On Thursday, survivors of the Eaton Fire held a press conference in Altadena to present their response to SoCal Edison’s proposed compensation plan, which they say is not enough.
Outside The Good Neighbor Bar on Lincoln Ave., survivors presented their 51-page report titled “Fix What You Broke.”
“Compensate all losses from your fire,” Joy Chin with the Eaton Fire Survivors Network said. “Two, every survivor counts. Value children, renters, and smoke-damaged homeowners and business people equally. And three, pay for housing until we are home. Cover full living costs until we have our own roof back over our heads.”
The group also said that SoCal Edison's draft plan mirrors insurance company policies. Andrew Wessels said the utility company needs to do better.
“We're asking Edison to align the draft with reality and pay for the full footprint of their harm,” he said. “Do that, and recovery moves faster. Families go home sooner, kids get back to stable schools, small businesses reopen, and neighborhoods come back to life.”
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Zaire Calvin, who lost two homes and his sister in the Eaton fire, said that Edison's draft plan doesn't even address the emotional toll the fire had on families and the loss of loved ones.
“I'm not gonna use my sister's example,” he said. “I'm gonna use my neighbor who lost her mother because that's what haunts me. Visualize your mother sitting in a room calling 911 while the house is on fire, burning down, and your mother is dying slowly from smoke and fire, and actually being burned alive. Let's be honest, what would you put on that? You figure out what that would look like and if you can replace that.”
The survivors said any compensation should not only be about making one whole, but it should be done in no more than two years.
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