For years, I’ve been warning that insurance coverage firms are quietly working to restrict or deny protection for smoke, soot, and ash harm even when these perils are clearly the results of a lined wildfire. Now, the Colorado Division of Insurance coverage has issued a Bulletin that calls out the issue straight and tells insurers to cease it.
In Bulletin No. B-5.53, issued October 20, 2025, the Division made it clear that insurers can’t impose sublimits or carve-outs that cut back protection for wildfire-related smoke, soot, ash, odor, or char harm. The Division said that these losses are “direct extensions of wildfire harm,” and that limiting them “undermines the important safety Colorado policyholders fairly anticipate” to obtain below their residential property insurance policies.
It is a vital step in defending householders from an alarming pattern I’ve been writing about for years. In my earlier submit, Smoke, Soot, and Ash Science and Clear-Up Stay a Sizzling and Regarding Insurance coverage Adjustment Subject, I defined how insurers usually downplay the extent of smoke and soot contamination even when scientific testing reveals microscopic particles could make properties unsafe. In California Smoke, Soot, and Ash Claims: A Trigger for Concern, I described how some insurers tried to control coverage language and claims practices to show whole losses into partial denials.
Now Colorado insurance coverage regulators are drawing a line. They acknowledge that smoke and soot could make a house uninhabitable, harm HVAC techniques, and trigger lingering well being hazards. The Division’s bulletin doesn’t mince phrases: it “expects insurers to chorus from together with of their residential property insurance policies such sub-limits and administer claims ensuing from wildfire smoke, soot, ash, odor, and char harm accordingly.”
This directive issues far past Colorado. Insurers are testing the waters nationwide, quietly introducing “smoke sublimits” or imprecise exclusions that chip away at what was commonplace protection. If regulators and policyholders don’t push again, these erosions will unfold identical to the wildfires themselves.
The science is evident. The harm is actual. Insurance coverage should at the very least fulfill its elementary historic promise to make policyholders entire after a lined fireplace loss. I applaud the Colorado Division of Insurance coverage for standing as much as defend customers and holding insurers to that promise.
Thought For The Day
“One could have a blazing fireplace in a single’s soul and but nobody ever comes to sit down by it. Passers-by see solely a wisp of smoke from the chimney and proceed on their means.”
—Vincent van Gogh
