Community Matters: Helping Fire Victims Rebuild

Rising from the Ashes: Our Commitment to Fire Recovery

The recent Palisades and Eaton Fires in Los Angeles County have devasted thousands of families. In 2018, Partner Steven O’Neill and his wife Barbara lost their home of 28 years in the Woolsey Fire. They rebuilt their home after three years of negotiating with insurance companies, architects, contractors, and city planners. This left them well-suited to help the recent Palisades and Eaton fire victims get back on their feet. Unfortunately, Barbara’s family home of 58 years (and the home of her 101-year-old mother) was destroyed in the Palisades Fire. They know the road to recovery and all the quicksand along the way.

One week after the fires they opened up their son’s winery and tasting room in East Pasadena as a relief center, offering free food, clothing, and counseling for anyone who needed it. Since then, Steven and Barbara have been counseling numerous homeowners who lost their homes to the fires, focusing on insurance policy recovery. Some of the families they've been counseling are board members of district public agency clients. Others are owners of generational homes that were lost in the Eaton fire, while others are new homeowners who had recently purchased a house in the Altadena area. The issues range from simple ones such as how to understand the different elements of coverage within a policy, to how to negotiate with the carrier to get the maximum payout on a policy. Currently, they are counseling approximately 20 different homeowners.