Posted by Bystander
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Jan 1, 2024 at 9:56 am
Bystander is a registered user.

This seems really strange to me. How can it be necessary to close the street for that long? As a comparison, the fire at Bills/Philz on Middlefield didn't close the street, but nothing has been done to remove or replace the building or businesses.

Posted by MyFeelz
a resident of another community
on Jan 1, 2024 at 4:11 pm
MyFeelz is a registered user.

The process for a fire insurance claim (if one can GET fire insurance) takes months to settle, as Bystander notes in the buildings on Middlefield last year. If the owner maintains the insurance, too bad. Being that there are multiple tenants in both fires, and with pullback of all well known insurers refusing to write new fire policies from any kind of renters, there may never be anything there without government intervention. Either on ECR or Middlefield. It behooves all of the tenants to find out what kind of insurance they can get and what it will cost before re-building. My guess is it's well above the "cost of doing business". If a Judo class relocates across the street, their insurance costs will at least quadruple, if they can find a policy anywhere. This is the untold story about renter's insurance and homeowner's insurance that is being debated at the CA department of insurance that no one is talking about. If your business or rental home suffered a loss due to wildfire, there's a moratorium on non-renewals. Any other policies or no policy, hold on to your hats. Mysteriously, my car insurance has increased 25% starting January 2024, with no explanation. Study your bills closely, look at the declarations and compare to prior similar coverage. Unless the CDI grants an increase, raising auto policies to cover wildfire losses to benefit the insurance companies is against the law.

ETA: the reason it's taking so long to assess the cause is because the only hope any of the victims have is being able to subrogate the claim against the person(s) or equipment that caused the fire. Everybody's out for the holidays after the ECR fire. It will take a while to find out the cause.