Corelogic wildfire report

I recently wrote a post about how we are in the heart of wildfire season. Wildfire season is always a scary time because one day everything is fine and the next we could be dealing with a major blaze. Even when the winds are low and the weather is mild there is still a risk for a fire to spread quickly through brush that has been sitting dry all summer.
A few weeks ago Corelogic released an extensive survey of areas at risk for wildfire. After reading through the report I can see both good and bad things related to the report. The bad is that pretty much all of southern California is in a high risk zone for wildfire. In fact Corelogic rates LA, Riverside and San Diego counties as the highest risk regions in the entire country. Scrolling through their data they use historical fire history, existing fuel aka native growing vegetation, the slope where said vegetation is growing and the direction the slope faces to determine properties at risk. They took all these factors and calculated it out over the areas where people were living. They then rated four categories, Extreme risk, High risk, Medium and Low. After all that was done they rated the counties with the most homes in the high risk areas. Yay! LA wins. Riverside took second and San Diego third.
What makes a high risk zone according to corelogic. The biggest risk is your proximity to native growing materials. Yes, slope and direction impact the rating but realistically it is all about how much distance you have between your home and the hillsides where the brush is growing.
So, how will this information be used by home insurance companies moving forward. The good aspect of reports like this are that it does show that most homes are at low risk. If insurance companies use this data they will be able to be more specific about what constitutes high or low risk.  Rather than just excluding whole cities they can now begin to take on some risk in areas they now consider too high a risk. If insurance companies delve even further into the report they might also look at which direction the brush is located from the home. Is the brush on a slight downslope facing north? If that is the case it might be a lower risk home than a house on top of a hill with a steep slope with brush to the south.
Rings of fire. That’s what I’m going to call the rating system for Corelogic. Basically imagine native brush as your most at risk area to start a fire, that’s the internal ring and where you are at extreme danger. Next is the edge where the native brush comes up to open areas or developed areas. That is your high risk area for homes. The next level away from the brush is moderate risk and then it leads low risk.  The further you get from the native materials the safer it is.  Good news, most of us live in low risk areas!
At the end of the day wildfires seem to be increasing with regularity. That isn’t a good thing for people who live in Southern California. The more fires we have the harder it will be to find a company to cover the home and we will all end up paying more for the insurance.
If you’d like to read the Corelogic report you can click here. https://www.corelogic.com/insights/wildfire-risk-report.aspx?WT.mc_id=crlg_190905_XhT4I
It is really interesting to see how they draw a comparison to hurricanes on the east cost to fires out west. The basic comparison goes like this, just like hurricanes build strength over warm open water wildfires do the same over native growing brush.  The larger the fire gets the more intense and more damage they do. Is more data better or worse for the insurance business? We will see! Give me a call if you’d like to take a look at your current home insurance. 951-395-0754