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Fires, Insurance and Politics

Writer's picture: Datta KhalsaDatta Khalsa

Updated: Jan 18



As five major fires rage in Southern California uncontained leaving behind a path of destruction which has so far claimed over 10 lives, over 40,000 acres of land, and over 1000 structures, inflicting damages estimated at over $100 Billion, a larger crisis looms in the background as insurance companies and their customers brace for the aftermath. 


In a time when conscience would generally dictate that our leaders lay down their differences to unite around those who have been affected, members of the incoming administration of our central government who are going to inherit the responsibility of supporting those impacted by the disaster are busy pointing fingers to try and lay the blame on anyone else they can pin it on. This could indicate that they are laying the groundwork for withdrawing support when it comes time for helping cover the expense of rebuilding, which sounds more like a business decision than a commitment to the common good. Hopefully this is not the case, but such rhetoric isn’t encouraging.


California’s detractors are claiming that water that could be used to fight the fires has been diverted to protect the endangered Delta smelt. But from what I’ve read, our state’s water systems here are complicated, and importing water from northern California would make no difference for the wildfires, because Los Angeles water doesn’t come from northern California. It comes from an aqueduct east of the Sierra Nevada, from groundwater, and from the Colorado River—and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California reports it has more water stored than it has ever had before. The real challenge is how to keep up with a fire that spreads at the rate of 5 football fields per minute.


The politicizing of what should be an issue of shared concern strikes me as a continuation of the trend we have been seeing at insurance companies, with carriers such as State Farm reported as having recently cancelled hundreds of policies in the Palisades area in the months leading up to the fires, defending their actions by stating the cancellations were to prevent "financial failure" amid escalating wildfire risks. It's disheartening when such decisions are handled as “just business”, but given that insurance companies are a business, they at least have their profits as a justification. However, when statements get made like that by the central government who should be supporting all efforts to help their citizens instead of singling out a state over party lines, it’s just plain disappointing. 


Four years after the CZU fire, our own County is still a long way from recovering with hundreds of former homesites remaining barren, with questionable prospects of ever being re-built. For many of us, the long-range effects of what is quickly becoming an annual occurrence will likely include continued restrictions on building and fire hardening practices in areas of high wildfire risk, and continuing escalation of insurance costs as those risks get spread out amongst the rest of us in the pool. But for now, our hearts go out to those impacted by this latest tragedy with the hope that our governing parties will collaborate to help with the recovery instead of fighting over who should pay for it.

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