A new state-commissioned study makes recommendations for standardized cleanup and sampling protocols for homes damaged by wildfires, guidance Colorado lacked after the wind-driven Marshall fire burned about 1,000 homes in Louisville and Superior, and rained potentially toxic ash on hundreds of others.
Inconsistent claims for testing the toxins were filed and cleaning processes were often inefficient, not just in Colorado, but in California and Hawaii, too, after wildfires tore through neighborhoods where the boundaries between natural landscapes and human development blur.
The lack of standards also brought a “battle of experts” between insurance carriers and policyholders, according to authors of a study published last month by an environmental consulting group.
The study, commissioned by Colorado’s Division of Insurance, aims to streamline the process for homeowners, insurers and regulators. The division was required to hire a third party to conduct the study under House Bill 1315, which was approved in 2024.
Still in draft form, the study will be revised after public feedback is collected over the next few weeks.
“Due to the outcry from survivors of WUI fires, there has been a rush to fill the void in the regulatory landscape, but as of yet, no accepted regulatory program in Colorado,” researchers from Partners Environmental Consulting Inc. wrote.
The study comes as more and more research shows the increasing hazards for those living in the wildland-urban interface. When wildfires reach the wildland-urban interface, they aren’t just burning vegetation. Flames devour human-made materials, including vehicles, buildings and everything inside them, like electronics, paint, plastics and furniture.
Gusty winds carry not just wood ash into homes, but also the residue of countless plastics, carpets, paints and construction material from suburban structures.
“In the evolving landscape of wildfire risk, particularly in the WUI, there remains no authoritative, enforceable standard for performing inspection, sampling, and remediation in homes affected by smoke, ash and soot infiltration,” researchers wrote. “Regulatory and technical guidance instead remains fragmented across various agencies, each typically focusing on debris removal, outdoor air quality or structural firefighting, rather than on the less visible, but potentially insidious contamination of indoor environments.”
After one Superior family’s home survived the 2021 Marshall fire’s flames, but became inundated with smoke, the toxins forced the family to move half-a-dozen times over two years to find housing, each move farther from school and work, said Brett Allen, a public adjuster and co-external chair of Rocky Mountain Association of Public Insurance Adjusters.
The family, with three children under the age of 11, all had autoimmune disease and when they stepped inside their home, they felt sick, Allen said.
“It was just a huge difference of opinion on what the correct way to bring it to a pre-loss condition really was,” said Allen, who reviewed the study, but did not work with the Colorado DOI to draft it.
A standard protocol for evaluating conditions would help eliminate the conflict, he said.
“It was just very, very hard on the family, very stressful,” he added. “Being told one thing by one expert and another expert comes and has something completely different. They were just beside themselves.”
Other homeowners he represented returned to their smoke-damaged homes weeks after the fire, after an initial cleaning that was agreed upon by their insurance.
“Because all of the contaminants are getting kicked up every time the wind blows or construction is happening or anything, their house would get recontaminated and they would get sick,” Allen said. “They had headaches, they had lung issues, all sorts of various ailments. And it just showed how present the hazards were that you couldn’t see. It really brought that to life.”
The standardized protocols would help create a “level playing field” to start the claim and help eliminate the initial delays, said Michael Stoycheff, a public adjuster who represented about 50 homeowners whose homes were lost or damaged in the Marshall fire.
The most destructive fire in Colorado history, which started Dec. 30, 2021, gobbled more than 900 houses in the span of six hours. It displaced tens of thousands of people and killed two. Officials estimated the loss at $2 billion.
Some of the claims took three years to settle, Stoycheff said.
“Those delays are what affects (policyholders) the most. Their families are displaced, and the longer you argue, or you go back and forth with the other side trying to just get these really easy things out of the way, it keeps those people from coming to a resolution so they can actually start repairing their house to get home,” he said.
The Marshall fire underscored the problem of toxic leftovers from wildland-urban fires, he said.
“It troubles me to say this, but when you have a wildfire, most people are better off their house burning all the way to the ground than it is to have a smoke inundated home, like we saw from half of the Marshall fire and some of them up in the East Troublesome fire,” Stoycheff said.
While many insurance carriers see the need to create standards around assessing smoke and ash damage, the study could have unintended consequences for Colorado’s insurance market, experts said.
“Property insurance is designed to cover repair and replacement of property damage to the original lifetime quality, not unforeseen or incalculable environmental hazards,” said Carole Walker, executive director Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association.
“We caution that public-policy decisions based on a Colorado-based study could have far-reaching impacts on an already fragile property insurance market and lead to further availability and affordability challenges.”
Walker said the industry trade group is still reviewing and drafting comments on the study.
“I’ve been in my job 28 years, from the Hayman fire to the Waldo Canyon fire to the East Troublesome to the Marshall fire,” Walker said. “We always have these concerns with, how do we put some standards in place for smoke handling, understanding that these claims are very individualized. So I think we just need to be very cautious when we go down this road.”
Colorado is a dual-catastrophe state, she said, with damage from catastrophic hail storms and for wildfire, and keeping the insurance market stable is a big concern.
“We just need to be very, very careful about anything that could destabilize the market,” Walker said.
Others fear that the draft report could cause property insurance premiums to increase and mislead consumers by mandating costly testing that doesn’t lead to improved outcomes.
“Like any business, ‘smoke restoration contractors’ are profit-motivated,” Karen Collins, vice president of property and environmental at trade group American Property Casualty Insurance Association, said in an email. “There is some concern that insurers are a target for the same kind of opportunism that drove asbestos claims and litigation in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, and claims and litigation over mold damage and health effects in the ’90s and 2000s.”
If implemented, the proposed protocols could lead to increased claim severity and frequency, “driving up costs for consumers and potentially reducing access to coverage,” Collins said.
“Policy decisions of this magnitude must be grounded in sound science and transparent methodology to ensure consumer confidence and market stability,” she said.
The 66-page draft makes five recommendations, including standardizing sampling, testing and remediation protocols to include contaminants beyond soot, char and ash, and establishing cleanup standards. It also recommends educating policyholders and insurers on anticipated changes in claims severity under the new protocols, completing a data-based insurance cost analysis and tracking of ongoing scientific data on wildfire-related toxins.
The study also looks at the potential effects standardization could have on insurance costs and availability in Colorado and suggests that a standardized approach could result in lower overall insurance costs.
The Division of Insurance will hold a virtual meeting Dec. 18 to gather feedback on the first draft. Comments can also be emailed to DORA_INS_RulesandRecords@state.co.us through Dec. 16.
Wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change, which creates higher temperatures, prolonged droughts, and changes in vegetation and weather patterns that make fire more likely.
Colorado joins a group of states, including California, Oregon and Washington, that are developing comprehensive wildfire smoke and ash remediation protocols, according to the study.
“While these initiatives reflect a growing awareness of the issue, none have yet resulted in enforceable, statewide remediation protocols,” researchers wrote. “Instead, efforts remain fragmented, and most states are still in preliminary research or pilot program phases.”
If Colorado adopted the recommendations, it could be first in the country to do so.
“I think it’s pretty neat that we’re the first state to implement something so daunting and take that on,” Allen said. “It just shows that the people that are in control actually do care and we’re not just numbers in an algorithm that the policyholders do matter.”