Fire ecology vs fire risk vs fire insurance

Fire risk can be controlled by how we build and maintain to offset threat. So, you've cut your weeds and brush back from the house, moved everything from under the deck, put in fine mesh screens and the other things to fire harden your home. But the nagging thought is, did I do enough and is there even a way to tell? Well maybe.

In a paradigm shift, the California Insurance Commissioner has developed a home owner controlled, self-certification process to highlight mitigations against fire danger. A certificate for home hardening efforts would be granted if an “inspector” agrees with the home spun efforts. The next step of course is whether Insurance Companies will reward these efforts appropriately or as a condition. The obvious details to be fleshed out are the qualifications required for the inspectors' credentials in both wildland ecology and fire risk mitigation methods and who they really represent.

The no surprise part of the Commissioner's approach is a proposed regulation allowing insurers to model future wildfire risks based on past fire losses to support rate increases. The paradigm breakthrough part is the intent to review any proposed model with an eye towards rewarding fire mitigation efforts. The stated goal may be to keep insurers in the state, but the Insurance Commissioner should be praised for moving the can down the road in the fire risk mitigation direction.

One of the problems for setting rates is understanding wildland fire ecology and what mitigates risk at the home level. The industry is only looking through the same looking glass of past losses. True, wildland fires have significantly increased in both size and severity over the past two decades. Much of this is due to the practice of keeping fire out of the forest starting in the 1930s to protect commercial trees. This caused a forest fuels buildup that is bumping against a drier fall climate era with higher winds. Every area of the State is different and the future may be different.

In recent years many people have moved into or near wildland fire prone areas known as the wildland urban interface (WUI). Unfortunately, they built homes using methods as in the cities they meant to escape, expecting fire trucks to roll up if they catch fire. Fire resistant upgrades were rare and risk assessments even rarer. Today every house has different risk and this is the real issue.

All rural California counties would benefit from a program that would assess a risk-score for each home and qualify for tiered priced insurance coverage. Rural county folks like to be in charge of their own investments and be informed about how best to protect them. With such knowledge, the homeowner could mitigate each scored risk to get a better assessment score and a better insurance rate. The home being insured should be the focal point of insurance rates and not the surroundings which are already factored in the score. This scoring version was provided to both the Insurance Commissioner and State Senator McGuire.

There is now science available to support a detailed score sheet approach determining this risk based on research of wildland fire impacts to buildings, and mitigation recommendations. This is published by the Insurance Institute for Building & Home Safety (IBHS) and other organizations such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). Collectively, these research and education efforts are pointing toward three overriding factors of structure ignition during wildland fire events — that of ember intrusion into the structure itself, ignition of materials adjacent to the structure and radiant heat ignition. All clearly mitigatable at the house level and this approach could even be a separate option for California's 35 rural counties.

The score sheet would be in the home owner's possession to make available along with upgrades for negotiation with any insurance agent. This opens the field up to companies that can write competitively priced policies from both inside and outside of California Admitted Insurers scope. Maybe competition will also help keep prices in line.

A full rollout program would look at a continuously improving one year college level course for independent home inspector consultants. Maybe the Certificate proposed by the Commissioner could actually go to these consultants. Now that's a real paradigm shift.

Jim Steele's credentials include a former Lake County Supervisor, and registered professional forester (RPF2421) and forest ecologist/ aquatic biologist with Cal Fish and Game.