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SYSTEM FAILURE, CONTINUED — Seven months after the Eaton Fire poisoned their Sierra Madre canyon home, Derek and Valerie are still unhoused. Not because the flames reached their house—they didn’t. But because Allstate, their insurer, abandoned them. Then turned predator.
This isn’t a fire story. It’s what happens when the system becomes the smoke.
Rewind to January. The Eaton Fire’s 131-mile-per-hour gusts drove toxins—lead, zinc, copper, chromium—into every vent, crack, and corner of their Little Santa Anita home. Derek fought the embers alone with a pressure washer. His wife, Valerie, battled Stage 3 cancer, diagnosed that same day. Their two Australian Shepherds collapsed with pneumonia from the toxic air. Vet’s bill: $50,000. Cause: their own home.
Allstate? Vanished. FEMA covered 30 days of hotel stays, then faded, leaving Derek and Valerie to sleep in their car. In America. In 2025. Fully insured.
Hotel roulette followed: broken elevators, freezing rooms, no pharmacies nearby for Valerie’s chemo. When Derek couldn’t make the long drive to a sister’s house, he curled up in the car again. Allstate said they “didn’t have time” to find lodging.
So Derek did what the system wouldn’t. He tested the house. The results were a nightmare. Lead dust: 60 times federal limits. Copper: 70 times health thresholds. Zinc: 50 times baseline. That’s not a home. It’s a poison trap with a mortgage.
Allstate didn’t just deny the claim—they attacked. When Rep. Judy Chu’s office pressed them on the stalled case, Allstate smiled, promised progress. Six days later, a cold email landed. Three attachments: “You’re a liar.” “Your expert is a fraud.” “No more funds.”
They called Derek’s hygienist—a member of the Governor’s task force—a fake. Claimed Derek refused testing they never offered. Ordered remediation vendors to dump contaminated belongings back into the house, officially deemed unsafe for Valerie, immune-compromised from cancer treatment. Storage fees are bleeding their policy dry.
They’re not alone. Another family, hit by the same fire, same insurer, got the same “liar” packet. Their case only turned because their hygienist refused to falsify results, risking their own contract. One person’s courage against a machine built to break people.
“Rats are living in our house now,” Derek wrote. “We can’t.”
Their home of 30 years is a toxic shell. Derek, a journalist and publisher, has missed work and interviews in Montana and Wyoming. He can’t leave Valerie, mid-radiation, living out of a suitcase in borrowed rooms. Can’t leave the dogs, still recovering. Can’t cook. Can’t plan. Can’t breathe.
This isn’t incompetence. It’s designed cruelty. Delay the claim. Drain the coverage. Dare the homeowner to break. When a congresswoman calls? Smile, stall, hit send.
Where’s California’s Insurance Commissioner, Ricardo Lara? Silent in the ashes. Once tied to insurance money, he now ignores families breathing lead, fighting mold, trapped in homes they can’t live in and can’t escape.
This is deregulated insurance. Allstate and State Farm, which stopped writing new California policies citing “climate risk,” aren’t dodging fires. They’re dodging people. Dodging Derek and Valerie.
This isn’t one family’s story. It’s dozens—stuck in hotel limbo, dropped mid-claim, branded liars for surviving. If it’s happening to them, it could happen to you.
Your Move
Don’t let their story die in the ashes. Share it with #ToxicHomesCA. Tag @Allstate, @StateFarm, @RicardoLara, @RepJudyChu. Call California’s Department of Insurance at 800-927-4357. Contact your state reps. Demand hearings. Demand decency.
Because if we let insurers betray wildfire survivors—people who fought flames with pressure washers, stood by loved ones through chemo, and kept the receipts—then California isn’t just failing.
It’s forfeiting its soul. And the insurers are already counting the money.
(Eric Preven is a Studio City-based TV writer-producer, award-winning journalist, and longtime community activist who won two landmark open government cases in California.)
