Wild Fires In LA

[shrubberyvaluation]

Hey calif, you can't build a new home if there is no fire insurance to be had, at a reasonable price. You think any insurance co will now insure in those areas again.

Why do you need fire insurance to build? As long as you bring the cash they will build.

Wouldn't surprise me if they put in a state fire insurance program.

 

[Tom D]

The builder has to have a fire & liability policy too. Bring cash? How many of those owners have that cash, except for malibu and fernando. So your building a $600,000 home with cash to see it all burn down again and lose $600,000. Me think you have never rehabd, or built a new home, let alone one in a valley of constant fires.

 

[shrubberyvaluation]

The builder has to have a fire & liability policy too. Bring cash? How many of those owners have that cash, except for malibu and fernando. So your building a $600,000 home with cash to see it all burn down again and lose $600,000. Me think you have never rehabd, or built a new home, let alone one in a valley of constant fires.

Sure if you really wanna build in a place with constant fires, you should be prepared to pay the cost.

 

[Charles West]

The news highlighted a guy who thought ahead and put together a sprinkler system that drew water from a 50,000-gallon pool that completely saturated his roof and his landscaping. He had a good firebreak on the slope beneath his home, and his preparations saved his and his neighbor's homes.

 

[TerryRohrer]

Maybe some of the greatest generation can do it again, although I expect want trumps need these days.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Hey calif, you can't build a new home if there is no fire insurance to be had, at a reasonable price. You think any insurance co will now insure in those areas again.

Well, actually if the whole surrounding area is burnt off, then the fire hazard may be years in returning. So, an insurer might be willing to risk it for the next decade but may want to rethink it beyond that. Seems to me the insurers could be proactive in recommending mitigation of the surrounding vegetation as well as perhaps requiring such things as

a sprinkler system that drew water from a 50,000-gallon pool that completely saturated his roof and his landscaping.

Common sense in a fire prone area. People seem to forget that California and much of the west is a fire created ecology. It's always burned routinely and the efforts from 1930s to the 1990s to suppress all fire resulted in the build up of too much material. It has nothing to do with climate change. In fact, for years, California records show December has averaged higher rainfall than it did decades ago.

Further, when someone says the fires are bigger, in part, they are referring to the dollars worth of damage. And remember RE got 30% or more expensive just in the past 5 years. Two identical fires, one in 2000 and one in 2025, will have radically different dollars worth of damage.

Creating fire breaks with sprinkler systems would also almost certainly help. Perhaps all the ROW under electric lines could have sprinklers installed. You'd necessarily need to use plastic pipe to prevent induction in metal lines or avoid bringing the lines into the ROW parallel to those power lines. I have a ROW over the farm and the electric company told us in no uncertain terms not to run aluminum irrigation pipe nor to refuel equipment under the lines. It can actually induce enough energy to knock you down if you touch a charged pipe. And the chance of creating a spark from static will set your tractor or mower afire.

 

[Mark K]

So your building a $600,000 home with cash to see it all burn down again and lose $600,000. Me think you have never rehabd, or built a new home, let alone one in a valley of constant fires.

Doesn't stop a lot of people in FL from doing exactly that over and over from hurricanes. A lot of slow learners down there.

If CA doesn't let the insurance companies charge based on the true risk, a lot of companies will leave the state. Expect high premiums and high deductibles...or none at all.

 

[Charles West]

Newsom will have to go hat in hand to Trump groveling for a federal bailout of his stupid Fair Plan. Trump will likely demand market-based reforms for insurers so the state will have an actual functioning insurance market.

 

[Mike Ault]

Nope, just make them use their heads for something besides a hat rack. Don't drive through a deer camp where firearms are in the middle of the night just because you want to be a Ahole.

Deleted

 

[J Grant]

The way insurance works in FL is that it is available but hard to get, expensive, and has a cap - I believe the cap is one million but not certain as individual companies might set their own

This means you are insured for X $ amount up to one mil, and for any amount over one million, you are self-insured.

FL also has a state-run insurance fund called Citizens known as the insurance of last resort (for properties rejected by private insurance)