Victims of wildfires in Colorado may soon get more immediate and substantive help from insurance companies under statutory changes the Colorado legislature approved Wednesday.

If signed into law, House Bill 1111 would increase the amount of lost property insurance providers have to cover upfront and extend the timeframe victims have to rebuild their homes. The proposed changes would only apply to future declared fire disasters, which would not help victims of recent wildfires.

Lawmakers are tackling a slew of wildfire legislation months after Coloradans suffered the state’s most destructive wildfire in history in December, the Marshall fire, which destroyed more than 1,000 Boulder County homes. The legislation has been in the works since before the Marshall fire, inspired by the East Troublesome fire, which burned 193,812 acres in Grand County in October 2020 and is the second-largest wildfire in state history. 

“There’s no question there are going to be more. That’s the unfortunate reality,” said Senate President Steve Fenberg, D-Boulder, who sponsored the bill. “This is something that, unfortunately, is not going to provide much relief to those who have already gone through these horrible disasters. But it is something that many of us have learned from those disasters that we can apply to right the policy and make it a better situation for those in the future.”

Under the bill, insurance providers would be required to cover at least 65% of the value of lost property upfront. Current law only requires 30% to be covered without the victims creating an inventory of their lost property, a process victims called unnecessarily difficult and traumatizing.

During public comment sessions for the bill, dozens of wildfire victims said they were forced to document every item in their homes – including every item’s age, condition, cost, where they were purchased and proof of purchase – only to be offered a fraction of what the items were worth after months or years of negotiating.

“In 2020, there were four major wildfires in my district,” said Sen. Bob Rankin, R-Carbondale, who also sponsored the bill. “The next year … we started to hear these stories about people who were in temporary living arrangements and they were still, a year later, trying to build the inventory of their personal contents.”

The bill would also require insurance companies to provide 36 months for wildfire victims to rebuild their homes, instead of the current 12 months. Victims could also rebuild in a different location or buy a new home instead.

Bob Hughes, a consultant of the Grand County Builders Association, called the current 12-month time limit “virtually impossible” due to shortages of housing, contractors and building materials in communities hit by wildfires. Hughes said not one home out of the 366 destroyed in Grand County was rebuilt in 12 months.

The state Senate passed the bill in a 29-5 vote on Wednesday, following the House’s 54-9 approval in March. All 14 lawmakers who opposed the bill are Republicans, some arguing the bill would raise insurance rates or not properly address issues wildfire victims face.

The bill will now be sent back to the House to approve changes made by the Senate, and then to Gov. Jared Polis for final consideration.