Jessica Newman’s mornings begin with a jolt. For months, she’s woken at 5 a.m., breathless and anxious, the memory of January 8, 2025, still raw. That was the morning the Santa Ana winds whipped through Pasadena at 90 mph and sheriff’s deputies stormed her neighborhood, flames at their heels, ordering everyone out. Jessica, 32, bundled her lively 3-year-old daughter Luna into the car and fled to Riverside, where they’ve lived at her aunt’s house for much of the past year. Their family’s 1909 Craftsman home, just steps from the Eaton fire burn scar, still stands—untouched by flames, but uninhabitable.
“It’s such an illusion,” Jessica told Los Angeles Times. “The house looks so nice. You would never think there’s so much damage.” But the illusion goes deeper. Jessica herself seems vital at first glance, but her heart is failing, the result of a rare and often fatal pregnancy complication that disproportionately affects Black women. Diagnosed in 2022, she’s spent the years since fighting for her life—and for Luna’s future.
Their old house was more than walls and a roof. It was a refuge, the address that unlocked Luna’s spot in a subsidized preschool, kept public benefits flowing, and granted Jessica access to the elusive “straight Medi-Cal” health insurance she needs for a heart transplant. After months of tests, Jessica was finally poised to join the transplant list a year ago. Then the fire upended everything.
The chaos of evacuation and repeated displacement cost Jessica her Medicaid-managed care plan exemption. Without it, she couldn’t join the transplant waitlist or even see her medical team. Today, her transplant is tangled in bureaucracy, her fate tied to a home she can’t live in and an address she can’t leave. “I need that appointment now so that they can officially put me on the list,” she said. “To start that process over—it’s not like I can just transfer and say, ‘Oh, I was waiting over here.’”
Jessica’s story is far from unique. According to a November 13, 2025 report from the University of Hawaii, disabled wildfire survivors like her face outsized health, economic, and bureaucratic challenges. The research, based on the aftermath of the 2023 Maui wildfires, found that fires “deepened pre-existing disparities and introduced new pressures.” Ruben Juarez, a professor of health economics and lead researcher in the Maui Wildfire Exposure Cohort Study, put it plainly: “The danger here is really this slow-burning bureaucracy, which is leaving the most vulnerable [to wait] months and years for care and cleanup.”
Disabled Americans are more likely to live in poverty, to rely on Medicaid and other public programs, and to have health conditions exacerbated by toxic ash and smoke. After a wildfire, they’re often left sicker, poorer, and locked out of recovery programs. Returning home is a distant dream. For Jessica, lingering damage from smoke, soot, and ash—and the stubbornness of agencies tasked with removing it—make moving back impossible.
“When we get exposed to ash and all this stuff, we breathe faster and our heart beats faster,” explained Dr. Peyman Benharash, a cardiothoracic surgeon at UCLA, to the Los Angeles Times. “If someone’s heart is already pushed to the limit, it’s going to be much harder for them.”
On November 18, 2025, after nearly six months without seeing her cardiologist, Jessica was admitted to Huntington Hospital gasping for air. She’s haunted by the fear that she could die in her sleep, leaving Luna an orphan. “You can’t help but think about the what-ifs,” Jessica said. “What if I’m no longer there?”
The fire’s aftermath has produced plenty of targets for public outrage: price-gouging landlords, GoFundMe grifters, L.A.’s mayor and her untested fire chief, an alleged arsonist’s blaze left to rekindle, a power line allowed to spark, and a panicked emergency management system that failed hundreds. But for many, insurance companies have become the focal point of indignation. Nearly a year after the inferno, tens of thousands are still displaced. About 20% can’t return to standing homes, trapped in a cycle of testing, remediation, and reevaluation for toxic contaminants—often met with resistance from insurers at every turn.
“We had good insurance,” Dr. Benharash said. “Our house didn’t burn down, but it was full of soot inside. The insurance said, ‘We’ll clean it for you.’ But my wife tested it again and all the same chemicals are still there. It becomes an impasse.”
Experts and community activists say this is the norm for survivors with standing homes. Insurance companies frequently refuse to pay for industrial hygienists to test for dangerous contaminants like lead and asbestos, or refuse to pay to have them safely removed when found. The California FAIR Plan, the state’s “insurer of last resort,” has rejected many claims for such testing and remediation, despite legal obligations. According to California’s Department of Insurance, CalFAIR has “systematically” ducked hundreds of claims for testing and routinely low-balled payouts for those that were found.
“Dealing with your insurance company is like another full-time job,” said Anastasia Mazzella, whose firm Kabateck LLP represents hundreds of Eaton fire victims. Many, faced with immovable bureaucracy, simply gave up and left—often paying double to stay in the region or abandoning Los Angeles altogether. Others, including many of Jessica’s neighbors, returned home despite clear evidence of contamination. “This circular process of evaluation draws the testing and remediation out for months,” said Andrew Whelton, a professor of civil, environmental, and ecological engineering at Purdue University. “That can lead to people being kicked off or denied [coverage for living expenses] and having to move back into their homes because it took so long.”
California law requires Medi-Cal managed care plans to cover organ transplants, but does little to ensure that the 13 approved heart transplant programs or their surgeons accept such plans, or that the necessary care is accessible to the poorest and sickest. Jessica has spent months reapplying for the Medi-Cal exemption that would let her see her specialists again. To get a new heart, patients like her must secure a special dispensation from the state—renewed every year. As Dr. Benharash noted, this is part of why publicly insured patients are much likelier to die during the transplant process. Nationally, Medicaid patients face more obstacles to listing, longer waits, and are more likely to be delisted before transplant, often because delays and gaps in care leave them too sick to survive.
Jessica’s ordeal began before Luna was born. When she became pregnant in 2021, her heart was already weakened by Graves’ disease and she was recovering from a rare neurological illness that left her partially paralyzed. Like many disabled mothers, she was urged to terminate the pregnancy—something only a specialized obstetric practice at UCLA would agree to do. She was scheduled for an abortion on the last day it could safely be performed, but felt Luna kick for the first time and decided to accept the risk. “When I was pregnant, they were so on top of it,” she recalled. “After? It takes so long to get these appointments. It can be three months before you see the specialists you’re supposed to see.”
After Luna’s birth, Jessica was discharged to a local cardiologist, who dismissed her crippling chest pain and shortness of breath. “He’s like, ‘Lose weight, you’ll be fine,’” she remembered. Her heart function kept deteriorating. She spent the next year in and out of hospitals, and by spring 2024—just before Luna’s second birthday—she was told she might not survive without a new heart.
Relocating her care to Riverside, a possibility after being displaced by the Eaton fire, would delay the process further and sharply reduce her odds of survival, experts said. She hasn’t been able to see her cardiologist without a new exemption, and can’t qualify for an exemption without paperwork that can only be completed at a face-to-face appointment—a classic catch-22.
Meanwhile, deadlines loom for insurance claims. Survivors must file by January 6, 2026, for cleanup coverage, even as insurance companies drag their feet. California’s newly formed Smoke Claims and Remediation Task Force is supposed to set standards for testing and remediation by early 2026—too late for many. For now, Jessica is stuck in limbo, trying to care for Luna and get the medical help she needs while navigating endless hoops. “If I didn’t have her, I might have given up already,” Jessica said. “But I know that she needs me and that I have to be here for her.”
At an art class for fire survivors in late October, Jessica paused, out of breath after a short walk. “I feel like I’m going in a circle and nothing is…” she trailed off, unable to finish. For Jessica and thousands like her, the struggle continues—one breath at a time.
