CA State Parks sues alarm company hired to watch over doomed Bidwell Mansion
California State Parks is suing the alarm company it had hired to protect Chico’s Bidwell Mansion just months before the historic landmark was gutted in an arson fire in December 2024, parks officials announced Friday.
The $38 million lawsuit alleges that Advantage Total Protection, or ATP, failed to monitor the mansion and failed to alert authorities in the event of a fire. State parks officials also allege that ATP led the agency to believe it had conducted required tests of the alarm system and that the systems were operational.
Advantage Total Protection took over the fire and alarm monitoring contract for Bidwell Mansion in June 2024, about six months before the inferno that engulfed the historic structure.
Damages will be determined at trial, parks officials said.
“State Parks never had any indication that the fire alarm system would not work as designed in the event of a catastrophic fire,” agency officials said in a statement Friday. “Because of these failures, fire authorities and State Parks were not timely notified of the arson at Bidwell Mansion in December 2024, leading to the nearly complete destruction of the historic property and the historic objects inside.”
The devastating fire shocked Chico residents. The stately mansion, built by city founder Gen. John Bidwell on the Esplanade near downtown, had long been a community and cultural touchstone.
Kevin Alexander Carlson, the man who burned down Bidwell Mansion, was sentenced in Butte Superior Court to 11 years in prison for felony arson in March 2025.
Carlson admitted in a statement filed by his defense to setting the landmark mansion ablaze out of a sense of personal frustration and class resentment.
This story was originally published March 13, 2026 at 12:25 PM.
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