SACRAMENTO, California — How bad is California’s wildfire insurance crisis? So bad that the state can’t get coverage for its own firehouses.
The irony emerged at a state Senate budget subcommittee hearing Thursday in Sacramento, where Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration defended the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s request for $11 million to replace a kitchen at Ishi Conservation Camp, which houses and trains inmate firefighters in the remote Sierra Nevada foothills of Tehama County.
Cal Fire usually pays for building maintenance with bonds based on the value of its property, but it couldn’t for the Ishi project because it couldn’t insure the facility to underwriters’ satisfaction, Finance Department analyst Victor Lopez told lawmakers.
“The insurance industry, they weren’t interested in selling insurance policies in the region due to the perceived fire risk in the area,” Lopez said. And the insurer of last resort, FAIR Plan, doesn’t meet the bond underwriters’ requirements, either, he added.
State senators from both parties were incredulous.
“We can’t get fire insurance at a fire station that’s going to be manned by firefighters,” said state Sen. Brian Dahle, a Republican from Lassen County, in the northeast corner of the state. “That’s where we are in California. That to me is crazy.”
Add Cal Fire to the growing list of constituents putting pressure on lawmakers to do something to stop property insurers’ exodus, which makes headlines daily as companies announce policy non-renewals or moratoriums on new coverage.
California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara agreed last year to let insurers raise rates and base them on future projections of fire damages, after lawmakers punted the decision to his office. Lara has been duly handing out rate increases, but insurers are still leaving: In the past two months alone, American National announced it would leave the state and State Farm said it would drop tens of thousands of homeowners.
State Sen. Josh Becker, a Democrat from Silicon Valley, highlighted his bill to require insurance companies to give property owners more credit for things like installing fire-resistant roofs and building fire breaks. (Insurance companies oppose it, saying it could force them to take on too much risk.)
“It’s ironic and highlights the problem we’re trying to solve,” he said about Cal Fire’s insurance woes. “We’re just trying to get recognition for the direct fire mitigation on the ground.”
Ishi might be the tip of an iceberg.
Mike McGinness, Department of Finance’s deputy director responsible for Cal Fire, said he only knew of one other Cal Fire facility that has had a similar problem so far. But the Department of General Services, which oversees all state facilities, has identified 16 projects statewide — 11 of which are Cal Fire’s — that may have trouble getting fire insurance, spokesperson Monica Hassan said in an email.
Cal Fire and the Department of Finance are now reviewing all the maintenance and upgrade projects seeking funds this year to figure out if others might struggle to get fire insurance, too, McGinness said.
“Typically, this hasn’t been an issue and so we have waited until closer to the point of selling the bonds,” he said. “But given recent trends in the insurance industry, it’s been important to start looking.”
So far, lawmakers have defended Cal Fire’s increasing drain on state coffers, even in a down budget year, as Newsom adds firefighters to cut back flammable vegetation and protect communities from increasingly intense wildfires.
But Cal Fire has a huge and growing maintenance backlog. The agency is currently working on 43 upgrade projects that cost an estimated $1.6 billion, said Michelle Valenzuela, Cal Fire’s assistant deputy director of capital finance and sustainability. Eighty percent of Cal Fire’s 635 facilities are older than their designed 50-year lifespan.
Helen Kerstein, principal fiscal and policy analyst with the Legislative Analyst’s Office, recommended lawmakers consider whether all ten new projects Cal Fire asked to fund this year need to happen immediately, given the state’s deficit could reach $73 billion or more.
“When taken together, these projects would add some significant pressure to the general fund,” she said.
