Current Wildfires In California Subside, California Wine Regions Appear OK

California wildfires are all too frequent events. Not three months removed from damaging Southern California wildfires, the Santa Cruz region of the state is on the tail-end of what is being dubbed “The Lockheed Fire.” For Live Asset Insurance, the current wildfires in California are yet another reason to consider offering insurance for things like trees, shrubs, landscaping and vineyards – the live assets that produce the fruits, nuts, veggies or berries. (more…)

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.

The Tea Fires that swept Santa Barbara in November burned 1,940 acres and added to California’s already record breaking 2008 year of 801,726 burned acres. Besides costing almost 6 million dollars in firefighting costs alone, the Montecito Tea Fire destroyed  230 residents homes.   Along with the homes is valuable landscaping on hundreds of properties in the area that have also been destroyed or damaged.

It has been said that it is hard to put a price tag on living things, but with situations such as the current California Wildfires, it is vitally important to replace the live assets such as landscaping that was damaged in the Tea Fires.

We are very happy to see our partners, Horticultural Asset Management (HMI), are working side by side with the wildfire recovery effort and providing Tea Fire support.  We wish that more folks in the wildfire zones had been part of our Live Asset Insurance Programs for wildfire protection.

HMI has issued a press release outlining their unique role as valuation experts for plant material destroyed in the most recent California wildfires.

It’s a great example of how we, as a society and even as part of the insurance industry, cannot continue to ignore landscaping and other plant life as valuable and as necessary to natural disasters.  This sentence alone, speaks volumes;

“HMI was also able to provide emergency solutions for damaged landscaping and erosion protection, which is critical in the Santa Barbara area, due to the fact that the plant material located on hillsides is what stabilizes the earth and prevents mudslides.”

Please read HMI Supports Claims Efforts Following Recent Wildfires in California over at Insurance Newsnet.com

The press release highlights HMI’s “post damage” claim settling expertise. Their real value, however, was apparent to us a long time ago as “pre claim” experts. They provide both services to Live Asset Insurance.

Live Asset Insurance discovered HMI over a year and a half ago when I typed “money grows on trees” into a search engine and they popped up. Doug Cowles the CEO and I instantly saw the potential of marrying our services together, to provide a seamless solution to a “significant market need”. We located an Insurance Company that agreed with our vision, and together we created a protection program that includes inspections; to determine the plant condition, and valuations; to determine the replacement cost of the plant material, and insurance; so we could properly protect them like any other valuable asset.  Even in situations such as the California Tea Fires. Live Asset Insurance is proud of the work HMI performs, and we are very proud to have them exclusively support our Live Asset Insurance program.