Home insurance harder to get as wildfire risk rises

BOULDER, Colo. — A few months after Chris Cook and his family moved from California into a four-bedroom house nestled among ponderosa pines in the foothills here, they got a letter saying their home insurance policy had been canceled. The insurer, Allstate, had concluded — after an assessor visited the property — that the house was too likely to be destroyed by a wildfire. Cook, a tech executive and recent transplant from the San Francisco Bay Area, said his reaction was something like, “Wait, what?!” Mortgage companies require houses to be insured, so the cancellation put Cook’s financing at risk. He worried that getting another major insurer to sign off on the house would be more challenging after one had turned him down. He’s not alone. As more and deadlier fires sweep through Western states, it’s becoming harder to get insurance on a property surrounded by forest, reachable only by backroads, or on slopes where a wildfire is likely to run. While most homeowners in fire-prone places can still get a policy, insurers often make coverage conditional on homeowners managing trees and undergrowth. And some might get denied by several insurers before finding one willing to take on the risk. States and counties are beginning to increase their efforts to help homeowners make their properties as safe as possible. The challenge is most acute in California, where catastrophic wildfires in 2018 caused more than $9 billion in losses to insured property, according to the state Department of Insurance. The Camp Fire that blazed through the town of Paradise and destroyed nearly 14,000 houses drove a small, local insurer into insolvency. California’s insurance department doesn’t have hard numbers on how many homeowners have been denied insurance because companies aren’t required to report that information, press secretary Nancy Kincaid said. But since 2014, more than 15,000 homeowners in medium or extreme fire-risk areas have turned to the state’s lender of last resort, the California Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan, which insurance companies created to serve people unable to find coverage elsewhere. Premiums also are rising in high-risk areas, Kincaid said. Scientists expect wildfire danger to increase as the climate changes, according to the latest federal climate report. Meanwhile, more people than ever live in forested areas, with millions of houses threatened in California, Colorado and Texas, according to Verisk Analytics, a company that models wildfire risk for insurers. “The [California] commissioner remains concerned,” Kincaid said, “that between climate change, and drought, and the way and where we built homes, that we’re going to see a growing trend of nonrenewals.” Homeowners can reduce risk, however, by removing fire hazards. In Boulder, Cook’s broker told him that he likely could get Allstate’s underwriters to reconsider if he worked with a nationally regarded Boulder County program to remove problem trees and brush. The program, Wildfire Partners, helps people create what foresters call “defensible space” around their houses by lopping off low tree limbs, removing leaves from gutters, and taking other steps that make it harder for fire to travel. The program’s coordinator, Jim Webster, wants homeowners ultimately to think of mitigation as another form of home maintenance, he said. “It’s becoming more and more standard.” Insurance companies now use satellite data to assess fire risk at a given location. Verisk’s FireLine tool, for instance, weighs factors such as topography, vegetation, wind patterns and accessibility — because houses are safer if it’s easier for firefighters to get there. When a potential customer calls Truett Forrest, a State Farm agent in the mountain town of Pagosa Springs, Colo., he plugs their address into his company’s wildfire risk rating tool. The algorithm puts the house in one of three categories: no concerns, high risk or extreme risk. Forrest estimates that about 10 percent to 15 percent of properties land in the third category, a classification that means State Farm won’t provide insurance. “It doesn’t matter if they cut every tree and bush on their property, we would not insure it because of where it sits,” he said. Houses judged to be at high risk — the second category — can get insurance if the owners take steps to protect their property, such as clearing brush and taking piles of firewood off their deck. “For most homeowners, it’s affordable,” said Bill Trimarco, the Archuleta County coordinator for Wildfire Adapted Partnership, a nonprofit that helps property owners in Pagosa Springs, Colo., the county seat, plan and pay for wildfire mitigation work. Trimarco estimates that treating a 150-foot radius around a house typically costs less than $2,500. That’s “less than a new heater, if it broke.” At least one insurer, USAA, gives discounts to homeowners who live in a Firewise USA community. The designation from the nonprofit National Fire Protection Association affirms residents have reduced their fire risk. There are 1,500 Firewise communities nationally, according to the association. But mitigation is time-consuming and somewhat subjective, some experts say. Many variables determine why one house burns and another doesn’t. Homeowners can end up getting advice from an expert like Trimarco that contradicts that of an assessor sent by their insurer to look at the property. They also might hear different things from the same insurer over time, as risk models and underwriting standards evolve. Forrest said his own house was formerly classified by State Farm as an extreme fire risk. The company doesn’t drop current customers in very risky areas, but if Forrest had sold the house, the new buyer likely would have been denied State Farm insurance. His house is now classified as high risk, he said, because of a 2017 update to the company’s risk analysis software. Since 1993, Boulder County has required everyone who builds a house on the western side of the county — where the city ends and the Rocky Mountains begin — to do wildfire mitigation work. After the 2010 Fourmile Canyon Fire tore through 169 houses in the foothills, county land use officials decided they needed to step up mitigation efforts. They created the Wildfire Partners program in 2014 in response, to clear up confusion about mitigation practices and push more homeowners to take part. The Wildfire Partners program is staffed by forestry and fire protection experts and advised by insurance companies, including Allstate, who have pledged to accept certificates earned by families who complete work on their property. The program has two employees and several contractors, and is funded by a mix of county money and about $2.6 million in state and federal grants. It’s open to residents who are required to participate and those who are not. Close to 1,900 homeowners have received advice so far. After Cook got the letter ending his insurance, he called Wildfire Partners for help. Within a week a specialist was at his house, walking around the house and the forested mountainside behind it, pointing out problems. “I was prepared for — ‘Oh, you’ll have to clear-cut everything,’” Cook said. He was advised, instead, to keep a healthy distance between trees and cut back saplings and brush pressing up against them, which reduces the chance of a dangerous fire and allows the savanna-like grassland among the pines to flourish.