{"id":154129,"date":"2026-01-29T00:34:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T00:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/154129\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T00:34:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T00:34:07","slug":"oc-board-of-supervisors-approve-a-33-million-airport-fire-settlement-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/154129\/","title":{"rendered":"OC Board of Supervisors approve a $33 million Airport fire settlement\u00a0 \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Orange County will pay $33 million to resolve hundreds of claims related to the Airport fire<\/a>, the destructive 2024 blaze<\/a> sparked by its public works crew that burned for 26 days and razed homes and structures between two counties.<\/p>\n

The OC Board of Supervisors agreed in a closed session meeting this week to approve the settlement payment to 592 claimants from 193 households. Second District Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento was absent.<\/p>\n

The Airport fire<\/a>, which erupted Sept. 9, 2024, in Trabuco Canyon, destroyed more than 160 structures \u2014 which include homes, sheds, cars and such \u2014 and 23,000 acres across Orange and Riverside counties. Twenty-two people \u2014 two civilians and 20 firefighters \u2014 were injured and thousands were forced to evacuate.<\/p>\n

The blaze was accidentally sparked by an OC Public Works crew<\/a> that failed to follow department \u201cbest practices\u201d while moving boulders with heavy machinery, officials have said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe committed to taking full responsibility for the damages and injuries suffered by homeowners and to resolving claims in an expeditious manner,\u201d Fifth District Supervisor Katrina Foley said in a statement Wednesday. \u201cWithin one year, we successfully resolved and reimbursed half of the claimants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarmiento said the county is taking the appropriate steps to process and settle the claims.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I cannot comment on specific claims, I can share that the county is continuing to review and carefully consider the claims submitted,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Singleton Schreiber, the San Diego-based law firm representing all the claimants in the $33 million settlement, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

In a 2024 interview, managing partner Gerald Singleton said the majority of his clients are homeowners or renters who lost personal property in the fire.<\/p>\n

The county\u00a0has settled 400 claims and paid out roughly $89 million as of Jan. 14, according to data shared by a county spokesperson.<\/p>\n

Separately, Cal Fire sued the county last year to recover $32 million in firefighting costs<\/a>. The county is seeking in court to dismiss<\/a> the state agency\u2019s claim, with a hearing set for June 11.<\/p>\n

This is a developing story, please check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orange County will pay $33 million to resolve hundreds of claims related to the Airport fire, the destructive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[5144,163,165,164,7,23,4765,612,136],"class_list":["post-154129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-airport-fire","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-california","tag-local-news","tag-orange-county-board-of-supervisors","tag-riverside-county","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}