Airport fire liability claims continue to roll in six months since the start of the wildfire; the county’s risk management department is sifting through more than 2,000 submissions.

Claims filed with Orange County seek reimbursement for a variety of physical damages and other expenses, from food and shelter to injuries and the cost of rebuilding, as well as emotional distress, fear and annoyance. Filings range from $100 million to the cost of a night or two in a hotel during evacuations.

The more than 600 filings that have been made public so far add up to hundreds of millions of dollars, but it’s still too early to know the true cost the county faces. The submissions include duplicates or multiple family members filing under the same property, so it is hard to know how many final claims there will be, and there is still more time to submit.

“The final number, if they actually do settle with all of them, could be very different,” said Samuel Stone, professor of public administration at Cal State Fullerton. “It strikes me as premature to put a real, precise dollar figure on it. Once you do, most of these become structured settlements, so they’re not paying out the whole amount in one single fiscal year.”

The fire began on Sept. 9, sweeping through 23,526 acres between Orange and Riverside counties, and burning for 26 days. Early on it was released that an OC Public Works crew using heavy machinery to move boulders in tinder-dry Trabuco Canyon sparked the flame. The crew failed to follow department “best practices” and bring a water truck for fire suppression, according to county documents.

State law sets a 6-month window from the date damages occurred to file a claim for personal property damage — such as vehicles and clothing — and one year to file a claim for real property damage. Each case is unique because the filer could have incurred personal or property damage on the day the fire started or any day after, county officials said.

Read more: Airport fire damage claims run the gamut — from millions for burned houses to $3 for M&Ms

“The County of Orange’s Risk Department normally processes approximately 665 claims in a year,” said county spokesperson Molly Nichelson. “At the present time, we have approximately 2,000 claims for the Airport Fire, which (we) continue to redact and update on our website. Given the current volume of fire claims, our Risk Department is working on inputting, accessing and consulting with claimants to ensure claims are addressed.”

Since December, the county started publishing copies of the submitted claims on the Clerk of the Board’s website. As of March 7, the county has publicized more than 600 submissions, though it is unclear how many final claims that represents. The county has already paid out about $1.6 million in claims, Nichelson said.

The government claim form process is a precursor to a lawsuit, said Bridgford Law attorney Michael Artinian.

“The process typically is, you file your government claim form, most of the time, in my experience, those get rejected, and then that’s the prerequisite step in order to file your lawsuit against the county,” Artinian said, adding that filers are required to include a dollar amount they are seeking. “The amounts in the government claim forms are a matter of subjectivity based on the claimant or the claimant’s lawyer.”

Because of the subjectivity of the dollar amounts, Artinian said there is nothing like an industry standard to how much government entities end up paying in this type of litigation. The reimbursement process can be easier if claimants are only asking for economic damages, such as the cost to rebuild or cost of evacuating, he added.

“But what always makes the claim not subject to a standard percentage of the claim is because of the non-economic damages, for example, nuisance, annoyance,” Artinian said. “All of that is dependent upon various variables that are difficult to quantify upfront, and usually a jury is asked to make an award of the non-economic damages based on the facts of the case.”

“There’s no rote formula for that,” he added. “That’s why, if a law firm is claiming, for example, $1 million in damages, unless it’s broken out by economic and non-economic damages, that claim is going to be subject to further proof at the time of trial.”

The remains of two homes destroyed during the Airport Fire sit on El Cariso Road in El Cariso Village, CA, on Wednesday, March 12, 2025. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

In January, Orange County’s interim CEO warned department heads and leaders to restrict local spending and find possible areas of savings amid slowing revenues and the potential for Airport fire litigation to possibly cost “hundreds of millions of dollars.” Nichelson said at the time the county has $30 million in insurance coverage that may be available to pay for claims.

According to CalFire, the Airport fire destroyed 160 structures — which includes homes, sheds, vehicles and such — and damaged 34 others.

“A number of those were, I believe, smaller cabins or things like that in the forest,” Artinian said. “It sounds to me that based on the number of structures that have been affected, in my opinion, at this point, it would probably be unlikely that the county would go bankrupt over this fire.”

There’s still a long way to go for these claims to become settlements, Stone said, and an even longer time before the county has to worry about potential bankruptcy.

“I think the term (bankruptcy) gets thrown around pretty casually to mean anytime someone is in some kind of financial distress. But bankruptcy has a very specific legal meaning and the bar is very high,” Stone said. “The long, long way from these multi-million dollar claims and the county not being able to make bond payments in the future, so many things have to happen in between. I wouldn’t worry about it at this point.”

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