Dlay Reyes lives with fear of visiting the park that is near his home. “I don’t want to go. I don’t feel sure to go to a park where we are still contaminated,” he says.
His fear is born from a nightmare that has lasted months and is still alive. Dlay is one of the victims of the Eaton fire, which destroyed 9,413 buildings and claimed the lives of 18 people in early 2025.
The flames began north of Altadena, a suburb of Los Angeles on the slopes of the San Gabriel mountains. Dlay, her husband and children were among the more than 50,000 people who received an immediate evacuation order on January 7.
“We left with nothing. We had no clothes, we had no food and we didn’t know what was going to happen,” Dely recalls.
The more than 3,000 firefighters dedicated to fighting the fire managed to turn it off in 24 days. Almost two blocks from the disaster area, Dely’s apartment was stretched, but suffered damage to the dense cloud of smoke and ash that extended by miles. He was able to return home at the end of February.
“We had ash and we could not return. The area was, then, very contaminated and we were afraid to get sick. But economically we did not have the opportunity to find another place that we could pay because the income rose a lot.”
Dely’s fear about the consequences of exposure to the remains of the smoke and ash cloud is shared by Dr. David Eisenman, director of the Public Health Center and Disasters of UCLA, who is dedicated to studying the impact of global climate change on people’s health:
“We are finding that the ashes and the soot on the ground have high levels of heavy metals and other toxic and even carcinogenic substances. The smoke enters the furniture, the walls, on the carpets and then it comes out little by little. Many times you cannot smell, but it contains substances such as benzine, formaldehyde and other toxic substances,” explains Eisenman.
Many of those affected found this extremely complicated situation when they returned to their neighborhoods.
“When you return and open your house, you find it full of ashes. All your memories, your things. You don’t know what to throw, you don’t know what to stay. I assure you: ‘This can be cleaned, this can be kept … but although it is cleaned, then it will return. And in the end it is a risk,” adds Dely.
There are companies that are dedicated to the cleanliness and restoration of housing after a fire. The process is known as remediation and is, at least in theory, covered under some insurance policies.
“My husband had to finish painting and I finished cleaning. Because the remediation companies … I thought they were going to clean all our things, but no. They did not clean my dishes, they did not clean my furniture,” Dely explains.
In addition, the insurer did not cover the cost of cleaning. She and her husband ended up as they could. But Dely is not alone. There are thousands of complaints from customers of insurance companies that accuse them of denying or delaying payments.
For example, the California Insurance Department announced an investigation in June due to the large number of complaints against State Farm. However, the company that has more than 1 million customers in the state says it is committed to helping its customers recover.
The insurer said that until mid -June they have received “approximately 12,870 claims in total related to fire” and have paid more than $ 4,000 million to their California customers.
Although you are already talking about modifications to the private insurance system, there is nothing concrete yet. While the victims continue to fight to obtain the compensation they need to rebuild their lives, it is essential that state and federal authorities, together with insurance companies, manage to update the system to improve equity, transparency and resilience. It is more than proven that the current system is not sustainable.
Meanwhile, Dlay and his family will continue to deal with the effects of a weed fire that ended the peace of mind of living in a toxic free community.
“It is afraid. I have two children, one of 10 and one of 7 years. My son worries a lot. And sometimes one as a dad means: ‘Do not worry, everything will be fine.’
This is the fifth and last article of five that have been published every week in the opinion. An analysis carried out by Zero Footprint Environmental Research Unit.