If shows like the Weather Channel’s “It Could Happen Tomorrow” teach us one thing, it is to be prepared

Facing a Southern California wildfire in late May, firefighters in a small community just outside of San Diego battled a 60-acre blaze that forced dozens of people from about 80 homes. No damage was reported – other than the 60-acres of wildfire-scorched earth – and no one was injured.

As far as current California wildfire stories go, that’s considered a happy ending 

In 2006 on the Weather Channel’s series “It Could Happen Tomorrow,” a show that explores the possibility of natural disasters vs. city focused on a California wildfire threatening San Diego.

That show was based on the Cedar Fire that burned more than 280,278 acres with wildfire in Southern California in 2003. The human-caused blaze claimed nearly 3,000 structures and 15 lives. That massive wildfire was just one of more than a dozen huge California wildfires blazes that swept through Southern California in the month of October. 

Current wildfire rates are high across the map

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2009 has been the worst year of the past decade for wildfires in the U.S. with 41,328 fires burning nearly 1.4 million acres of land – the third highest year ever for acreage lost to fire. In May of this year, the NOAA  reported 9,265 new wildfires affecting some 312,000 acres.

Those numbers are stunning, to say the least. And while the loss of human life is always a heavy number to consider, the amount of agricultural loss is staggering, too. As a guide, take a look at timber losses in Florida in 1998 – some $390 million according to the National Fire Protection Association.

The Southern California wildfires destroy agriculture, but so do wildfires everywhere

The U.S. Fire Administration released a study in 2002 that found 20,000 agricultural fires each year result in $102 million in loss and about two-thirds of those fires happened in orchards or crops.

Data on what types of insurance the owners of these crops and agricultural lands had was unavailable, but the losses were huge, nonetheless.

Great resources for current Southern California wildfires, wildfire maps and wildfire prevention

A great resource for up-to-date information on wildfires currently burning in the U.S. is the Center for Fire Research and Outreach – a product of the College of Natural Resources at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Center for Fire Research and Outreach also produces what they’ve titled the California Active Fire Mapper – showing a current California wildfire map with active and recently burned areas in California. The center also has a valuable collection of tools and tips for homeowners, researchers and community leaders.

One of the smoothest tools on the site is a series of questions about your home and surroundings that can give you an idea of how susceptible your property is to wildfires. The tool asks questions about areas like:

• Roofing
• Windows
• Decking
• Garage
• Siding, and
• suppression

Prevention is key against wildfires not only in Southern California, but everywhere

The lesson to be learned here is that wildfires burns constantly across the country and they burn all the time. The stats on acreage burned by wildfire in Southern California and elsewhere, along with the lives lost are staggering, indeed. But, what the Center for Fire Research and Outreach teaches us, we can be prepared.

Part of the challenge of marketing a new product is letting people know that the product is available.

Even though Live Asset has been creating waves in the Insurance and Green industries for over two years now, there are still so many end users that could benefit from our services, who would want to have the protection that we offer, but they just do not know that we exist. We fear that our policies are, for too many, a wishful pipe dream that is an unknown reality.

Complicating the challenge is the adoption and internet use of some of our target audiences. Live asset insurance is great for:

• Nurseries and Growers
• Tree Farms
• Golf Courses
• General Farming
• Insurance Brokers
• Homeowners with landscape exposures
• Greenhouses

But reaching out to some of those markets is the real challenge!  

Using the internet is great, but if you look at social demographics for things like social media and internet use, there rises the difficulty of this medium. 

 The average age of farmers in 1997 was 54.3 years. The proportion of farmers age 55 and over rose from 37 percent in 1954 to 61 percent in 1997 which indicates that our farmers are continuing to get older as a population demographic.  While some internet places like Facebook report that older age groups are growing rather fast, in actuality it seems that while people join, they don’t often come back often enough to become actual users of the mediums.  In general studies have found that that the use of the various social networks decline with age: 10 percent of those aged 55 to 64 and just seven percent of those aged 65 and older.

Sadly, that’s our traditional US farmers right there: not using the intenet.

An organic and eco friendly small farmer, by contrast, seems to be represented by a younger, upcoming generation who is much more comfortable online, but often is still in the beginning stages and not always aware of the benefits of serious risk management, yet. The green industry is well represent on various internet services for networking such as Twitter and blogging, but sometimes then, this groups on a whole seems to have an inherent mistrust of “big business” type industries.. like insurance.

The Wineries are comfortable online to sell wine. Some with our greenhouses and other nursery industries…

And so, we ask you: You are here, you have found your way to us and hopefully you represent one of the many industries that may be interested in Live Asset Insurance. So, where do YOU go online? What is your source of information for you and your peers and, while we are at it, how to we get there?

The Name of the Next Hurricane will be Ana

Hurricane season begins this week and will run from June 1^st to November 30^th with the peak of the hurricane season during the August to October time frame. Still, Mother Nature does not watch the calendar: the first tropical depression had already formed in the Atlantic Ocean last week and, luckily, was deemed no threat to land.

What Causes a Hurricane?

Since most hurricanes are born of tropical storms, one might think that a pre-season storm is an indicator of a rough season, but Tropical Depression One was created at a much higher latitude than many of the truly destructive hurricanes of lore.

The hurricanes that threaten the US coastlines often begin near the African coast. Belts of low air pressure called “easterly waves” occur in the oceanic trade winds. Sometimes, these easterly waves form tropical depressions. The hurricanes are fueled by the heat generated from the condensing water vapors, so when a tropical depression is coupled with sever thunderstorms the meteorologists get nervous!  Vigorous thunderstorm activity in that region early in the season would be one predictor of a rough hurricane season. As the winds increase, the depression can become a tropical storm until the winds speed is over 73 MPH. Then, the hurricane has been formed,  it officially gets a name, drifts west  from its African birthplace on the Trade Winds, and veers north as it meets the prevailing winds coming eastward across North America. 

2009 Hurricane Names according to the National Hurricane Center:

Ana
Bill
Claudette
Danny
Erika
Fred
Grace
Henri
Ida
Joaquin
Kate
Larry
Mindy
Nicholas
Odette
Peter
Rose
Sam
Teresa
Victor
Wanda

New Hurricane Formations?

The first tropical depression of this year, however, formed in a newer atypical hurricane formation pattern. The new pattern defies the one common to most tropical systems. Instead of starting off Africa’s coast; it starts off the U.S. coast in either the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico.  Another thing to blame on overall global warming, as the warm water temperatures could be a key reason why these pop-up storms are occurring and some hurricane forecasters really fear this new hurricane producing pattern may be a  bad sign of things to come.

When a storm comes all the way from Africa, there is time to track and predict the Hurricane’s path.  This also allows people in its path to prepare and evacuate. Storms forming so close to the coastline mean that people might not have that time.

“The caveat is in the Gulf of Mexico in August and October you can have very strong storms form and become severe simply because warm water is there,” said University of Miami Rosensteil School Of Marine and Atmospheric Science professor Nick Shay. “The atmosphere is favorable, and these storms can spin up to category 4 or 5 status.”

Hurricane Humberto in 2007 is a classic example of this sudden storm. It formed and intensified off Texas faster than any tropical storm on record. In just one day it grew from a disturbance to a full blown category one hurricane. It ended up causing $50 million in damage.

Bottom Line of Hurricane Safety: Prepare!

No matter what causes a hurricane, they are extremely destructive forces of nature.  And now is their season. Right now it is just a benign list of names and there is no sign of who will be this year’s Katrina or Ike or Andrew.

It could be Ana or Ida or perhaps it’s Rose who we will have to watch out for. Only Mother Nature knows.