Wildfire prevention experts are encouraging local communities to scale their efforts to reduce fire risks and improve access to insurance.
Fires are growing threats around the U.S., leading some companies to increase their insurance premiums or even pull coverage from high-risk areas.
But neighborhoods that adopt measures like home hardening, while using fire-resistant materials, or joining recognized groups like Firewise to reduce and prepare for wildfires, can give insurers confidence about providing coverage to an area.
“Some prominent fire chiefs have posited this: that ‘we cannot suppress, regulate or market price our way out of the wildfire crisis — we must mitigate,’” said JulieAnna Anastassatos, who works for Verisk, an analytics firm that works closely with the insurance industry.
She spoke at an insurance webinar hosted by the Hawaiʻi Wildfire Management Organization.
“The expectation from insurers is that large-scale adoptions of these mitigations will provide greater comfort for the insurance carriers to insure these homes in these risky areas,” Anastassastos said.
In California, some laws even require insurers to take certain community-wide resiliency measures into account when assessing coverage.
Some communities in the state have qualified for insurance discounts because of their fire prevention efforts, though some say they still don’t keep up with growing premiums.
