Home insurers under fire for policy cancellations as LA burns
As deadly wildfire incinerated more than 1,000 homes and other structures in Los Angeles County this week, insurance companies are sparking outrage for having recently canceled homeowners' policies across California—including in some of the areas hit hardest by the current blazes.
More than 1,000 homes, businesses, and other buildings have burned in the Palisades, Hurst, and Eaton fires—the latter of which has killed two people, The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday. Fueled by fierce Santa Ana winds and extraordinarily dry conditions, all three fires were at 0% containment as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE).
Authorities have issued mandatory evacuation orders for more than 80,000 residents. Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone told reporters Wednesday morning that a "high number of people who didn't evacuate" suffered serious injuries. Hundreds of thousands of area residents are also without power.
CAL FIRE said on Wednesday afternoon that the largest of the three blazes, the Palisades Fire, had burned more than 11,000 acres, while the Eaton Fire had scorched over 10,600 acres and the Hurst Fire topped 500 acres burned. Firefighters battling the Palisades Fire reported hydrants coming up dry.
Amid increased extreme weather events driven by the climate emergency, insurance companies have faced criticism for canceling policies and pulling out of states with elevated wildfire or hurricane risk.
State Farm, one of California's largest insurers, announced last year that it would not renew 30,000 home insurance policies throughout the state—including at least hundreds in areas affected by the current wildfires—explaining that the move was meant to avert a "financial failure" that would "detrimentally impact the entire market."
Other insurance companies have taken similar action, leaving their customers scrambling to find coverage.
Michael DeLong, research and advocacy associate at the Consumer Federation of America, told Common Dreams Wednesday that while climate-driven extreme weather has "made many areas riskier to insure," insurance companies are also canceling policies because "they're trying to take advantage of the situation of rising risks and rising costs to weaken consumer protections."
"They've been waging a campaign against Proposition 103… a ballot initiative that got passed in the late 1980s that, among other things, puts in place a lot of consumer protections about insurance," he added. "This has been a big deal for consumers and it's helped keep rates down. But insurance companies really hate these consumer protections and have been trying to weaken them."
In a Wednesday interview with Common Dreams, Jamie Court, president of the Los Angeles-based group Consumer Watchdog, noted that "under Prop 103, we could challenge rate hikes, and we saved $1 billion by challenging rate hikes that were too high last year."
However, advocates say that California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara's new "sustainable insurance strategy" will make it harder to challenge rates and lacks transparency and public input.
DeLong said Lara is "allowing the net cost of reinsurance to be passed on to consumers."
Reinsurance is an arrangement in which insurance companies transfer risk to another insurer to mitigate damages.
"Until a few weeks ago, California's regulations didn't allow the cost of reinsurance to be passed on to consumers, and now they do," DeLong explained. "So that's probably going to drive up costs for consumers. The commissioner and the department say it's going to make the insurance industry more stable—we're kind of skeptical of that."
"Another reform that he's done is allowing the use of catastrophe models in insurance," DeLong added, referring to a risk management tool that helps insurers assess potential financial impacts of disasters. "Every other state allows insurance companies to use them; California did not until recently. Catastrophe models can be helpful and useful; the problem is that many catastrophe models aren't that good; they're based on inaccurate or incomplete information and they don't have any transparency."
Court also decried the lack of transparency in catastrophe models, which he said "can say anything they want, and then we have to pay the rate." He also criticized Lara's proposal to allow insurers to hike rates in exchange for a purported commitment to cover more properties in wildfire areas.
Lara said last year that "insurance companies will write no less than 85% of their statewide market share in wildfire distressed areas,"
However, Court cautioned that Lara is assuming "that the companies are actually going to increase their footprint in wildfire areas."
"When you look at the details... there are these big loopholes," he said. "Insurance companies have to commit to 85% [wildfire area saturation] within two years—or they can do 5% more than they're doing now. So if they're at 0%, they can go to 5%. This is complete bullshit."
As coverage becomes more difficult to obtain, hundreds of thousands of California homeowners have turned to the state's FAIR Plan, an insurer of last resort, which has more than doubled the number of policies issued since 2020.
"If the FAIR Plan is the only thing you can do, take that," DeLong said. "In the meantime, you can reach out to the Department of Insurance and let them know that you want them to protect consumers and reject excessive rate increases."
"You can also try mitigation measures to reduce risk, like clearing brush around your home, improving your roof so it's a Class A roof, which means it's very difficult to catch on fire, you can take measures to prevent embers from starting fires on your property," he added. "The problem is that all of that costs money, and not everyone may be able to afford that… California has recently started some proposals to provide grants to consumers to undertake these measures, and these should be expanded even more."
"There is some good news," DeLong said. "The California Department of Insurance is working on a public catastrophe model, one that would have opportunities for input from consumers, that would be based on data that's fair and open."
"However, that's going to take at least a couple of years to get off the ground," he added.
Court concurred. "We're a long way away from that, and it's not even going to be something that companies have to use, it's something that would be supplemental," he said of the public model. "I think it's giving lip service, but I think it's the right direction. It just needs to be much more aggressive."
Charles Henderson lived in a tent in a field before he died on Jan. 3. He had been evicted and became homeless before his death. (Courtesy photo)