The Park fire in Butte County — already the largest blaze in California this year — exploded to more than 164,000 acres by Friday morning, with its rapid spread forcing more evacuation warnings.
The growth of the fire over two days amid steady winds and hot temperatures has been dramatic, with its remote location making it difficult to fight. It was listed at 164,286 acres Friday morning and 3% contained.
Conditions on the ground are going to continue to be a challenge, forecasters say.
Say goodbye to more insurance companies, California.
Oh no they’ll have to resort to mutual insurance run as a nonprofit? Oh the horror
I don’t know that even a nonprofit will be able to cover what climate change is wreaking on California in terms of wildfires.
They’re a kind of insurance firm founded as a not for profit endeavor that supply mitigates the risk among a community. The insurance costs what it should to mitigate the risk - no more, no less. The policyholders are the stakeholders in the business.
Quite a few mutual insurance providers are struggling in places like California and Florida because they didn’t correctly price in the potential impacts of climate change. The main issue that mutual providers have is that their risk pools are much smaller and generally very regional. If your whole region is on fire then everyone is screwed.
Additionally, they are dependent on the same reinsurance providers that other for profit insurance providers are which is already more expensive for them because of the smaller risk pool.
I can see that. I’m not going to discard the idea just because some actuary didn’t do a great job though. Prices will have to increase as risk assessments rise to meet reality. Same way good fish gets more expensive the riskier things get out at sea. At some point, in theory, the markets correct to reflect these changes.
In theory, that is.
Eastern Oregon is also going through a bunch of fires so itll be interesting to see if some pull out of Oregon too.