The standing house is a different loss
A house that burned has an obvious claim. A house that stood in the plume has a subtle one, and it is routinely under-documented because the damage is not visible from the street. The EPA's guidance on wildfires and indoor air quality makes the essential point: some of the smoke from outdoors enters the home, and even people far from the fire are exposed. What enters is a mixture of fine particles and gases; what remains after the air clears is what the particles settled on and what the gases condensed into. Windowsills, closets, attic insulation, the inside of the ductwork and the return-air filter carry it. So do porous furnishings and clothing. The smell that comes back on warm days is the residue re-emitting from those surfaces.
The EPA's wildfire cleanup guidance also warns about the ash itself: it is handled wet, never dry-swept, and with respiratory protection, because dry cleanup puts the finest fraction straight back into the air. That is one reason not to clean before testing, and one reason the cleaning should be done under a protocol.
What we sample after a wildfire
- Exterior-to-interior pathways. Window tracks, door thresholds, the attic hatch and any ventilation opening, to establish how the smoke came in.
- Interior surfaces. Horizontal surfaces in each occupied room, inside closets and cabinets, tape-lifted and wipe-sampled for microscopy.
- Attic. The top of the insulation and the underside of the deck — wildfire ash settles here through gable and soffit vents in quantity, and it is where residue persists longest.
- HVAC. The filter that ran during the event, the return plenum and a supply register; a system that ran on fresh-air intake pulled the plume through the house.
- Background. Outdoor and unaffected-reference samples, so that the interior results are read against the local baseline after a regional event.
- Air. Where odor persists, sampling for the volatile compounds that residue continues to release.
Results come back from an accredited laboratory identifying char, soot and ash and distinguishing them from ordinary dust — the finding that makes a wildfire smoke claim specific to your house rather than a general complaint about the season.
Mitigation and clearance
When contamination is confirmed, a licensed industrial hygienist writes the protocol and certified professionals carry it out under methods aligned with ANSI/IICRC S700. In a wildfire-exposed home the work typically centres on HEPA vacuuming and wet cleaning of the interior, removal of contaminated attic insulation and cleaning of the deck and framing beneath it, duct cleaning where the system carried the smoke, and cleaning or replacement of porous contents depending on what the samples showed. The same locations are sampled afterwards; the clearance report is the document that says the house is back to background.
The claim, and the state resources that go with it
Smoke and ash from a wildfire are generally covered perils under standard homeowners policies, subject to policy terms, and after a declared event the state insurance regulator usually publishes guidance for claimants — California's Department of Insurance, for example, maintains a wildfire resources page with claim guides and a consumer hotline. What the carrier needs from you is the exposure record — the fire's name, dates, your distance and the wind, the evacuation notices — and the laboratory evidence that the exposure reached the inside of the house. We assemble the first and produce the second, and coordinate the claim-support materials so they arrive together.
Embers, heat and the roof
Smoke does not damage a roof; embers and radiant heat do. NFPA's wildfire mitigation guidance is largely about the ways a home ignites from embers landing on and around it — in gutters, valleys, vents and against siding — and a house that came through with scorched fascia, melted vents or blistered shingles needs a roofer in the attic as well as a specialist sampling it. Our page on the fire-damaged roof explains the inspection; the state directory below finds the contractor.