The Ross wildfire has burned more than 80,000 acres across Palo Pinto and Jack counties, forcing evacuations, closing roads and disrupting schools.
Page B3From§Eachthe late evening edition — 30 August 2026
California fire burns 85,000 acres; lawmakers protect insurers' right to sue utilities over it.
As it ran on the front
OBITUARY: A proposal to stop insurance companies from suing utility companies over wildfire damage, blocked this week by the California legislature, at the request, more or less, of the insurance industry. It was young — Governor Newsom had only just proposed it — and it is survived by the 85,000 acres the Ross Fire burned across two counties, and by the destruction left behind in them, which will not be suing anybody, being destruction.
The proposal was born out of a plain premise: that after a fire burns through a county, the insurance company that pays the claim shouldn't turn around and sue the utility whose equipment may have started it, driving up costs and drawing out the fight over who pays while the people who lost the house wait. It is survived also by the utility companies, who will now be sued, and by the ratepayers, who tend to be the ones who eventually cover a utility's legal bills, one way or another, whether the bill says so or not.…
…(cont) It was preceded in death by a number of other proposals this legislature has declined to advance on the same general subject, filed away with the other whippersnapper reform ideas that arrive each fire season and leave before August ends. This is not new. It is just penny-ante, done again, on schedule, the week a fire posts a number big enough to make the news.
This obituarist has read the vote and can report plainly that the bill did not pass. That is not an editorial judgment. That is the count. It is also worth noting, gently, that the insurance industry did not want this bill to pass, and the insurance industry generally gets what it wants from a legislature it spends enough on, which is not an accusation, it is a shit-simple pattern this desk has been filing under "wildfire season" for longer than most of Sacramento's current members have held office.
Preceded in death, ultimately, by the idea that a burned county gets to watch the disaster get settled without also watching the insurers and the utilities settle it between themselves, on a separate clock, at the ratepayers' eventual expense.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that readers request, from their state representative, a copy of the vote.
“The fire's real, the acreage is real, and the first thing Sacramento protects afterward is the insurance company's paperwork, not the family standing in the ash. That's the order they picked, out loud, on the record.”
“Insurers need the ability to recover costs from negligent utilities, that's just responsible cost management — recoverable from utilities who pay it by raising rates on the very families in the burn zone, which, hearing that back, is not the savings pitch I meant to make.”
The receipts
Newsom’s office pushed for the change as part of a wider effort to protect California’s wildfire liability fund and prevent utilities from potentially being driven into bankruptcy.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.