Sources & Methodology

This page explains exactly how the California Wildfire Recovery Center is built: where our facts come from, how we model litigation, the rules that keep us from guessing, and how we keep the record current. We publish this openly so the record can be trusted and checked.

Our sources

We use public records only. Every fact on this site can be traced to a published source, and we record where it came from. Our sources include:

• Incident data and statistics from CAL FIRE and InciWeb, cause, acreage, structures, containment, and fatalities.
• Government records from state, county, and federal agencies.
• Court dockets documenting filings and case status in the public record.
• Regulatory filings, including proceedings and records before the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
• Photographs that are public domain or licensed, each with its license recorded.

Facts are rewritten in original words. We summarize and report what these sources establish; we never copy article prose. The writing on this site is our own.

The litigation data model

Litigation is the area where loose reporting does the most harm, so we model it carefully. Every fire record carries a litigation status drawn from a fixed, durable set of states:

• litigation_filed, litigation is on the public record as filed.
• litigation_reported, litigation is reported in public sources.
• settled_resolved, a matter has been settled or otherwise resolved on the record.
• no_known_litigation, no litigation is known in the public record we can find.
• unknown, the public record does not establish the status.

A status is never shown bare. It always appears as "Status as of <date> per <source>," so you can see when it was confirmed and where it came from.

Why we report it this way

These are durable facts. Whether litigation was filed on a given date, attributed to a named source, is a statement that stays accurate and can be maintained over time. We deliberately do not publish perishable claims, for instance, whether a specific person can still take action. That kind of question depends on legal deadlines and on facts unique to each individual, and it can only be assessed by a licensed attorney. Reporting the durable record keeps us accurate; reporting a perishable, individual claim would not.

Our anti-hallucination rule

We do not guess. The rule is simple and absolute:

• Unknown is stored as null and shown as "unknown." We never fill a gap to make a record look complete.
• No field publishes without a source behind it.
• Every fire record carries a minimum of two sources.

If we cannot source it, it does not appear. An honest gap is more useful than a confident error.

How the data stays current

A record like this is only as good as its freshness, so it is maintained on two tracks:

• Government impact figures, acreage, structures, fatalities, and containment, are refreshed from public incident data, and the record is re-stamped with a "last verified" date so you can see how recent it is.
• Legal-status accuracy is periodically confirmed with the named firm. As that confirmation ages, the pages become more conservative, never less. Time only makes us more cautious about a status, never more certain.

How to report a correction

If you find something you believe is wrong or out of date, please tell us through the contact page and include a public source we can check. We will review it against the record. We would rather be corrected than be wrong.