Research study
ADUs as rebuild housing after wildfire
The state records every damaged structure over 120 square feet. It has no category for an accessory dwelling unit — so nobody knows how many burned, including the state.
Written by HyreADU Research Desk Primary-source research and data analysis
Audited by HyreADU Research Desk Query reproducibility and citation audit
The finding
California’s official post-fire damage record cannot distinguish an ADU from a garden shed on one side or a house on the other. We queried CAL FIRE’s Damage Inspection (DINS) feature service directly and grouped all 132,522 records by structure type.
Twenty values exist, and none of them is “accessory dwelling unit”, “second unit”, “granny flat” or anything equivalent. A detached ADU falls into “Single Family Residence Single Story” or “Utility Misc Structure” at the inspecting officer’s discretion.
So the question “how many ADUs were destroyed?” has no answer in the state’s own data, and any published figure claiming one did not come from DINS. The gap is a data-collection choice rather than a controversy, and it is fixable.
What the record does show is the shape of the exposure. Of those inspected structures, 70,390 are recorded as “Destroyed (>50%)”, in spikes rather than a trend: 22,701 destroyed in 2018, 16,512 in 2025 and 10,922 in 2017, against 53 in 2023.
On the law, a rebuilding household usually does not need an emergency ordinance to add an ADU. The standing statute already provides ministerial approval within 60 days (Government Code section 66317), by-right categories including a detached unit of not more than 800 square feet of livable space (section 66323), a floor beneath local size and height standards (section 66321), and no owner-occupancy requirement.
Those apply on a burned lot as on any other. What we could not retrieve is any county’s post-fire emergency rebuild ordinance. fire.ca.gov and the main municipal code host both returned HTTP 403 to automated retrieval throughout this session, so this edition names no county’s emergency ordinance and describes none. Not legal advice.
Read this first
- If you have just lost a home, this page is not the resource you need first
This is a research study about a data gap and a statutory position. It is not disaster guidance, not claims guidance and not legal advice.
After a loss, the sequence that matters runs through your insurer, your county’s recovery or rebuilding center, and — where money or coverage is disputed — a lawyer.
The California Department of Insurance publishes consumer guidance including “Don’t Get Scammed After a Disaster” and a residential property claims guide, and post-disaster contractor fraud is a documented and serious problem.
- We describe no county’s emergency rebuild ordinance, because we could not retrieve one
The page contract names post-fire ADU provisions adopted by counties as a primary dataset. On this date
fire.ca.govreturned HTTP 403 and the main municipal code host returns HTTP 403 to automated retrieval as a standing condition for this desk.Emergency ordinances are also time-limited by design, so a description written from a stale source is worse than none. Ask your county’s recovery office directly and get the ordinance number and its expiry date.
- The DINS figures are counts of inspected structures, not of homes lost
CAL FIRE states the limits plainly in the dataset documentation: “Fire damage and poor access are major limiting factors for damage inspectors. All inspections are conducted using a systematic inspection process, however not all structures impacted by the fire may be identified due to these factors.” Attributes “with null values could not be determined.” Treat every figure on this page as a count of what was inspected and recorded.
- A burned lot can carry constraints that have nothing to do with fire
Post-fire slopes shed debris and water differently, and a lot may sit in a fire hazard severity zone, a flood hazard area, or on a septic system whose leach field was damaged. Those are separate determinations. See our studies on fire code, flood zones and septic systems.
The gap: what the state records, and what it cannot
CAL FIRE maintains a Damage Inspection database — DINS — which the state describes as documenting “all structures impacted by wildland fire within the Statewide Responsibility Area (SRA) that are inside or within 300 feet of the fire perimeter.” It records structure type, construction features and defensive actions, and it is published openly through the state’s data portal with a live feature service behind it.
The schema is unusually detailed about construction. It carries fields for roof construction, eaves, vent screen, exterior siding, window pane, decks and porches on grade and elevated, patio cover or carport attached to the structure, fence attached to the structure, and the distance from a propane tank to the structure.
That level of detail is what makes DINS valuable for research on what survives a fire and why.
It carries no field, and no structure-type value, that identifies an accessory dwelling unit. We enumerated every value of STRUCTURETYPE across the whole record set. Twenty values exist.
Seventeen of them describe single-family, multifamily, mobile home, motor home, commercial, school, church, hospital, infrastructure or agriculture. Two describe utility or miscellaneous structures. One is a misspelling of another.
The schema does carry “# Units in Structure (if multi unit)”, and it carries two fields counting outbuildings under 120 square feet — damaged and not damaged.
So the concepts of unit counts and of small ancillary structures both exist. What does not exist is the category that sits between them: a second, complete, permitted dwelling on a single-family parcel.
HyreADU analysis: the practical consequence is that a detached ADU is recorded either as a “Single Family Residence” — indistinguishable from the main house — or as a “Utility Misc Structure”, indistinguishable from a large shed.
Which of the two depends on what the inspecting officer concluded in the field, and DINS carries no flag to tell them apart afterwards. That is why we publish no ADU loss count, and why we think any figure you encounter should be asked where it came from.
Every structure type in the state damage record
The complete enumeration, returned by grouping all 132,522 DINS records by STRUCTURETYPE on 2026-09-05. This is the whole vocabulary the state has for describing a burned building.
| Structure type as recorded | Records | Could a detached ADU be recorded here? |
|---|---|---|
| Single Family Residence Single Story | 47,272 | Yes — and indistinguishable from the main house |
| Utility Misc Structure | 35,871 | Yes — and indistinguishable from a large shed or workshop |
| Single Family Residence Multi Story | 28,386 | Yes |
| Mobile Home Double Wide | 6,262 | Possibly, where the ADU is a manufactured home — see our prefab study |
| Commercial Building Single Story | 3,867 | No |
| Mobile Home Single Wide | 3,291 | Possibly, same caveat |
| Motor Home | 1,814 | No |
| Multi Family Residence Multi Story | 1,372 | Possibly, on a multifamily lot |
| Infrastructure | 942 | No |
| Multi Family Residence Single Story | 884 | Possibly, on a multifamily lot |
| Commercial Building Multi Story | 675 | No |
| School | 633 | No |
| Mobile Home Triple Wide | 530 | Possibly, same caveat |
| Mixed Commercial/Residential | 410 | No |
| Church | 132 | No |
| Motor Home/Travel Trailer | 94 | No |
| Utility or Miscellaneous Structure > 120 sqft | 51 | Yes — note this is a separate value from “Utility Misc Structure” |
| Hospital | 25 | No |
| Agriculture | 7 | No |
| Single Famliy Residence Single Story (sic — data entry variant) | 4 | Yes; recorded here we retain the source spelling |
HyreADU query against the CAL FIRE POSTFIRE_MASTER_DATA_SHARE feature service, layer 0, grouping by STRUCTURETYPE with a count statistic, 2026-09-05. Counts are as returned; the right-hand column is HyreADU analysis. Total 132,522.
Note the last row, and the seventeenth. “Single Famliy Residence Single Story” is a misspelled duplicate with four records, and “Utility or Miscellaneous Structure > 120 sqft” is a near-duplicate of “Utility Misc Structure” with 51 records against 35,871.
Both are ordinary artefacts of a field-collected dataset and neither materially changes any total. We publish them because a table that silently merged them would be a table you could not reproduce.
What was destroyed, and when
All figures returned by direct query on 2026-09-05. The damage classes are the state’s own, and the top class — “Destroyed (>50%)” — uses the same 50 per cent line as the federal substantial damage definition, though for a different purpose.
| Cut of the data | Figure | Query basis |
|---|---|---|
| Total inspection records | 132,522 | All records, layer 0, grouped by structure type and summed |
| Date range of incident start dates | 7 August 2013 – 23 November 2025 | Minimum and maximum of INCIDENTSTARTDATE |
| Destroyed (>50%) | 70,390 | Grouped by DAMAGE |
| No Damage | 54,414 | Grouped by DAMAGE — inspected and found undamaged |
| Affected (>0–10%) | 5,057 | Grouped by DAMAGE |
| Minor (10–25%) | 1,356 | Grouped by DAMAGE |
| Major (25–50%) | 714 | Grouped by DAMAGE |
| Inaccessible | 591 | Grouped by DAMAGE |
| Destroyed in 2025 | 16,512 | DAMAGE = Destroyed and incident start date in 2025 |
| Of which, Los Angeles County | 16,278 | Same filter, grouped by COUNTY |
| Destroyed in 2018 | 22,701 | DAMAGE = Destroyed and incident start date in 2018 |
| Destroyed in 2023 | 53 | DAMAGE = Destroyed and incident start date in 2023 — the quietest year in the record |
| 2025 destroyed recorded as “Utility Misc Structure” | 4,374 | The bucket a detached ADU may land in; not an ADU count and must not be read as one |
HyreADU queries against the CAL FIRE POSTFIRE_MASTER_DATA_SHARE feature service, layer 0, 2026-09-05. Damage class labels are the dataset’s. Reproducible from the service endpoint recorded in our sources.
Read the last row carefully and do not lift it. 4,374 destroyed structures were recorded as “Utility Misc Structure” in 2025. That is not a count of destroyed ADUs.
It is the size of the bucket into which some unknown number of ADUs fell, alongside sheds, workshops, barns, pump houses and detached garages. We publish it to show the scale of the ambiguity, not to resolve it.
What standing state law already allows on a burned lot
The premise that a post-fire emergency ordinance is needed before an ADU can help is, in most respects, wrong. Here is what the ordinary statute already provides, as retrieved on 2026-09-05.
| What a rebuilding household usually wants | What the standing statute already provides | Citation |
|---|---|---|
| A quick, non-discretionary decision | “The permitting agency shall either approve or deny the application to create or serve an accessory dwelling unit within 60 days from the date the permitting agency receives a completed application if there is an existing single-family or multifamily dwelling on the lot.” On denial, the agency must “return in writing a full set of comments to the applicant with a list of items that are defective or deficient and a description of how the application can be remedied.” | Gov. Code § 66317 |
| A ministerial path where the city has no ADU ordinance | Where a local agency “has not adopted an ordinance governing accessory dwelling units”, it “shall approve or disapprove the application ministerially without discretionary review pursuant to Section 66317.” | Gov. Code § 66320 |
| A detached unit that can be built quickly | A by-right category: one detached new-construction ADU that does “not exceed four-foot side and rear yard setbacks” and is “not more than 800 square feet of livable space”. | Gov. Code § 66323(a)(2) |
| Protection from a restrictive local size or height rule | No local maximum below “[e]ight hundred fifty square feet of interior livable space” or “[o]ne thousand square feet … for an accessory dwelling unit that provides more than one bedroom”; and no height limit below 16 feet detached, 18 feet near qualifying transit or beside a multifamily multistory dwelling, or 25 feet attached. | Gov. Code § 66321(b)(2), (b)(4) |
| A unit that is not counted against density | A conforming ADU “shall be deemed to be an accessory use or an accessory building and shall not be considered to exceed the allowable density for the lot … and shall not be considered in the application of any local ordinance, policy, or program to limit residential growth.” | Gov. Code § 66319 |
| Freedom to let the unit while living elsewhere | No local owner-occupancy requirement may be imposed on an ADU, and the prohibition no longer sunsets. See our owner-occupancy study. | Gov. Code § 66315 |
| A manufactured or factory-built unit, delivered rather than framed | An ADU is defined to include a manufactured home as defined in Health and Safety Code § 18007 — so the HUD-Code route is open. See our prefab study. | Gov. Code § 66313(a) |
| Relief on fees for a small unit | No impact fee on an ADU of 750 sq ft of interior livable space or less; above that, fees “charged proportionately in relation to the square footage of the primary dwelling unit”. Connection fees and capacity charges are outside that waiver — see our utility study. | Gov. Code § 66311.5(c) |
Compiled by the HyreADU Research Desk from Government Code Chapter 13 sections retrieved individually from the Legislative Counsel’s codes service on 2026-09-05.
HyreADU analysis, and the limit of it. What a genuine post-fire emergency ordinance typically adds is different in kind from the rows above — temporary occupancy of a recreational vehicle or trailer during rebuilding, fee deferrals, expedited plan check staffing, or relief from a design standard.
Those are real and they matter. We have described none of them here because we retrieved none.
What we can say with sources is that the ordinary ADU statute is already permissive on a burned lot, and that a household should not wait for an ordinance to ask the counter about it.
What the fire changes about the lot itself
The hazard designation may be the same, or may not be
Government Code section 51178 requires the State Fire Marshal to identify areas as moderate, high and very high fire hazard severity zones, “based on consistent statewide criteria and based on the severity of fire hazard that is expected to prevail in those areas”, using “fuel loading, slope, fire weather, and other relevant factors including areas where winds have been identified by the Office of the State Fire Marshal as a major cause of wildfire spread.” The section was amended by SB 63 (Stats. 2021, Ch. 382), effective 1 January 2022.
Section 51189 directs the State Fire Marshal, in consultation with the director and the Director of Housing and Community Development, to “recommend updated building standards that provide for comprehensive site and structure fire risk reduction,” addressing “fire resistant building materials, and standards for reducing fire risks on structure projections, including, but not limited to, porches, decks, balconies and eaves, and structure openings, including, but not limited to, attic, foundation, and eave vents, doors, and windows.”
Zone designations are revised. A rebuild is built to the standards in force at the time of the new permit, not the standards the lost building was built to. Our fire code study deals with what that means for an ADU in detail.
The construction features DINS records are the ones that matter
The DINS schema is itself a statement about what the state believes decides survival: roof construction, eaves, vent screen, exterior siding, window pane, decks and porches on grade and elevated, attached patio covers and carports, attached fences, and the distance from a propane tank to the structure.
HyreADU analysis: an ADU rebuild is a rare opportunity to get every one of those right at once, on a new structure, with no legacy detailing to work around. That is a design observation rather than a code requirement, and the code requirement is whatever the zone and the current standards say.
Utilities and wastewater may need re-establishing rather than extending
A fire that destroyed the house may have destroyed or compromised the service equipment, the meter, and — outside sewered areas — the septic system’s components. That changes an ADU from an addition to a functioning property into part of a wholesale reconstruction, and the sequencing question becomes real.
Our electrical service study and septic study set out how each of those is assessed. Both are licensed-professional determinations on the specific property.
Insurance is a separate and moving question
Insurance Code section 675.1 provides that “[a]n insurer shall not cancel or refuse to renew a policy of residential property insurance for a property located in any ZIP Code within or adjacent to the fire perimeter, for one year after the declaration of a state of emergency … based solely on the fact that the insured structure is located in an area in which a wildfire has occurred,” with CAL FIRE determining the perimeter in consultation with the Office of Emergency Services and the Insurance Commissioner issuing a bulletin identifying affected ZIP Codes.
That is a protection for an existing policy on an existing structure. It is not a guarantee of cover for a new second unit. Our insurance study is explicit about what we could and could not retrieve on the California market, and none of it is insurance advice.
If you are rebuilding and considering an ADU
Administrative steps, in the order that surfaces blockers earliest. None of this is legal advice and none of it substitutes for your county’s recovery office.
- 1 Ask the county recovery office for the emergency ordinance number and its expiry date
If one exists, it will be time-limited. Get the number and the sunset date in writing, and ask specifically whether it addresses temporary occupancy during construction, fee deferral, plan-check priority, or design relief — those are the four things such ordinances usually touch, and they are different from what the standing ADU statute already provides.
- 2 Confirm the fire hazard severity zone designation as it stands now, not as it stood before
Designations are revised, and a rebuild is built to current standards. This determines materials, vents, eaves, decks and glazing, and it is a large cost driver. Ask the building department for the current designation for the parcel in writing.
- 3 Check whether the lot carries any other hazard overlay
Post-fire hillsides shed debris and water differently, and a parcel can sit in a flood hazard area independently of the fire. If the property is unsewered, the septic system’s capacity and condition is a separate county environmental health question. Neither is answered by the fire recovery process.
- 4 Ask whether the ADU can be permitted ahead of, or alongside, the main dwelling
Section 66317’s 60-day clock is conditioned on there being “an existing single-family or multifamily dwelling on the lot”, which is a real question on a lot where the dwelling was destroyed.
This is exactly the kind of point a written question to the permitting agency answers and a website cannot. Ask it early, because the sequencing changes the whole program.
- 5 Talk to your insurer before you commit to a second unit
Adding a dwelling changes the policy the property needs, and in the hardest markets it can change whether cover is available. That conversation belongs before the design, not after the framing.
- 6 Verify every contractor’s license, and be alert to post-disaster fraud
Licenses are checkable on the Contractors State License Board’s public register. The California Department of Insurance publishes a consumer guide titled “Don’t Get Scammed After a Disaster”. Solicitation at a burn site is a recognized pattern and it is worth treating an unsolicited approach as a reason for more diligence, not less.
What we could not verify
Every county post-fire emergency rebuild ordinance. None retrieved. The page contract asks for them and this edition does not have them. fire.ca.gov returned HTTP 403 throughout, and the main municipal code host returns HTTP 403 to automated retrieval as a standing condition for this desk.
Because such ordinances are time-limited, we would rather publish nothing than publish something expired.
How many ADUs have been destroyed by wildfire in California. Not knowable from DINS, for the reason this page exists to document. We have not found another dataset that answers it and we do not estimate one.
An apparent inconsistency in the DINS scope that we did not resolve. The dataset documentation describes DINS as documenting structures “within the Statewide Responsibility Area (SRA)”, and the CAL FIRE Director Memorandum quoted in the schema documentation refers to structures “in the State Responsibility Area (SRA)”.
Yet our query returned 16,278 destroyed structures in Los Angeles County for 2025, and much of the affected area in the January 2025 Los Angeles fires is local responsibility area rather than SRA.
We report both the documentation and the query result as retrieved, and we do not reconcile them. It may reflect a broader master dataset than the description implies, or mutual-aid inspection practice, or something else.
Anyone using DINS for research should establish the answer before relying on statewide completeness.
CAL FIRE’s own published incident statistics. The fire.ca.gov statistics page returned HTTP 403, so we could not cross-check our query results against CAL FIRE’s own published annual structure-loss figures. We would expect differences — published incident summaries and the inspection database are compiled differently — and we have not been able to characterize them.
The Office of the State Fire Marshal’s current fire hazard severity zone maps. The OSFM fire hazard severity zone page returned HTTP 403. We therefore cite the statutory framework at Government Code sections 51178 and 51189 and publish no map, no zone designation and no adoption date for any jurisdiction.
Questions
How many ADUs have been destroyed by wildfire in California?
Can I build an ADU on a lot where the house burned down?
Do I need a special emergency ordinance to add an ADU while rebuilding?
Will an ADU on a rebuilt lot have to meet stricter fire standards?
What does “Destroyed (>50%)” mean in the state data?
Which year was worst, and what does that tell a rebuilding household?
Can I live in a trailer or RV on my lot while rebuilding?
Does my insurance have to keep covering me after a fire in my area?
Written and audited by
HyreADU Research Desk
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a builder. We read the permit extract, the statute, the HCD return or the fee schedule ourselves, and publish each figure with its source and retrieval date.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we leave it out and say what we could not verify. Our store-based claims cover California only.
- CA
- the only state this desk will make store-based claims about
- 5
- jurisdictions with extracted ADU permit evidence
- 735
- CSLB-verified companies in the California store
- 0
- national claims from a one-state store
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Permit counts come from the city or county that issued the permit. Production counts come from HCD’s Annual Progress Report. Rents come from HUD or the Census. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we download the source and compute the figure ourselves.
- This is a California site. The company store is 734 California firms and one New Mexico firm. Permit evidence exists for five named jurisdictions: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, San José and unincorporated Marin. A number from that store is titled to those places, never to the United States.
- A permit is not a completion, and a license is not an ADU grade. California licenses no ADU classification. Being named on an ADU permit is evidence of engagement in that jurisdiction, not of quality, completion, or work anywhere else. Owner-builder permits are excluded from contractor counts.
- Calculation is labeled as calculation. Figures we derive are never presented as something HCD, HUD, the Census or a city published. Terner Center research is cited as Terner’s, never restated as ours.
- We do not design, permit or build ADUs, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favorable mention. Pages that look like rankings are not: they publish public-record counts and let the reader decide.
- Nothing here is legal, tax or financial advice. Zoning, underwriting and appraisal practice vary by jurisdiction, lender and appraiser. The useful next step on a specific lot is the planning counter and a licensed professional.
Data as of CAL FIRE Damage Inspection (DINS) data queried directly against the POSTFIRE_MASTER_DATA_SHARE feature service 2026-09-05; dataset metadata from data.ca.gov, metadata modified 5 September 2026; Government Code Chapter 13 sections and Government Code §§ 51178 and 51189 retrieved from leginfo.legislature.ca.gov 2026-09-05. Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold.
Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
- CAL FIRE Damage Inspection (DINS) Data — feature service, POSTFIRE_MASTER_DATA_SHARE , Queried directly on 2026-09-05. All counts on this page come from grouped count statistics and filtered count queries against layer 0 of this service: total records 132,522; twenty distinct STRUCTURETYPE values, none describing an accessory dwelling unit; six DAMAGE classes including “Destroyed (>50%)” at 70,390; INCIDENTSTARTDATE ranging 7 August 2013 to 23 November 2025; per-year destroyed counts 2017–2025; and 2025 destroyed grouped by COUNTY and by STRUCTURETYPE. The schema’s field list — including ROOFCONSTRUCTION, EAVES, VENTSCREEN, EXTERIORSIDING, WINDOWPANE, DECKPORCHONGRADE, DECKPORCHELEVATED, PATIOCOVERCARPORT, FENCEATTACHEDTOSTRUCTURE, PROPANETANKDISTANCE, NUMBEROFUNITPERSTRUCTURE and the two outbuilding fields captioned “< 120 SQFT” — was read from the service metadata. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- CAL FIRE Damage Inspection (DINS) Data — dataset record, California Open Data Portal , Metadata modified 5 September 2026. Describes the database as documenting “all structures impacted by wildland fire within the Statewide Responsibility Area (SRA) that are inside or within 300 feet of the fire perimeter”, recording “structure type, construction features, and defensive actions”, with “[a]ttributes with null values could not be determined.” Records the limits we quote: “Fire damage and poor access are major limiting factors for damage inspectors. All inspections are conducted using a systematic inspection process, however not all structures impacted by the fire may be identified due to these factors.” Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- CAL FIRE Wildfire Damage Inspection Template (GDB) — dataset record, California Open Data Portal , The schema documentation, describing itself as “the schema developed and used by the CAL FIRE Office of State Fire Marshal to assess and record structure damage on wildland fire incidents” and noting that additional fields “are based off of fields needed in the Incident Status Summary (ICS 209)”. Source of the quoted Director Memorandum: “Effective January 1, 2019 all structure[s] greater than 120 square feet in the State Responsibility Area (SRA) damaged by wildfire will be inspected and documented in the DINS Collector App.” Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- California Government Code § 66317 — the 60-day ministerial deadline and the comments requirement , “The permitting agency shall either approve or deny the application to create or serve an accessory dwelling unit within 60 days from the date the permitting agency receives a completed application if there is an existing single-family or multifamily dwelling on the lot.” On denial: “return in writing a full set of comments to the applicant with a list of items that are defective or deficient and a description of how the application can be remedied.” Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- California Government Code § 66323 — the by-right ADU categories , Including the detached new-construction category: an ADU that does “not exceed four-foot side and rear yard setbacks” and is “not more than 800 square feet of livable space”. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- California Government Code § 66321 — floors under local size and height standards , No local maximum below “[e]ight hundred fifty square feet of interior livable space” or “[o]ne thousand square feet of interior livable space for an accessory dwelling unit that provides more than one bedroom”; minimum height allowances of 16, 18 and 25 feet by configuration and transit proximity, with two additional feet permitted to match the primary dwelling’s roof pitch. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- California Government Code § 66319 — an ADU does not exceed allowable density , A conforming ADU “shall be deemed to be an accessory use or an accessory building and shall not be considered to exceed the allowable density for the lot upon which it is located, and shall be deemed to be a residential use that is consistent with the existing general plan and zoning designations … [It] shall not be considered in the application of any local ordinance, policy, or program to limit residential growth.” Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- California Government Code § 66320 — ministerial approval where no local ordinance exists , A local agency that “has not adopted an ordinance governing accessory dwelling units in accordance with Section 66314 … shall approve or disapprove the application ministerially without discretionary review pursuant to Section 66317.” Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- California Government Code § 51178 — fire hazard severity zones , Requires the State Fire Marshal to identify areas as moderate, high and very high fire hazard severity zones “based on consistent statewide criteria and based on the severity of fire hazard that is expected to prevail in those areas”, using “fuel loading, slope, fire weather, and other relevant factors including areas where winds have been identified by the Office of the State Fire Marshal as a major cause of wildfire spread.” Amended by Stats. 2021, Ch. 382, Sec. 2.5 (SB 63), effective 1 January 2022. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- California Government Code § 51189 — recommended building standards for fire risk reduction , “The State Fire Marshal, in consultation with the director and the Director of Housing and Community Development, shall … recommend updated building standards that provide for comprehensive site and structure fire risk reduction,” addressing “fire resistant building materials, and standards for reducing fire risks on structure projections, including, but not limited to, porches, decks, balconies and eaves, and structure openings, including, but not limited to, attic, foundation, and eave vents, doors, and windows.” Amended by Stats. 2021, Ch. 382, Sec. 5 (SB 63), effective 1 January 2022. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- California Insurance Code § 675.1 — post-wildfire moratorium on cancellation and nonrenewal , “An insurer shall not cancel or refuse to renew a policy of residential property insurance for a property located in any ZIP Code within or adjacent to the fire perimeter, for one year after the declaration of a state of emergency … based solely on the fact that the insured structure is located in an area in which a wildfire has occurred.” CAL FIRE determines the fire perimeter in consultation with the Office of Emergency Services and provides the data to the Insurance Commissioner, who issues a bulletin identifying affected ZIP Codes. Amended by Stats. 2018, Ch. 618, Sec. 1.5 (SB 894), effective 1 January 2019. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
The standing statute is more useful than most people are told
Ministerial approval in 60 days, a by-right detached unit to 800 square feet, floors under local size and height rules, and no owner-occupancy requirement — none of that needs an emergency ordinance. Ask your permitting agency, in writing, whether the 60-day clock runs on a lot where the dwelling was destroyed.
HyreADU does not design, permit or build accessory dwelling units, does not practice law, and does not adjust or advise on insurance claims. This page is informational and is not legal, insurance or disaster-recovery advice.
If you have suffered a loss, your insurer, your county recovery office and — where money or coverage is disputed — a lawyer come first.
All damage figures are counts of structures inspected and recorded in CAL FIRE’s Damage Inspection database as queried on 5 September 2026, and CAL FIRE states that “not all structures impacted by the fire may be identified” because of fire damage and access limits.
No figure on this page is a count of accessory dwelling units, because the dataset has no category for one. We describe no county emergency rebuild ordinance, because we could not retrieve any; such ordinances are time-limited and must be confirmed with the issuing county.
Verify every contractor’s license on the Contractors State License Board register, and treat unsolicited approaches at a burn site with more diligence, not less.