residential areas are hazardous for weeks. Ash contains the heavy metals and asbestos described above. Structures that appear stable may not be. Utilities may be live. Trees weakened by fire fall without warning. Adjusters should wear N95 or better respirators, eye protection, gloves, and boots with thick soles, should not enter burned structures until cleared, and should follow local hazmat guidance about disturbing ash. Carriers have been inconsistent about providing this equipment. Adjusters should bring their own.

Doing it well

Adjusters who have worked multiple major fires describe the same lessons. Advance money early, because families need it and the alternative is a slow, painful inventory. Explain the ALE timeline and the coverage limits in the first two weeks, in writing. Treat smoke claims with the same seriousness as total losses, because the policyholder does. Coordinate with the debris program so the homeowner is not caught between two payers. And recognize that the policyholder standing in front of you may have watched their neighborhood burn from a car on a jammed evacuation route, and that the adjuster is often the first person from any institution who has shown up to help.