Camp Fire

The plan has proved pivotal due to increasingly disastrous fires in the state, including after the 2018 Camp fire that destroyed the town of Paradise and cost insurers $12.5 billion.

After the devastating Camp fire in Paradise in 2018, soil testing of 12,500 properties revealed that nearly one-third still contained dangerous levels of contaminants even after the first 6 inches of topsoil were scraped by federal crews.

After a series of devastating fires, including the 2018 Camp fire that destroyed the town of Paradise in Northern California, the insurance department in January 2021 notified the Fair Plan that this practice was illegal, but the insurer “ignored” the directives, the lawsuit asserts, prompting regulators to conduct a “market conduct” exam of the Fair Plan, according to the lawsuit.

In those cases — such as the 2018 Camp fire in Northern California and the Woolsey fire near Malibu in the same year — for properties where contaminants exceeded California’s standards, cleanup crews returned to remove another layer of soil, and additional soil testing was conducted.

Pacific Gas & Electric paid a settlement of cash and stock valued at $13.5 billion to victims of the 2018 Camp fire and other blazes.