When the insurance adjuster first stepped into his smoke-damaged property days after the Marshall Fire, Justin Meschler felt relief, believing the rehabilitation of his home was in good hands. But more than two years later, Meschler and his family have yet to return and are pursuing legal action against their insurance company, USAA, for its handling of their claims.
“It has been a nightmare since the beginning,” Meschler said.
Meschler alleges that USAA delayed testing for soot, char and ash, substances that can spread through smoke plumes and pose health risks if not properly removed from a home. USAA hired an industrial hygienist five months after the fire, but Meschler believed the inspection was limited. “He would go into places like the crawl space and sniff,” Meschler said.
According to Meschler, the hygienist only took one sample from inside the house and did not test for soot, char or ash. Although the tests conducted by the hygienist came back negative for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — another toxic wildfire byproduct — Meschler hired his own experts. These experts detected char behind the drywall and in the insulation, suggesting that contaminants had penetrated deep into the walls. USAA did not respond to a request for comment on Meschler’s claims or its policies for testing smoke-damaged homes.
This dispute mirrors the experiences of other Marshall Fire “standing home” survivors, who escaped flames but have lived with uncertainty about their homes’ safety. And it underscores a larger issue: the lack of scientific research and clear standards for testing or cleaning smoke-damaged homes from urban wildland fires.
Now, two Boulder-area legislators, state Reps. Judy Amabile of Boulder and Kyle Brown of Louisville, are taking the first step to address this gap. They have introduced HB24-1315, titled “Study on Remediation of Property Damaged by Fire.” The bill would fund a study to identify the best methods for inspecting, testing and cleaning homes contaminated by smoke from a fire. The House Business Affairs and Labor Committee has passed it. Now that the budget for the next fiscal year has been approved, bill HB24-1315 will have to make it out of more committees and head to the state House and Senate for approval, according to Brown.
Seeking roughly $200,000, the bill would task the Division of Insurance with conducting this first-of-its-kind study, which could recommend guidelines for insurers dealing with smoke, soot and ash contamination after wildfires. Currently, there are no professional standards for insurance companies to follow when it comes to testing and cleaning smoke-filled homes.
“It is really about the homeowners,” Amabile said. “First, they have survivor’s guilt that their house didn’t burn down and they are relieved. Then, they run into this nebulous space where they aren’t sure what they are asking for. They don’t know what they need, and they don’t know if their home is safe.”
An award-winning project published by Boulder Reporting Lab, “No Return,” investigated this lesser-known threat caused by smoke from the Marshall Fire. While flames destroyed more than 1,000 homes, many others suffered smoke damage. Unseen toxins from burned homes, vehicles and vegetation settled inside the still-standing homes, causing health issues for some residents who were unaware of this consequence.
After hiring remediation companies, residents discovered there were no standardized criteria for determining when it’s safe to return post-fire. Insurers denied testing requests or claims for smoke-damaged property for some homeowners.
“You lose faith in the company that you trusted with your family’s needs,” Meschler said of his insurer.
Passing this bill would be a small but important step in the effort to get property owners, insurance companies and the Division of Insurance on the same page about making homes safe, according to the bill sponsors.
“Right now there is a lot of uncertainty,” Brown told Boulder Reporting Lab. “For homeowners, it is about knowing there are standards designed to ensure health and safety after they return home. For insurance companies, it is about certainty that they have done what is required.”
It is an issue expected to resurface due to climate change in the state. Experts predict an increase in the number and intensity of wildland-urban fires, posing health risks that scientists and public health experts are just beginning to understand.
“For me, it is not only that we are doing something for folks struggling after the Marshall Fire,” said Brown, “but for those who may be impacted by future fires.”