Fire cover, the severity map, and the arithmetic that failed last time

Fire heads the list the standard residential form answers for. The Department of Insurance lists fire and lightning first among the losses typically covered by a homeowners policy, alongside windstorm or hail, explosion, riot or civil commotion, aircraft, vehicles, smoke, vandalism and malicious mischief, theft, volcanic eruption, falling objects, the weight of ice, snow and sleet, sudden and accidental water damage, and breakage of glass. The interesting questions about fire in California are therefore not usually about whether the peril is covered. They are about how much, about where the severity maps fall, and about what happens when the ordinary market stops writing.

The boundary CAL FIRE drew across Palmdale

Palmdale has been identified by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection as being within a wildland-urban interface, which the City’s Safety Element describes as areas in which homes or other structures are built near or among lands prone to wildland fire. Severity zone designations run moderate, high and very high, and in Palmdale the areas south and west of the California Aqueduct, including Joshua Ranch, Ritter Ranch, and Anaverde Nuevo neighborhood and the adjacent open space, are identified as very high fire hazard severity zones and are considered to be under local fire agency responsibility. Those areas consist primarily of undeveloped open space, largely vegetated with chaparral, trees and grassland groundcover, which can provide fuel for wildfires.

The chapter’s own next sentences are the boundary on all of that, and they belong beside every one of these findings: the remainder of Palmdale is not under significant wildfire hazard risk. The sparse vegetation and urban development do not provide significant fuel for wildfire propagation. The chapter does add that several notable areas adjacent to Palmdale are subject to high and very high fire risk, that these areas have the potential to rapidly spread wildfire into the city, and that they may have widespread air quality impacts. All of this is hazard mapping done for land use planning. It is not a statement about any address, and nothing on this page treats it as one.

The failure mode after the last fires was arithmetic

When the Department reviewed what went wrong for homeowners after past California wildfires, the two major problems it names were underinsurance and the increased cost of construction. Many of the dwellings were underinsured, insured for amounts inadequate for rebuilding, a shortfall insurers sometimes call inadequate insurance-to-value. And the problem of increased cost of construction was evident in many situations. When rebuilding, homeowners have to comply with new building code requirements; in some instances the difference between the dwelling limit and the code upgrades was a significant amount, and the extreme heat of some fires, together with some new code requirements, made new foundations and the removal of debris from the damaged foundation necessary. A policy that pays exactly what it promised can still leave a household short if the promise was written years ago.

A discount the regulations require

Mitigation now has a formal place in California pricing. After meeting with consumers from 38 counties and convening an investigatory wildfire hearing, the Insurance Commissioner promulgated permanent regulations that require insurance companies to give wildfire safety discounts to property owners who have reduced their risk of loss from wildfire by undertaking specific mitigation efforts. The Department describes those measures as achievable and effective property-level and community-level actions identified in the Safer from Wildfires framework, an interagency collaboration between the Department and the state’s emergency response and readiness agencies.

The vehicle in the driveway is a different contract

Fire damage to a car is a question for the auto policy. On the auto side the Department is explicit that comprehensive covers damage to your car caused by something other than a collision, and it gives fire as one of its examples, along with theft, vandalism, windstorm, flood and falling objects. Whether an older vehicle still carries that coverage is worth deciding deliberately rather than discovering afterwards.

When the ordinary market says no

If you cannot find a company that will sell you a homeowners policy because you do not meet eligibility requirements, or cannot find fire cover in particular, the Department points to a set of special insurance programs, and the California FAIR Plan is one of them. It is worth knowing before you get there that the FAIR Plan’s standard offering is a fire policy rather than a homeowners policy, and that the difference is large. That comparison has its own guide on this site.