LAKEPORT >> The county is making progress in collecting insurance payments from those who were affected in the Valley Fire and had cleanup work on their property.
CalRecycle and the county collaborated to clear debris from over 1,000 properties in the months following the blaze, with the state footing the bill until personal insurance funds became available.
“We are required to collect these funds and return them to the state and we invoiced approximately 1,049 homes and thus far 83 of those have paid,” County Administrative Office Carol Huchingson said.
This amounts to only 8 percent of affected households. Thus far the county has collected $960,000. Huchingson said they still have a long way to go for collection and have also sent invoices to 200 of those who were not insured.
“The uninsured folks need to sign a perjury statement that confirms they were indeed uninsured and did not receive any benefits,” Huchingson said.
Pushback on receiving payments continues, as many seek more details and question the amount invoiced.
“We’re merely acting as an agent of the state and the invoices we sent out contained all the detail provided to us by CalRecycle. So, people that are asking a lot of detailed questions, we’re going to be referring them to CalRecycle,” Huchingson said.
She encourages the people who received the invoices to give them to their insurance companies and have them handle it. Some of the other questions the county has been receiving are from misinformation about funds relating to the Valley Fire.
The county received funds from California Office of Emergency Services (CALOES) in the amount of $5.2 million to help with the disaster. This had to be paid back through cuts in state funding for other projects..
Huchingson said there is also some misunderstanding about audits by the OIG (Office of the Inspector General), tying these to the advance of funds they received from the CALOES.
“The county invited OIG to come in and audit us very early on in the disaster because the disaster magnitude was so huge we wanted to make sure we were getting our fiscal procedures in place and carrying out all of the fiscal requirements of claiming in a correct way,” Huchingson said. “This was actually a favorable audit that reaffirmed that we were putting all of our measures in place at the beginning.”
Funding for the audits was not related to the debris clean up project.
District 5 Supervisor Rob Brown said fire victims have been asking questions because of the rumors and theories that are spreading around the county, causing more issues than needed.
“We’ve been chasing this rumor for a while,” Brown said. “It’s exhausting, people are wondering why things aren’t done quicker and it’s because of this kind of nonsense.”
The county is working on a repayment plan for those who might need assistance. Huchingson said the department is putting together a waitlist and has received a few calls from people who want to take that route.
“We’re working on a tight time frame because people have two years to submit the claims to their insurance companies and the two year anniversary of the Valley Fire is coming up,” Huchingson said.
Huchingson said she will be giving periodic updates to the Board of Supervisors as the county staff moves through the processes on the collections.
