Firefighters play by a different rulebook in California comp — three different rulebooks, actually: a salary benefit ordinary workers don’t get, presumptions that flip the burden of proof, and an occupational group at the top of the rating schedule. Here’s each one, with the ratings computed by the engine.
The §4850 year
Qualifying safety members — city, county, and district firefighters among them — don’t receive ordinary TD when a work injury takes them off duty. Labor Code §4850 pays up to one year of full salary, tax-free, in its place. Against TD’s two-thirds-of-wages cap, that is routinely tens of thousands of dollars of difference, and it applies per qualifying injury.
The presumptions
For most workers, proving an illness is job-caused is their burden. For qualifying firefighters the Labor Code presumes several conditions are industrial: heart trouble, hernia, and pneumonia (§3212), cancer following exposure to a known carcinogen (§3212.1), and PTSD (§3212.15, added by SB 542). The employer must disprove causation — and the presumptions extend for a period after retirement, measured by service time. Sharper still: §4663(e) exempts these presumption injuries from apportionment — the standard defense lever of blaming pre-existing degeneration is off the table.
The group-490 premium
The 2005 schedule assigns firefighters to occupational group 490, which draws variant I — at or near the top — for essentially every injury a firefighter brings home. Engine-computed at the 2026 maximum, age 37–41, before any of the above:
Compare the fusion line to the same surgery at a desk job — 25% PD, $29,217.50 — on the fusion page: the schedule pays the 490 premium because firefighting demands everything the injury took.
The retirement interplay
Serious firefighter claims run parallel tracks: the comp case and an industrial disability retirement through the pension system. The comp rating, the medical evidence, and the timing feed both — which is why the P&S report and its WPI numbers are worth auditing line by line (the decoder checks any rating string against the tables) before either case settles.
The clocks still run
Presumptions ease causation, not deadlines — the statutory clocks (claim decision, limitations, the five-year window) run like any claim, and cumulative-trauma dates follow §5412. The full money framework — what PD pays at every percentage — is in what comp pays. Estimates for informational use; not legal advice.