“Reducing the wildfire risk is critical to making insurance available, reliable and affordable for all Californians,” Commissioner Lara said last Monday. “The new standards would prompt insurance companies to offer discounts, providing incentives for retrofitting older homes. There are 12 insurance companies representing 40% of the insurance market already offering discounts to homeowners taking hardening measures. Three years ago, only 7% of the market was offered such discounts. The framework will help me as a regulator of the nation’s largest insurance market to expand insurance incentives to homes and businesses and that will save money and encourage safety.”
The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services Director Mark Ghilarducci added, “Those homeowners that actually take the time to become prepared by taking actions like these we’re discussing today are going to be more resilient and will be able to deal with the impacts of these kinds of disasters and of course recover more quickly.”
Homeowner insurer companies, wildfire mitigation experts and others praised the new standards on Monday, but with some concern for those who make it through the cracks.
“The standards are good and make sense. If insurance companies, the state, and homeowners all agree on homeowners doing the work to get lower premiums and insurance companies not having to shell out as much in claims, more power to them,” explained insurance company investigator Pat Drummond to the Globe on Tuesday. “However, for any homeowner in a wildfire area who misses out on this, it may prove to be disastrous. It’s for lower insurance costs, saved lives, and saved property, but there will still be people refusing it because they don’t want to alter things or move things around the yard. For this to be effective, people need to treat this like a ruling from a local government on trimming trees on your property or something, and that kind of action sometimes inflames homeowners. Don’t believe me, go to a city zoning or planning meeting, or city council meeting, where they discuss home ordinance violations. The state needs to be clear on how they plan to nip that outcry out now instead of problems with it all later.”
Let's see how this rollout goes and get to work trimming and cleaning up our properties!