How the Every Fire Survivor’s Network Is Changing Who Gets to Recover
Joy Chen already survived one devastating wildfire. Nearly 18 months later, she had a chance to help shape who pays for the next one.
The executive director of the Every Fire Survivor’s Network (EFSN), Chen was invited to testify at three important legislative hearings at the State Capitol in Sacramento. The hearings were focused on how to equitably distribute the financial costs of wildfires among utilities, ratepayers and residents.
Since the wildfires ripped through Los Angeles County in January 2025, Chen has helped build a community of thousands who she hears from every day as they relay their uphill struggle to recover and return home. So she had a lot to share with lawmakers.
“Survivor advocacy is just democracy at work,” Chen said. “It’s empowering survivors to share their stories so that people can see the gaps in the system, so that survivors get the recovery funds that are owed to them.”
What started as a WhatsApp pickleball group chat has grown into something far more significant – a community of survivors who have taken on insurers and mobilized support for policy changes.
“Recovery follows the money,” Chen said. “EFSN moves the money.”
Formerly the Eaton Fire Survivor’s Network, the nonprofit rebranded itself to the Every Fire Survivor’s Network this year to reflect its inclusive mission. While its primary focus remains helping those impacted by the 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires, the group now stands as a national model for how survivors can organize and accelerate their own recovery.
The mission has evolved from immediate relief efforts to rewriting the rules of recovery for everyone, said Chen, a former deputy mayor of L.A.
By spring of last year, Chen had moved nine times with her two teenage daughters and two cats while her smoke-damaged home was being remediated. She had been running EFSN entirely on a volunteer basis for six months. She realized she could not keep going without financial support.
The California Community Foundation (CCF) awarded EFSN a critical grant last summer, allowing the organization to formalize operations, obtain a fiscal sponsor, launch a weekly newsletter and pay Chen for her leadership. Without it, EFSN would have shut down.
CCF recently made a second major grant to fund EFSN’s second year through its Wildfire Recovery Fund.
“Every dollar that CCF invested in EFSN has helped unlock over $1,000 directly into survivor bank accounts,” Chen said. “Together, CCF and EFSN are building a future where recovery is not reserved for the wealthy.”
The scale of the wildfire recovery challenge is staggering. According to the latest survey data from the Department of Angels, nearly seven in 10 of L.A. fire survivors are still not home. Nearly half of all fire survivors have lost or will soon lose their insurance coverage for temporary housing. Retirement savings have been drained and credit cards have been maxed out.
That financial freefall is not happening by accident. Seventy percent of insured Eaton and Palisades survivors report delays, denials, or underpayments from their insurers. These are families who paid their premiums for decades and are now being failed by the system they paid into. The disparity of this recovery has in large part been driven by insurer conduct.
In that respect, the Los Angeles County recovery is repeating a painful history. A Los Angeles Times analysis of mega California wildfires found that less than 40 percent of destroyed homes were rebuilt within eight years, and that the single greatest predictor of whether families returned home was whether their insurance payouts arrived fully and on time. Another major factor was whether utilities compensated survivors promptly if and when they were found at fault for a fire.
Those insights have shaped EFSN’s model. The nonprofit aggregates survivor experiences into credible public evidence, works with national media to keep the recovery visible, and builds the data and transparency that enable insurers and utilities to be held accountable for the funds families are owed.
The relentless efforts by Chen and her network of more than 10,000 survivors have produced tangible results for survivors trying to get home.
The FedEx envelopes began arriving last fall.
Inside were insurance checks – some totalling as much as $2 million – issued just days after EFSN forced a reckoning with one of the state’s largest insurers, Chen said.
By aggregating nearly 500 first-hand accounts of complaints about insurance company misconduct, EFSN provided L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger with evidence and she notified county officials. The L.A. County Counsel subsequently launched an investigation into insurance industry giant State Farm. The results were swift and life-changing for families who had spent many months in financial limbo.
Eaton Fire survivor Andrew Wessels got a call from State Farm shortly after the investigation was opened in November that the company was declaring all of his home’s soft, porous and electronics items a total loss. They also agreed to post-remediation testing.
“I felt a huge sense of relief,” Wessels said. “Just a huge sense of relief to be able to protect our children.”
After the wildfire swept through Altadena, his home was still standing in the middle of the burn zone. Wessels paid a private company to test his home for toxins and found lead levels 20 times higher than EPA acceptable limits. Every room tested positive for lead contamination.
The payout for contents by the insurance company went well into the low six figures. It came after months of delays and gaslighting by the company, he said.
“The agreement to do post-remediation testing is huge because it means that if the testing finds more contamination, State Farm will be responsible for the additional remediation too. Every home we know that has undergone post-remediation testing, including mine, has shown continued contamination that required further work,” Wessels said.
It’s that kind of a return on investment that marks a shift in how philanthropic organizations view disaster aid, Chen said.
“These systems owe Los Angeles families tens of billions of dollars. Until that money moves, this recovery will be reserved for the wealthy. I don’t think any of us wants to live in that world. Every family deserves a real chance to get home, and that is exactly the future we are building,” Chen said.
Rather than just focusing on providing humanitarian relief, EFSN has used its resources to back the deliberate long-haul work of unlocking the tens of billions of dollars that families are owed and need to get home.
The nonprofit’s focus is now expanding. Chen and her team are currently building the nation’s first insurer-by-insurer open data set on insurance company performance after a disaster. The survey of fire survivors aims to gather hard data that law enforcement, civil litigators and future disaster survivors can use to hold insurance companies and utilities accountable.
For more information, visit the Every Fire Survivor’s Network at https://www.efsurvivors.net.
— Ben Poston