How much do you think your home insurance bill will go up to help your insurance company cover the loss of 10,000 homes in California?
So far, the tab is $150,000,000,000.
Every area with wildfires will have its’ own issues and challanges. To contrast, the Maui fires in Hawaii caused some major changes even outside insurance changes.
There was (Civil Defense) equipment in place to notify the public of emergencies. These are located near the ocean as that is where people mostly reside and they are used primarily for tsunami warnings. The problem with sounding them during a fire is that people may have run for the hills, which would be the logical place for avoiding an ocean event, but was where the fire was coming from. With the smoke, people may not have known that.
The Maui fires were fueled by a hurricane and damage happened at night with no warning and was over soon thereafter. That is somewhat different from the California fires where people have more notice and perhaps more options to evacuate. In Mauis fires there was one road available that ran along the coast. That meant one direction to actually leave as the other direction goes away from town. The fire is above them and below them is the ocean, so one way out. They also had few places to evacuate to, as the island is small and due to the weather ships and plane travel were restricted.
Major landowners were not clearing tall grass from their land and thus it fueled the fire. We have tall invasive grass that grows quickly and is a major issue. Many of us are now doing our best to reduce this overgrowth. Even on my farm I have 8 foot tall grass I am cutting down. It just keeps growing.
The electric company on Maui was cited as one of the causes of the fires because of downed power lines that were active. Now they and other island electric companys are warning us that when we have high winds or other issues, they will selectively cut power to areas to avoid these kind of issues.
Without rivers, our water comes from the hills and wells. Thus we use electric for moving water to users. Pumping statiosn may have emergency power but we do have a fragile system here.
Premiums are way, way, way up in coastal TX due to all of the tropical weather and flood losses dating all the way back to Katrina (the hurricane that drowned New Orleans). Honestly, if there are two things that would chase me out of Houston it would be insurance increases and property tax increases. I’m from Illinois & Indiana, and I have Indiana kind of on my mind as a place to go, especially as winters get milder.
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