Nov 16, 2018 04:07 AM
(This post was last modified: Nov 16, 2018 05:22 AM by C C.)
Or: Do horses really run back into a burning barn? Apparently they do -- well over 90% of the time across four decades.
https://www.axios.com/moving-back-to-the...127c4.html
EXCERPT: For Californians — many of them inured to routine annual fires, mudslides and earthquakes — a key question is not whether to rebuild when catastrophe strikes yet again. It's whether they can afford it.
Driving the news: For many fire victims, insurance — or the government — makes it so they can rebuild on the same lot. But in some of California's most recent spate of fires, that hasn't been enough. And a lot of experts see signs that more homeowners could find it hard to rebuild as insurers reassess the risk of a new future of fire.
The big picture: Since the middle of the last century, fire has destroyed an average of 500 homes a year in California, according to the Western Ecological Research Center.
(1) The number of vulnerable houses keeps growing: According to a 2014 study by the Nature Conservancy, builders in the state are on track to add 645,000 homes in highly fire-prone zones by 2050.
(2) Judging by history, these new homeowners will view any fire as an acceptable hazard of living where they choose.
(3) In 11 California fires from 1970 to 2009, builders reconstructed 94% of the burned homes within 25 years, the NYT reports.
The big picture: Insurance losses from California fires last year were about $12.5 billion and this year could be about $6.8 billion, reports Don Jergler of Insurance Journal. After this season, insurers could decide to stop issuing fire insurance in high-risk zones "because they are contributing to people building where they shouldn't at all," says Dante Disparte, founder of Risk Cooperative, a DC brokerage that provides insurance to insurance companies...
MORE: https://www.axios.com/moving-back-to-the...127c4.html
https://www.axios.com/moving-back-to-the...127c4.html
EXCERPT: For Californians — many of them inured to routine annual fires, mudslides and earthquakes — a key question is not whether to rebuild when catastrophe strikes yet again. It's whether they can afford it.
Driving the news: For many fire victims, insurance — or the government — makes it so they can rebuild on the same lot. But in some of California's most recent spate of fires, that hasn't been enough. And a lot of experts see signs that more homeowners could find it hard to rebuild as insurers reassess the risk of a new future of fire.
The big picture: Since the middle of the last century, fire has destroyed an average of 500 homes a year in California, according to the Western Ecological Research Center.
(1) The number of vulnerable houses keeps growing: According to a 2014 study by the Nature Conservancy, builders in the state are on track to add 645,000 homes in highly fire-prone zones by 2050.
(2) Judging by history, these new homeowners will view any fire as an acceptable hazard of living where they choose.
(3) In 11 California fires from 1970 to 2009, builders reconstructed 94% of the burned homes within 25 years, the NYT reports.
The big picture: Insurance losses from California fires last year were about $12.5 billion and this year could be about $6.8 billion, reports Don Jergler of Insurance Journal. After this season, insurers could decide to stop issuing fire insurance in high-risk zones "because they are contributing to people building where they shouldn't at all," says Dante Disparte, founder of Risk Cooperative, a DC brokerage that provides insurance to insurance companies...
MORE: https://www.axios.com/moving-back-to-the...127c4.html
