Examining a blazing insurance conundrum, part II
Last week’s column raised the specter of some homeowners in the hills above Santa Fe losing insurance coverage for their properties because of wildfire risks. The column also noted recent publication of “The 9th National Risk Assessment: The Insurance Issue” by First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research organization formed to assess impacts of climate change on four risk factors: wind, floods, heat and wildfires.
First Street also hosts a free online tool at riskfactor.com that reports on 161 million U.S. properties. Incredibly, the report claimed Lea County in southeast New Mexico was one of the top 20 counties in America at risk from wildfire.
Sure enough, entering addresses from Lovington or Hobbs turns up wildfire risk scores of 9 and 10, the worst possible and considered extreme.
On the other hand, addresses in Los Alamos County, a place badly damaged in the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire, have scores of 2 and 3, meaning virtually no risk.
It seemed to defy logic. Calls and emails to Matthew Eby, CEO of First Street Foundation, and its chief data officer, Edward Kearns, asking for explanations have gone unanswered. Turns out, with no corroboration from experts, there is logic for the anomaly.
Every fire jurisdiction in America gets a rating from the Insurance Services Office. Communities also get a Public Protection Classification. Both judge on 1-10 scales, with 1 being best and 10 worst. These scores influence insurance underwriters.
The scores assess three weighted factors. Fifty percent is based on clear measurables like number and frequency of fire hydrants, distance from full-time fire departments and wildland fire fighting training. Forty percent is based on water availability and 10% on communication effectiveness.
Other variables do influence ratings and insurance underwriters. One of the biggest, and most arbitrary according to some insurance agents, is called the “brush factor.” Since brush grows and dies quickly, it can change
with seasons and annual precipitation.
Not surprisingly, Los Alamos County has an ISO rating of 1, the best. Lea County’s seven fire jurisdictions have worse ratings. Lea County is big, rural, flat and grassy. Its fire marshal confirms grass fires blow up on occasion and move with incredible speed, like what Boulder, Colo., witnessed with the devastating Marshall Fire at the end of 2021. So what can Santa Fe do? The most obvious is following Los Alamos and creating residential construction codes based on fire zones crossing city/county boundaries. Many luxury homes in the hills above Santa Fe are in the county. That means the city’s fire department ISO score of 2, which is very good, is not relevant to those county addresses, though the city, because of proximity, is the first responder. Fires don’t follow jurisdictional lines.
Most Santa Fe homes are clad with cement-based stucco. That’s good. Los Alamos has gone further and requires all roofs to be Class A roofs, which are most fire resistant. Very few Santa Fe flat roofs earn Class A rating, although it can be done. Counterintuitively, a spray foam roof with gravel topping is considered Class A. So are metal roofs and roofs with clay or cement tiles.
Los Alamos also banned plastic bubble skylights; only tempered glass is allowed. Accessory structures also must be fire-hardened and defensible, with vegetation-free perimeters maintained. Los Alamos also has a fire suppression infrastructure second to none for obvious reasons of national security.
Accessibility of water is also a huge factor. Luxury areas like Wilderness Gate have no fire hydrants. Fire hydrants are static and don’t consume water unless opened, and infrastructure for hydrants is simply trench, pipe and pressure. But who foots the bill? There are four homes for sale in Wilderness Gate today with asking prices totaling $15 million.
The city and county should come together to create crossjurisdictional fire zone construction codes akin to those in Los Alamos. Youth construction crews can be trained to clear defensible areas and de-limb lower branches of piñon and juniper trees around homes in red fire zone areas.
City and county fire departments can work with the state’s Office of Superintendent of Insurance to petition insurance companies to take a closer look at how we build, our levels of preparedness and our ability to attack wildland fires in early stages. We’re much better than out-of-state underwriters assume.