Hell Angeles - Chapter 10
Insurance Hunger Games Part I. FEMA
The whole story takes place in Los Angeles after the fire. That’s what I’m beginning to believe. In early April, I receive a check in my mailbox for $171.99 from the U.S. Treasury Department. The check is dated February 21, 2025, and it may have arrived earlier but there was no postal service on my street. The sky is bright, the air is filthy sticky today, syrupy-sweet with chemical ash from trucks rolling past, blue tarps clapping loose what they scraped from burned lots above. There are very few families living here. It’s lonely without the boom and hiss of trucks. From my driveway, I can see the end of something—the tall trees crowning Will Rogers State Park sagging at the waist, blackened, dead soldiers—and the beginning of the burn scar. The hours where I’m allowed to feel naked terror, cut open like a knife by all that happened between January 7 and January 31—this is over. A check for $171.99 is in my hands. Lady Liberty holds her torch high next to “Pay to the order of.” Kansas City’s distribution manager, Vena S. Robison has added her bubbly signature clouded in grey. The amount is approved. It occurs to me; this is not the full amount. The check for smoke damage, vent cleaning, lead and arsenic in the water must still be in the mail. Is it lost?
Start at the beginning.
“Any good lawyer recommendations floating around yet?” Elena, who lost her home the night of January 7 asks this on January 8. Her loss is perfectly crystallized but not so for others. It’s early; recall, the fire starts at 10:30 am on January 7, 2025, in an area of repeated ignition (a fire erupted in the same spot New Year’s Eve a week earlier) and the flames, the heat will cause property damage on the scale of war for 24 days. Oddly, the Eaton fire will last exactly 24 days as well.[1] The earliest estimates of loss are $250 billion.[2] These estimates will ratchet down for political reasons (a separate and interesting activity is to track the progression of the total property damage estimates and who is releasing them) but only a few, like Elena, are lawyering up. “My husband Alex W is an insurance lawyer. Office number is 310-824-XXXX,” Maria responds. Peter goes a step further. “I spoke with a lawyer today who believes we collectively has a mass tort claim….”
Mass tort claims are in the ether. Advice starts coming hot and heavy and fast.
“Report claims immediately even if you are not sure about the status of your house.” This advice is from a local builder. “We talked to our insurance agent. Here are my notes. He said there will probably be no surcharge because it’s a major disaster. Keep all your receipts, including food and lodging. We should do an inventory of things we lost in the house. It’s better to start working on it soon.”
Time is of the essence.
At this hour, for me personally, it’s difficult to act. Time is critical but time has lost all meaning. When a 40-acre problem became a 400-acre problem in just under an hour, when it was compounded by other problems like 80 mph Santa Ana winds, waterless hydrants, missing firetrucks, when a total failure of imagination took place, when no one wearing a uniform—any uniform—thought to raise the white flag and shout from the rooftops that what we have here is a fire massacre in the making— a disaster shaping up to be the costliest in history (for reference: 9/11 was $21.8 billion of property damage, Hurricane Katrina was $41 billion, the Camp fire in Butte County in 2018, the deadliest in California history, cost $16.5 billion, the 2020 August Complex fire the largest by acreage in Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity Tehama, Glenn Lake burned 935 structures for a price tag of $10 billion) when this occurred, I lost my bearings. Call it vertigo. I could see only the mosquito airplane, flitting back and away, with its 500-gallon payload, spraying droplets into a volcano.
With each passing hour, each burning roof that collapses, lawyers get added to the message boards. “Mike Bidart and Ricardo Echevarria of Shernoff Bidart Echevarria for insurance lawyers. The best.” A google form circulates with the names of lawyers. “The Disaster Relief Clinic at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law will refer clients to lawyers who have agreed to take clients pro bono.” The anger is palpable, but it feels premature. Shouldn’t we first figure out what we lost? Shouldn’t we figure out our share of the loss? The call to prayer repeats. Act quickly. File now. File three hours ago.
But file with who?
We scratch our heads. What was the name of that insurance broker we used? It’s not saved in the phone. It turns out everyone operates under the same umbrella of false hope that the insurance broker is like a one-night stand, good for the moment, never needed again, so it takes a few calls to find the person who referred you. That guy says: don’t bother calling your insurance broker. The broker is gone. Moved out of state. If you want a copy of your insurance policy at this late hour, if you need to ask questions about the language (total coverage amount, amounts in each bucket, timeline of payments) better to call the company directly.
As we get the 800 number off the website, we see headlines scrolling across the phone. “The largest U.S. primary insurers have meaningfully reduced exposure to California due to costly and unquantifiable wildfire risk.” Jefferies Bank puts in a note. We’re noodling that statement, assuming it applies to someone else, because we know our personal situation. Sort of. We have a contract. Premiums were paid and the money was taken out of our bank account and now that the worst thing happened, the house and car and office burned, we collect. Right?
A neighbor on Napoli Street reports, “Hi. Heads up. We checked… our insurance company sent a letter just before the fire saying that they were going to drop our fire insurance. Who else received the letter?” A surf coach who lives on Tahitian Terrace calls his insurer right after his home burns. State Farm picks up the phone. The representative tells him that he has no fire coverage. In fact, everyone who lives the strip of land along the Pacific Coast Highway near Will Rogers Beach, was dropped from fire coverage in January 2024. Check your spam box. Check your burned mailbox.
Blood pressure going up. Heart racing. How many of us are going to be in this situation? Some of us? All of us? January 10, 2025, Los Angeles-based multi-line insurer Mercury General (MCY.N) is getting hammered. The stock is down 22%. Allstate is down 7% on the open. Insurance CEOs can smell a bloodbath coming; and for us, the insured, the hold times are getting longer, the responses cloudier. We ask for specific coverage amounts and get encyclopedias of unintelligible advice. For instance. Homeowner question. “Am I covered for partial loss?" Insurer answer. “Properties with Partial Damage. Partially Burned Down. Your insurance cover site security, generators, water and restroom facilities necessary for the protection and repair of your structure… Food Removal. Remove all food from refrigerators and kitchens. Ensure proper documentation before disposal of food, for reimbursement purposes.”
Huh? Can I just know if you’ll pay to rebuild my garage and kitchen? Do I have rental assistance while I’m evacuated? Shirley who owns Knolls Pharmacy on Marquez Avenue, she and her husband have owned and operated it for 35 years and paid insurance premiums through earthquake, wildfire, riots and burglary (pharmacies get burglarized all the time) learns that her insurer will not pay her a cent—not a cent of the $300,000 in fire coverage—until the “Inventory Salvage” expert is sent to the pile of rubble where her store existed. She has accounts payable, huge bills, right now. The beginning of January is when everyone refills their prescriptions. This story repeats, ad infinitum. The insured can’t get insured. Insurers are using every play in the playbook to “reduce exposure” to use the Jefferies Bank term, on the fly. Right now. Not last year or yesterday: right now.
Group panic. Group psychosis?
You mean the language in my insurance contract meant something different before this fire erupted? Is coverage fluid? Is contract law fluid? Yes, it’s fluid; the entire conversation between insured and insurer is changing; it’s dictated by things like size of the impact zone, the number of policies written in the disaster area plus the financial health of the insurer; if Mercury is your policy underwriter and Mercury is down 22% today, expect a longer hold time. Expect an uglier negotiation. Expect to have cash flow problems.
“We should look into government help like FEMA,” Jerome writes.
Silence. An asteroid falls out of the sky. If ever there were terrifying words—a suggestion we weren’t prepared to receive— you’re looking at it. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is mobilizing. Coming our way. There’s not a breathing soul among the 200,000 evacuees who is ready to get off the phone with Mercury or Chubb and get on the phone with FEMA. No person who fought their way through late-stage capitalism, i.e. overpriced college and graduate school and the fiercest job market in the world, who sold their soul to achieve prominence in their corner of American economy, law, medicine, tech, finance, entertainment, cosmetic dentistry, screenwriting, directing, acting, singing, sports management, solar panel fabrication thought it would come to this. No one imagined their journey up the American success ladder would land them on the top rung staring into the watering maw and murderous gaze of a FEMA inspector.
But here we are. Considering FEMA.
Breakfast on Friday January 10 our U.S. Congresswoman and 28th district of California Representative Judy Chu—a woman with a charmless haircut—repeats the invocation. She appears onscreen with information you don’t want. IMPORTANT FEMA INFORMATION. Here’s how to apply. Visit the website: disasterassistance.gov or call 800-621-FEMA (3362). USE: the FEMA mobile app. “What does this relief include? Temporary displacement assistance (e.g., hotel costs for up to two weeks) $770 for essential personal items. Larger direct grants to help cover essential needs such as medical bills, car repairs, and more….” Click the picture below or HERE.
But why, you wonder. Why would I enter these dark waters?
Here’s one reason. Lenders, insurers, increasingly, are requiring it. “I talked with BofA today (our lender) and they said they are waiting to hear from FEMA before making any decision on abatement.” Fascinating. Bank of America is waiting to hear from an entity which isn’t, according to their own definition, in the business of insurance. FEMA is not a public adjuster, not an arbiter of any sort, and yet, scores of financial institutions are withholding decisions (funding) based on FEMA? In fact, what is the technical definition of FEMA?
“FEMA assistance is not a replacement for insurance” the website states. The capstone doctrine, a click away, says FEMA is designed to “sustain and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.” The agency was created by President Jimmy Carter (coincidentally, lying in state on January 7, the day the Los Angeles fires erupt) to manage the Nation’s disasters. The United States has plenty of disasters. “The History of FEMA” section teaches us their critical role in the Great Midwest Floods of 1993, the Northridge Earthquake in 1994, the 1995 terrorist attack at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. All told, FEMA employees have coordinated Federal response and recovery efforts in more than 1,800 incidents. If you got through all that, I’ll reward you with the point. The point is: Federal help is needed in times of duress. Don’t fight it.
What kind of money is FEMA offering?
$43,000 for loss of property, $10,000 repair assistance. $770 for evacuation expenses. It’s less than one tenth, one twentieth, one fiftieth of what we’re owed (depending on your situation) but it’s not nothing. Still, most of us ignore the invitation. We’re going to keep calling our private insurer. We hope not to be in a situation where we’re calling FEMA.
Friday January 10 is a pressure point. The busiest freeway in the world is barricaded shut. The one that appears in your history books, June 17, 1994, when O.J. Simpson drove his White Bronco away in a slow-speed police chase (“more of a failure to yield than to run” Deputy Sherriff Larry Pool said) while 95 million Americans switched over from the NBA finals to watch the former USC Trojan running back with a 100-yard dash time of 9.53 seconds and a world record breaking 4x110-yard relay time of 38.6 seconds, run one last race against law enforcement. We all watched him, our beloved O.J. Simpson, taking a leisurely drive along Interstate 405 with helicopters hovering over, football fans hanging off the railings of overpasses shouting, cheering, gripping homemade signs, “Run OJ Run!” and “Go OJ!!!” This Interstate, this memory—is in the news again. The 405 is about to burn.
Yellow jacketed newscasters stand on a high bluff on Skirball, opposite Mandeville Canyon, pointing down on orange plastic dividers being dragged across the road. Vehicles are u-turning. DC-10 airplanes zoom in the night sky, spraying fire retardant by the thousand-gallon tank. Dozens of firetrucks with sirens blaring (we wish we’d seen this on day one) are climbing the ribbon roads that lead up the mountain. Why all this effort now? Why on day four going into day five has the appropriate response been mounted? Flames are about to jump the Rubicon. The fire is going west to east, into Westwood, UCLA, Ronald Regan Medical Center, and beyond. Our imaginations spiral. Physically, we’re exhausted. Psychically, we’re on the brink. Desperation like we’ve never felt. If the fire consumes another five or ten thousand homes in Los Angeles—it’s game over. The FEMA mobile app will crash. FEMA hotline will never work again.
Pick up the phone. Call disaster assistance.
It is with fear, trepidation, dark curiosity, that we do this. We log onto that place called disasterassistance.gov, and peer around the site. A cheerful greeting. White letters on navy blue shield. “Do you need help after a disaster?” Yes, that describes that situation. The homepage shows a woman in a sleeveless FEMA vest, a baseball cap, ringlets of hair coming down to her waist high fiving a tiny girl standing next to her grandmother on the porch. The grandmother is headless, we can’t see who she is, but her t-shirt reads Pray, Pray, Pray. The brother, slightly older, maybe 6-years-old, stands in his pajamas. The paint on the house is chipping. Apply Now is a red button waiting for our click.
We click it. The journey begins. Confirm you’re not a robot, enter your zip code and find disasters in your area. A treasure hunt follows. “Why isn’t the fire listed in the dropdown menu? What is our disaster named? Is it grouped under the Eaton fire?” Questions flying around from neighbor to neighbor. The group works together. Individuals make progress. By Friday night January 8, it’s offered on the dropdown menu. WILDFIRES AND STRAIGHT-LINE WINDS 4856. Highlight the bubble. Enter credentials. Pick a password. Get a secure mobile code to log on with your username and password. Feeling good. This part is going well. The feeling dies fast. Seventy-five or a hundred steps follow that require your full mental energy and focus. Maybe you have kids. Or elderly parents evicted from their nursing home behind you, asking for help. A house that just burned. Responsibilities. A car to drive. You can’t go Hunter Thompson style, whiskey and an eight ball of speed, to get through this FEMA application. You just need to muscle through it. Brute force. Did the website buffer for a long time after you hit submit? Stay with it. Words of encouragement come from other people who battled the process. You can do this. A frightening message arrives.
They’ll be in touch.
Wait. Wait a few days. No news.
Then…. the fight is over before it starts. People cry out in agony to neighbors. “I was just denied” “We were just denied” “Is anyone else being denied FEMA coverage?” “I was denied as well” “Also denied FEMA” “I suspect we aren’t absolutely denied, just denied for now.” “Such BS” “Denied, us too. Got the notice a few hours ago” “Denied too here” “I applied but I knew they would deny us. I am angry and sad… we were abandoned. They let our beautiful community burn. Promised us 100 percent of nothing. Praying that our insurance covers something.” “I was denied as well” and “We were denied also.” “Also denied FEMA because we have insurance. Was just assigned an adjuster today for our regular insurance. Haven’t heard from them yet.” “Denied too here.” People start posting their denial notices. A cascade of notices. “NOT APPROVED.” How is it possible that so many of us can be denied all at the same time, and so early? Did we all fill out the application incorrectly? Is it indexed to income? Myth: My income is too high or low to qualify for FEMA assistance. Fact: FEMA does not consider your income when evaluating your application. What is it then? We go digging in the fine print. “Does anyone understand why FEMA denied coverage yet?” Jeremy reports. “FEMA rejected almost everyone. What a joke.”
But FEMA is not a joke; it’s a game. We are as yet, uninitiated players. There are rules, arcana we can’t possibly know. Here’s one. “Insured- Please submit a copy of your insurance settlement or denial letter. If you do not have insurance, you must submit a statement regarding your lack of insurance that is signed and dated by you.” Many, like the family on Napoli or the surf coach on Tahitian Terrace, already know they have no fire coverage. If they submit a letter from the insurer proving they were dropped from fire coverage, they will receive assistance. “What if I have insurance with a very large deductible?” This question is populating the message boards. It’s a common problem. People don’t have enough cash to meet their deductible. “We were told we need to pay off our deductible before FEMA will reimburse for living expenses.”
Others, in a third bucket (maybe the worst bucket) have private insurance that pays them nothing, or close to nothing, but the onus is on them to prove that to FEMA. The process is lengthy, costly, and can be litigious. They need to file with their insurer, wait for a public adjuster to visit their burned lot, fill out an estimate on amount of damage sustained. This number is confirmed or denied by an independent adjuster contracted by the insurer, who may or may not agree to visit the burned lot. The loss estimate may go to arbitration, it may sit in arbitration for a while, the insurer may decide to pay pennies on the dollar of what it costs to rebuild and replace. After all of this is complete, and documented, the insured can present the evidence that they were screwed—screwed beyond belief—and FEMA will send them a $43,000 check for total loss, $10,000 for repair, $770 for evacuation expenses. They’ve spent multiples of that just trying to prove their loss.
To wit, my friend calls me on May 15, 2025. This is 128 days after the fire.
“I am the FEMA pop-up on Pico, getting answers.” She is at 10850 W Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90064, United States at one of several disaster relief centers set up around Altadena and Pacific Palisades. On January 7, midnight, her dream home with a wraparound wooden porch that hung over Sullivan Canyon burned to the ground. The homes to the left and right of her house, were untouched. She felt indelible despair that day, displacing her children from a home she was sure she could never replace. Did she know she’d have problems with California FAIR Plan, in the event of fire? Maybe, possibly. But she didn’t expect it to receive as little as she did. After a 4-month battle to recoup something on her policy, she is being paid 23 cents on the dollar for the structure and less than 10% of personal property (contents inside the home). To boot, no matter how many times she calls FEMA, e-mails, inquires, she did a video call with a FEMA inspector months ago—she receives nothing. Today, she is determined to get to the bridge of Battlestar Galactica, talk to a FEMA captain, and get answers. Ariel is her man. He listens to her sad tale, her near-total loss, and is sympathetic. Starts pulling rules from the playbook no one knew about. If she changes the language on her FEMA application, if she changes the words “rental assistance “ to “rental appraisal” if she claims she has two children (she does) and needs a rental with three bedrooms (two bedrooms would be fine but Ariel insists the number must be three) if she provides documentation that California FAIR plan will pay her not a penny more than $247,000 (he is specific about this number), then FEMA can start giving her assistance. The Agency will cough up the $43,000 and $10,000 and $770 in the following increments. $3,679 a month for eighteen months.
A parent I know loses her condominium in Palisades Hills, her car and her toy store, to the fire. In May, she is still applying for FEMA. She has not received a cent from any of her insurers and because her store burned, she has no income and can’t work. With her last $5,000 in spare cash, she hires a lawyer to fight her insurer. FEMA doesn’t care if there’s a paper trail to prove all this. They continue to say: because she has home, car and business insurance, she is not eligible for assistance.
The stories go on.
At some point, I decide the only way to understand group psychosis is to get in the middle of it and try it out. I file my FEMA application and receive the following notification on my phone February 13, 2025. The message, with typos, is contained here.
I’m contacting you as per your request FEMA Housing Assistance Application For DR 4856 California wild fires. Please let me know if you are still interested in your FEMA Assistance through video call. If you are NOT interested in continuing your claim, please REPLY “NOT interested in the inspection of CANCEL inspection.” I will cancel the inspection as per your request. If no response is received, the application will be returned back to our data base and the process will take longer and possible cancelation of for your assistance. We kindly ask for your collaboration to expedite the process in order to help other disaster victims who are waiting for assistance. If you have any doubts about the authenticity of this message, here is my name and FEMA inspector number for verification: Beatriz V., Inspector ID: V102XX. You can contact FEMA directly at 1-800-621-2262 to confirm my identity. Thank you for your cooperation.
They offer me a site inspection.
Will you be available tomorrow morning between 11;30 and 2PM for an in-person assessment at the provided address?
As soon as I agree to the visit, they cancel it.
Due to weather conditions, all appointments will be rescheduled for tomorrow Friday. Pacific Palisades weather high 58 low 61, light drizzle.
On Valentines Day, I wait at the end of my driveway for the FEMA inspector, wondering if the inspector can even get here. I had trouble getting here. The National Guard is at the bottom of my street, barricading vehicles without permits. There’s no one living in the area; it looks like a warzone. At the citywide press conference the Public Health Commissioner said, “don’t touch the water in your faucet” and mayor Karen Bass warned us not to breathe the air. There are rolling blackouts on the street, the Department of Water and Power is right now lifting an exploded pipe out of the road across from a double burned lot. I had to drive around that. But here I am.
I’m not about to miss the FEMA site visit.
Her name is Gladys. Beatriz then switches to Gladys. Then Beatriz is put back into the job. This is like waiting for an Uber driver while the algorithm hallucinates. I’m very careful to keep calling the 800 number to confirm the identity of my inspector. Already, dozens of fire impacted families from Altadena and Pacific Palisades have been targeted by criminal rings posing as FEMA inspectors. A neighbor on Monaco reports he was defrauded just days after the application opened. He had his identity stolen. His wife’s identity was stolen. Then both is daughters, married with children, who lived in another part of town had their identities stolen too. Another woman, Julia, tells a grave and pathetic tale about handing over her name, address, social security number, bank account number for direct deposit wire, during a FEMA site inspection. Later, she finds out those were criminals at her home, not FEMA inspectors. But FEMA can do nothing to help. A parent at our school. “I spoke to the person posing as FEMA… My husband was worried it was a scam and cross-examined her. She had our FEMA application number.”
Belatedly, I wonder if the Gladys Beatriz switch is an elaborate plot, and I should cancel the meeting altogether. But it's too late. She pulls up in a red shiny jeep. Precision hubcaps. I can see the FEMA inspector through her dark windshield, and she’s not wearing the sleeveless blue vest with FEMA stamped in yellow, and she has no baseball cap. In fact, she looks nothing like the picture offered online.
Right now, she’s sitting in her car ignoring me. Finishing a personal call. The book called “Scam Me If You Can” that I bought when I was writing an FBI show says that criminals don’t typically play hard-to-get. Beatriz is finishing a 22-minute personal call, and when she comes to meet me, when I see her glossy blowout, her gel manicure, expensive low-top hiking boots and matching crimson athleisure pants and padded vest—when I say, “thank you for coming” and offer my handshake, she rejects me. Won’t shake my hand without hand sanitizer. She goes back to her jeep, and I decide, this is a sign of legitimacy. The woman is snooty and doesn’t want to be here, which means, she’s not here to fleece my social security number.
She carries her distaste to the front door.
“Do you have pictures of the fire damage?” she asks briskly. It’s an intriguing question. There’s debris floating between our noses. Ash in little piles at our feet. Right there on her iPad she has a list of what is wrong; water contains lead and arsenic and copper and lithium and uranium and we have sewage pipe issues (as noted: Department of Water and Power is outside), every vent and air duct is choked with soot, needs to be sucked clean along with the crawl spaces between roof and attic and possibly, even, the insulation taken from parts of the drywall, tested, if contaminated, disinfected and replaced. Hospital grade air purifiers are heaving, pumping, in every corner. Hard surfaces need to be power washed. The soil needs to be lifted, tested. The remediators recommend that smoke damaged furniture, clothes, curtains, rugs be disinfected or disposed of altogether. We’re a family of six so this is not a small task. If the details bore you, the big picture is fairly clear. We’re standing inside a home deemed uninhabitable by the State, on a street deemed uninhabitable, in a town where a 23,000 acre plus wildfire just eviscerated 9,000 structures. We haven’t been able to live here in six weeks. I’m claiming something on the order of $17,000 in remediation expenses, just to get back home, just to live here so I don’t have to claim more than that in rent. West Los Angeles rent has tripled. This reality is lost on my FEMA companion. Right now, she makes it clear, the onus is on me the homeowner to prove that WILDFIRE STRAIGHT LINE HIGH WINDS 4856 happened, that it caused problems, and that I deserve help.
Maybe I don’t deserve help?
She keeps adjusting her mask, complaining she can’t breathe, as she snaps pictures of the soot, the debris, the air purifiers heaving in every corner. The FEMA inspector pecks at her iPad, then moves outside to my front lawn where there’s a nice view of the 23,714-acre burn scar. She announces, her work is done.
Meeting over.
A few last rapid swiping motions on the iPad. I get the feeling: this was a waste of her time. Okay, I think. It was just an experiment anyway. I was testing the null hypothesis. I fund this arm of government with my tax dollars, but reciprocity is too much to ask. I’ve read enough post-war Soviet literature to know what I was getting myself into; what did I really expect? She is leaving me now. But lingering. The laws of attraction kick in. If someone is ever playing power games with you, if you refuse to care, they get immediately anxious. Beatriz starts talking to me, sharing, splurging on intimacy. She confesses she hates her boss; he tries to send her back and forth between Pacific Palisades and Altadena despite the impassable freeways in Los Angeles. Her grown daughter is giving her trouble. Arguing all the time over tiny, stupid things. Just this morning, a claimant in Pacific Palisades, a woman whose house burned to the ground, really vexed her. Here’s this woman who lost everything and all she could talk about was her cat. “FEMA doesn’t care about cats” Beatriz informs me. Her exit is abrupt. She says, she’ll never see me again. Weeks later, a plot twist. I wonder about that last conversation on the lawn. Manners will take you where brains and money won’t, the saying goes. I was friendly, respectful throughout the meeting. My check for $171.99 arrives. A bigger amount is promised. $6,115.83 if further documentation is submitted.
I study the watermark before I cash the check. Fraud is rampant.
“Has anyone else been dealing with a fraudulent FEMA claim filed with their social security number I’ve tried to apply five times for FEMA in the last five weeks and no one can clear the lock out on my account because someone filed a claim at a rental property in the Highlands that I moved out of nine years ago using my former name. I haven’t been able to file a claim on the home I lost in Marquez Knolls or apply for SBA because of this. Help anyone?” Another neighbor. “We had a fraudulent claim as well… It seems to be happening to lots of Palisades residents.” “Hi Julia!!! Our names were used fraudulently and they cashed the ‘check’. We filled out a claim with FEMA but never actually reached a live agent or heard back from anyone. Seems like a joke, $700 and change doesn’t even cover a day of expenses let alone the loss…. Let me know if you get anywhere.” Another woman, Amber is bombarded all day long by calls from fraudsters posing as FEMA inspectors. “This is the call back 202-255-XXXX felt scammy… I googled the number… and they said, ‘only in area a few days and want to schedule an inspection’.”
The fraud is so thick that it’s deterring people from even applying. Yet, we keep hearing that FEMA assistance is flowing from the taps. Governor Gavin Newsom at a press conference. “Thank you to FEMA and the Trump administration for granting California’s request…. as our communities in Los Angeles continue to rebuild and recover…. I urge Angelenos impacted by the Eaton ad Palisades [fires] to apply for federal assistance to help get back on their feet.” The Governor publishes the numbers on his website.
Disaster assistance by the numbers: 30,563 visits at the two Disaster Recovery Centers that remain open at UCLA Research Park and Altadena Recovery Center. $200 million in FEMA assistance. To date, more than 31,636 households have been approved for FEMA funds, including, $24, 631,795 in housing assistance for short-term rental assistance and home repair costs. $76, 690,832 in other essential disaster-related needs, such as expenses related to medical, dental, and lost personal possessions. $101,322,628 in individual housing support. This, alongside an angry post from an electrician whose home burned, who is working on clearing debris from burned homes all over town. “There should be a CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST FEMA !! THE WORST! 5.5 months same excuses everyday!! Any lawyers have a lawsuit? I’m sure you will have thousands sign up. ALL FEMA DOES IS VERIFY YOU 3X Same call and tell you nothing!! AND GIVE YOU ZERO INFORMATION.”
The first week of May I conduct a survey. I’m inspired to do it because my friend Cort is waiting on hold with FEMA, after 125 days, he still has not received an inspection (video or in-person) and still has not gotten even the $770 check for emergency expenses. I ask three dozen people if they’ve filed with FEMA. I ask what they’ve received. Six people have received the check for $770. One person wasn’t able to cash the check because it was sent to their burned street, to their burned mailbox, reabsorbed in the postal service and canceled. Better than most who received nothing. That surf coach and former physical education teacher who inherited a two-bedroom home (his dad bought it in 1970) and had no fire insurance, was dropped from State Farm in January 2024, lost a home valued at over $1,000,000 and for his loss, FEMA sent him the $43,000 and the $10,000. He’s the only person I’ve spoken to in Pacific Palisades who has received the allotted amount. I continue to survey. A friend I spoke to yesterday, who lives within 1,000 feet of where the fire broke out at 1190 Piedra Morada Drive, was told by FEMA she is outside the impacted zone.
“Hello, FEMA has added a letter to your account on DisasterAssitance.gov. It’s very important that you read it.”
Yesterday, May 15, long after I assumed FEMA forgot me, I receive the familiar greeting. It’s an e-mail from noreply-ecorr@dhs.gov; I hesitate to open it. My relationship with FEMA has been so productive, so happy, compared to others. There’s only downside here, I think, as I go through the verification process and begin scrolling tabs. We cut large checks to make the home “safe” for our return; none of the amounts were covered by insurance. On one tab all my evidence, all my documentation is posted. Someone from FEMA has gone through each credit card receipt and vendor invoice and added a time stamp. After reviewing it, they have added a decision letter to the correspondence tab. In a world where everything changes too rapidly, too brutally, where history is moving away from us never to be seen again—I am relieved to see the steady hand of FEMA. I click open the letter. The banner reads “NOT APPROVED” and then there are steps, a dozen or so, if I’d like to appeal the decision.