ADVISING PLAINTIFF TEAMS ON WILDFIRE CASES

I have worked the Eaton Fire recovery from the inside since January 2025, co-founding Eaton Fire Residents United and running its operations since. EFRU sponsored AB 1642, signed into law this September, which with AB 1795 creates the first smoke damage standards in the country.

Wildfire cases are built on expert science and legal theory. But the distance between what a report documents and what a household actually went through, what they were told, which protocols were followed and which were skipped, is often where a case turns.

I came to it as a survivor, and the work has been the same throughout: take what the testing actually found in these homes, make it usable to the people who had to act on it, and carry it through to law. That has meant a close view of how remediation and clearance went for hundreds of households, a seat in the technical working groups where protocols are still being argued out, and the campaign behind the legislation itself.

When firms bring me in

• A firm standing up intake for a large claimant pool needs a documentation protocol its case managers can actually run.

• A case that turns on what remediation should have cost against what a carrier funded needs a benchmark, and figures a damages expert can build from.

• Arguments about what was required in early 2025 depend on reconstructing what guidance existed at the time.

• One household's account carries more weight set against what happened across the burn area.

• Report quality varies widely, and a firm needs to know early which ones will hold up and which have gaps.

• Before deposing a hygienist, a remediation contractor or an opposing expert, someone has to work out what to ask and what a weak answer sounds like.

• Teams that need to get current on smoke contamination and testing methods rarely have three months to spend getting there.

Why me

A hygienist's report is where one of these cases begins, and what a carrier does with it is where the case turns. I have spent this recovery standing between the two. I know how these reports get made and what a complete one contains, so I can look at a report and see what is missing. A hygienist works one house at a time. I have seen hundreds of these reports, and what the carriers did after. Of the Altadena homes EFRU tracked that were tested for asbestos after remediation, 40 percent were tested using the wrong method.

I know the Clearance Before Occupancy path stage by stage: what it costs, what order it has to happen in, which licensed trades each stage requires, and where the gap opens between what a carrier funded and what the home actually needed. I have presented EFRU's findings on that gap to the Department of Insurance's Smoke Claims and Remediation Task Force.

EFRU was the sole sponsor of AB 1642. We drafted it alongside Legislative Counsel and the author's office. I prepared the testimony, the floor alerts, the position letters for every committee and floor vote, and met with Assembly members and their staff. When AB 1642 had to be harmonized with AB 1795, we worked directly with both authors' offices and the Department of Insurance. I ran the analysis on each round of amendments and sat in the working group that approved the language. So I know what the standards cover and, more usefully, what they leave out.

The science and the clearance logic are not specific to one fire, and California is where the standards were written first, not where they stop applying. They are also prospective. Interim lead and asbestos standards take effect January 1, 2027, DTSC has until the end of 2028 for the permanent regulations and the end of 2029 for the wider contaminant list, and the cases in front of firms now come from the years before any of it existed.

I am not structured as an expert witness and I do not testify. I work with the team.

BUILDING STRUCTURE FOR MISSION-DRIVEN ORGANIZATIONS

Small mission-driven organizations get built fast, often after a disaster, by people already carrying full loads. Early on the energy goes where it has to: raising money and holding the mission steady.

I come in for what comes after. Building the operating structure that lets the work continue and grow, without adding a full-time role to do it. I build it with you, then leave you running it.

Every TV and film production is an organization built from scratch, and I have built one for every project since 2001. I built EFRU the same way. I assemble the team, manage the budget, negotiate the contracts, and keep the work inside the labor and legal rules of whatever state or country it shoots in. I also manage the client, whose vision has to come through the schedule and the money intact. I have done this as a producer, as an executive producer for other companies since 2007, and through my own company since 2010.

What I bring

• Financial administration. Grant agreements, reporting to deadline across multiple funders, contractor onboarding and disbursement, and running the organization's side of the accounting. EFRU raised $785,000 in its first year under a fiscal sponsorship structure.

• Board and governance. Advisory board meetings, materials and board communication. I built EFRU's 13-member advisory board. Before that I spent 6 years on the board of Planned Parenthood Advocates Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley, a 501(c)(4), serving as board chair for 3.

• Multi-organization partnerships. MOUs, joint working groups and shared projects, including the legislative coalition assembled for AB 1642, and mediating disputes between partners without losing the coalition.

• Communications. Education materials for residents, briefings for legislators and partner organizations, website and social copy, and alerts to members.

• Policy and advocacy. Shaping bill content with outside counsel, committee meetings, coalition position letters, floor alerts and letters to the Governor, on two bills carried through to passage in the California Legislature.