Posted on 09/22/2022 12:30:42 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
FORESTHILL, Calif. (AP) — California temporarily banned insurance companies Thursday from dropping customers in areas affected by recent wildfires, a day after evacuation orders were lifted for residents near a two-week-old blaze that’s become the largest in the state so far this year.
California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara invoked a law Thursday aimed at protecting homeowners in the wildfire-plagued state who say they are being pushed out of the commercial insurance market.
Lara ordered insurance companies to preserve residential insurance for one year for Californians who live near one of several major wildfires that have burned across the state in recent weeks.
The Department of Insurance estimates the moratorium will affect policies covering about 236,000 people in portions of Placer, El Dorado and Riverside counties.
“Wildfires are devastating even if you did not lose your home, so it is absolutely critical to give people breathing room after a disaster. This is not the time to be having to search for insurance,” Lara said in a statement.
The law was implemented in 2019, when more than 15 major wildfires burned homes across the state.
Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. In the last five years, California has experienced the largest and most destructive fires in its history.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
The reason the west is warmer and drier is La Nina (23 years and counting with just one interruption in 2016).
What this will do, is companies will stop writing insurance policies in those areas until the ban is lifted. They will not keep adding risk to local areas they can’t exercise some form of risk management.
BS, my area of Arizona must not be affected by climate change, as we've had rain for over two+ months now and it just rained again this morning...Everything is green!
Smart thinking there. After they burn everything down, there won’t be a fire danger for a while so don’t allow the insurance companies to drop them, make the policies mandatory and then raise the price 1,000%.
The state of California cannot force insurance companies to write new policies. Some insurance companies may just pull out of the lunatic state completely.
They can not prevent a complete pullout, but what they can do is tell a company "no more insurance sales anywhere in our state" if you do not continue to sell insurance in these areas.
CA is a very large state and a very profitable market most of the time. Many companies will comply.
Plus the state will not allow logging and brush clearance there are more fires and the fires burn hotter.
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