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Yep. And another consequence of the Camp fire was preventative rolling backouts as PG&E just shed load instead of (or at least while) doing a lot of long deferred maintenance. BTW: I went to school in Pasadena back in the 90s. Lived in Altadena for a bit, renting a room in a house which isn't there anymore :(
@@travcollier I am so glad my county has its own power company instead of relying on PG&E. Other advantages include electricity costing about half as much as PG&E.
My nephew Michael is one of those prison inmates currently fighting this fire. He got into that program a couple of years ago and is due to get out in 2025. It's been a wonderful opportunity for him, He's turned things very much around from his teenage years and we're all very proud.
I've heard they have basically 0 chance of being a firefighter after getting out with a criminal record so it's not really an opportunity for employment after prison.
@@cyan_oxy6734 The governor signed a law that allows incrassated firefighters to use their experience while behind bars as firefighters to carry over once they are released.
The frustrating part, is that we were warning people about this for *nearly 2 decades!* I remember people in 2006 talking about how the wildfires would just keep getting worse and that the insurance companies would stop insuring people because it won't be profitable at some point. And *_nobody listened!_*
Devin, PG&E had a historical policy known as "run to failure." They didn't think it was good business practice to attend to ANY maintenance on their infrastructure. What could possibly go wrong?
BuT THey’Re iN a BLUE sTatE 🙃 so apparently nobody can rail against them like the other terrible monopoly energy companies because this has to be nobody’s fault or it starts looking bad for regulators (which is more important than future fires apparently)
As someone who lost their home in the Paradise Camp Fire, there should be absolutely no leeway granted to PG&E for failing to maintain their equipment. They are 100% to blame for that fire, hence their open admission of guilt.
After, Camp fire and then last year's Park Fire, in those Magalia ca, can no longer get fire insurance. They have the Fair fire insurance from CA state but it is not the same. I am not sure if Paradise is going through the same thing. Magalia was not even burned during the Park Fire.
It would be one thing if they were just scrapping by, but I have this feeling they were making record profits. Meaning that needed repairs just weren't an expense they thought they needed.
lol the government are literally going to do nothing for you and just blame you. You all live in a dictatorship, not a democracy. Stop voting in rigged elections and take back your country from your corrupt government. They are laughing at you.
Prison firefighters get such a bad deal on all sides. They risk their lives for crap salaries and once released, they are not eligable to become standard firefighters!
Our prisons aren't set up for reform, and you wouldn't want to temp someone by putting them around a building with valuables that insurance would most likely cover it's destruction and if it went missing, you can rationalize as a victimless crime
I don't think anyone is concerned about the insurance companies. We should be concerned about the market for insurance. If the market is not good then nobody will be able to get affordable insurance and eventually the government will have to pick up the tab.
@@westlydurkee6230 Insurance companies pull out because they think the chances of the home being destroyed is too high. So high that they can't charge people for insurance, because they expect they will have to rebuild entire neighborhoods after a disaster and the price for that is so high no one could afford to pay it. Even if all the insurance companies pull out and the government is forced to step in, thats still not an idea situation. If the companies have left, that means the entire city/neighborhood is high risk. Sure the government can help after it gets destroyed to make sure people don't go homeless. But by definition the people living there need to move away because that place is not suitable to live in.
It is important to note that there are many "regular" people that lived in rentals and homes they inherited in those areas. There are a lot more of them hurt than the millionaires that have mansions, many of whom don't even live in their mansions.
I am an underwriter for an insurance company in New Zealand, seeing this is crazy, cannot imagine all the future restrictions, endorsements and premium increasing that will happen on renewal.
If California even allows the premiums to increase. Insurance companies started leaving California a year ago when California put price controls on insurance premiums.
Taking photos of your stuff is always a good idea. I just switched car insurance after a short lapse in coverage, and then hit a deer a week after. My car insurance adjuster told me they wouldn't pay the claim because I didn't have photos of my car prior to the accident. Take photos of your stuff.
Ask the adjuster to point out the language in your policy that requires proof of the status of the vehicle beforehand. Seriously. You're being lied to.
"Doing the best with what they have" is fine if they were given the stuff without the time or resources to do anything, but PG&E has spent decades refusing to do even basic upkeep on their infrastructure, instead choosing profits over responsibility. That they are still allowed to be a publicly traded for-profit company is a grave injustice.
Before the pipeline explosion PG&E executives were regularly collecting bonuses because they were 'efficient' with maintenance, spending significantly less than an average of reference utilities. They weren't "saddled" with aging, poorly maintained infrastructure. They owned and profited from that old infrastructure for most of a century, while not inspecting or maintaining it to reasonable standards. But it all came out OK for them, as PG&E has been allowed to have the highest electric rates in the country by far, even more expensive than inherently expensive places such as Alaska and Hawaii.
Dont forget how they burned down the city of Paradise then began doing "public safety" power shutoffs at random during the hottest days of the year in obvious retaliation over their getting sued. Bastards nearly killed my pugs with heatstroke. They suffered enough *with* consistent AC
@@dirkbester9050 They are a for-profit company with shareholders that executives attempt to enrich before bothering to do their jobs. Regulations are an attempt to rein in the greed and get them to actually do their damn jobs, but we've seen how unsuccessful that's been.
Thank you for bringing up the floods and super bloom's roles in the fires. I remember talking to a friend of mine who lives in LA and said it was great to see California was no longer in a terrible drought and was getting all these wonderful flowers blooming, and he said it worried him because it was potential fuel for a wildfire. He's now watching the fire maps religiously to see if he needs to evacuate or not.
This is the same “perfect storm” which caused the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria where 280 people died. Moderately wet early spring and then 90 days with literally no rain and 35°C temperatures.
My cousin is a nurse at UCLA medical center and the Hurst fire is closest to her. She's seen the glow of the flames over the mountain. I've been keeping in touch with her and it's terrifying.
Thank you for this and for setting up the donations. I live about five miles from Eaton Canyon. Fortunately, the worst we had was a lot of downed tree branches and ash *everywhere*. The media only shows you so much. Most of Altadena is gone. Those 7,000 structures include schools and businesses in addition to homes. As of 1/16, most residents still cannot go into the area and check on their homes. Nearly everyone knows of someone who lost everything. It's not just the loss of homes - it's the loss of community and livelihoods.
I live about 15 miles south, but I work about 5 miles away. I actually had to go to work on Thursday and you couldn't even see the mountains. It was raining ash most of the time and the air purifiers couldn't keep up with the smoke. We were all eventually sent home at like 1:30, but the damage was already done.
So if every insurance company pulls out of the state, yet in order to get a mortgage you legally have to have homeowners insurance, then how would you get a mortgage?
You find a company and pay the sky high prices!!! or you end up with the state plan that is a temp coverage to even get a loan and then scramble to fill in the blanks and it still costs a fortune, but you have the most basic coverage required to get the loan.
@@welsonma3911 except that isn't what happened. They are pulling out because those are high risk areas (floods and wildfires). Like devin said they pulled out of florida (a red state) because of hurricane risks.
@@apuapustaja1 yes that is part of the reason, but not entirely. Cali DOI is notorious for being difficult to work with. Ask any actuary friend you have about rate filing in California. They'll tell you all about the nightmare that is. Unlike Florida, Cali can fix this problem. They can let insurers use better and more accurate predictive modeling (something they immediately announced was going to happen a day after the fire lmaooo), and have better preventative measures against wildfires set in place. This can include stuff like clearing out the brushes, ensuring water supply, having a more robust fire department for a quicker and more effective response, and legislating new laws on homes being built in the area (more fireproof, less fire hazards like tall trees, etc.) Simply put, climate change is affecting California and insurers are accounting for that risk. The DOI needs to acknowledge those risks, give insurers more flexibility in determining their rates, and pressure the govt in making high risk regions safer for everyone. It's not rocket science.
The mayor should hold a press conference, just stating the names of the CEOs of the insurance companies to which the residents paid their respective premiums and urging them to do the right thing. Then, she should put on a Luigi hat from Mario Bros and walk off the dais
The silver lining here is that the insurance companies can't litigate their way out of this tragedy. There's too much money and wealthy people in this natural disaster to try and wait them out or drown them in court cost.
Oh boy. I wish I was this naive. Over the last 5 years, the VAST majority of people in the affected regions had fire damage excluded from their insurance policies. Most just don't know it yet. At the time they were just happy their premiums were lowered. The insurance companies won't have to litigate their way out of covering damages, as they already did that. These people will get nothing from insurance.
I don’t see how a billion dollar business that receives twice monthly payments from their customers can’t afford payouts- sounds like they can’t afford shareholder payouts AND payouts to their customers in need
They can afford the payouts. But if they know they're going to pay out money in the future and the current premiums they are collecting aren't going to cover the loss, then why continue doing business there? If someone went up to you and asked you for 5$ in return for 4$, you'd say gtfo I ain't losing a dollar. Just because you have more than 5$ in your bank account doesn't mean you're about to start giving away money to everyone. Edit: state farm is a mutual insurer and they're pulling out. You should read up on who their "shareholders" are. It would surprise you.
Notice that when a normal person caused a fire during his kids gender reveal he was charged with manslaughter, later when a corporation caused the same situation, no charges filed or even sought. Just a small fine. disgusting...
@@mysteriouszap5489 prison sentences for those who are proven to be Negligent in their duties towards preventing accidents and the Company on the hook for Damages, Honestly when Companies gets involved it should count harsher than Citizen Joe, as it's usually the case that Profits are the reason it happened in the first place, Though it should be proven first that its clear that a Company indeed was Negligent in their duties for preventing accidents which Could be prevented if covered by the profits
@@suehowie152 UA-cam channels are not the only source of information... Traditional news papers, tabloids, so on, want the headline grab of "X celebrity loses house in California wildfire" albiet some have explored the wider impact but these headlines are not quite as attention grabbing and therefore user throughput is not as high
I really hope they increase multi-unit zoning in the wake of this. We can't keep letting housing get more expensive. It's why insurance can't afford to work in high-risk areas anymore. And a huge step to that will be reducing the single-family zoning that has gone from rich people housing to nearly the entire market. If free market will is so important, let the market decide if an area needs single-family detached housing or duplexes/triplexes/townhomes/small apartment complexes, etc. When you zone it so only a 100 homes fit in the space where you could have 250, of course land and housing is going to cost a lot more.
This sounds like a great idea in concept but quickly falls apart in reality. The reason single house owners are sticking together is because of the realtors. Getting rid of single homes jacks prices even worse. Realtors and developers are sleaze-balls that will jack prices 200% to 400% because of demand. Look at Texas and now Tennessee as examples. The state of California is even trying to encourage this, it’s getting really bad.
@@ThatCraftyCorner It’s a reference to a _Saturday Night Live_ skit, and one of the main characters is named “Devon” or “Devin.” If you’re interested, just searched UA-cam for “SNL The Californians.” There are two compilation videos that you can find which will show what we’re referencing and will make sense of Devin’s accent and speech patterns at 9:56.
@ It's a reference to a Saturday Night Live skit, and one of the main characters is named "Devon" or "Devin." If you're interested, just searched UA-cam for "SNL The Californians." There are two compilation videos that you can find which will show what we're referencing and will make sense of Devin's accent and speech patterns at 9:56.
8:44 Quick correction by an Insurance: Fair is limited to only 3 million dollars off coverage but that is more than enough for the majority of homeowners because your home insurance does not cover the cost of the land or your location of your house just the cost to rebuild your house. Because if a fire comes through your land will still be there so you don't have to worry about covering it. Often times, especially in California the cost of the land/location of your house worth way more your house is. A great example I use to explain to my clients is a beachhouse. You might have 800sqft beachhouse located on prime realestate worth a million dollar on Zillow. But you only insure it to the reconstruction of $200,000. Because the value is tied up in the location/land not in the actual house itself.
Was looking for this comment - the whole thing about "only insuring the land value" is obvious nonsense. The land is still there. To rebuild, you're talking about structure, contents, and maybe consequential loss while that's happening, and $2-3million goes a lot further there.
Was going to post the same thing. Your insurance just needs to cover site clearance and rebuilding (many people forget to factor in the site clearance when deciding what coverage amount they require).
As experienced in Maui; the land becomes "worthless" for years. In the meantime, you need somewhere to live. Getting a payout to rebuild is suitable in cases where you can start rebuilding right away. If you can't rebuild, you have to move out and try and sell the plot. So yes, you can sell your toxic lot that will eventually be prime real estate again someday, but not at last year's prices right away. Even that will take a long time, since the city will move very slowly on these types of land transfers. Most of us thought the same way. The land will still be there, we just need insurance for the house... It doesn't work that way at this scale.
And he mentioned that $3 million may not even cover the cost of the land. Like... did the land disappear in the fire, too? Who cares what the land costs, it's still there!
@@streamofthesky I think you may be confused or trolling They arent being just paid for the land that exists... we are talking DAMAGE to the property. The land might be there, but the value of land is not just square footage. Theres a very good reason that a yard in LA is worth more than 5 acres of swamp (or charred forest)
@@Shiftarusok but the properties in the Palisades for example are mostly multi million dollar homes. And I'm talking about the buildings themselves. People need to stop building expensive af shit in high risk areas. It just doesn't make sense.
I lost everything in the 2018 camp fire, I was a renter too, though I had renters insurance, it only covered a small chunk of what I lost (the stuff I was able to prove I owned) and because I was renting an unofficial "in law cottage" I didnt recieve a dime from PG&E. Im still trying to rebuild my life as I am disabled, on a fixed income and with prices are the way they are, I will never be able to completely rebuild.
I justwatched your unboxing video on your channel. Looks like you're life is coming back together and your disability isn't visible. Im so proud of you
I know someone else that didnt lose anything in the camp fire themselves but just about any services around them never returned after the fire, it's a ghost town now, insane that even though supposedly a lot of money was paid out by PG&E almost none of it seems to have gone into rebuilding the destroyed communities
Regarding taking pictures or videos of your stuff, put those pictures in the cloud somewhere. Google or Apple photos, Google Drive, etc. Even creating a private album on Facebook would work. That way if your phone is lost in a fire, you haven't lost your photos too. There are tons of places to store photos for free online.
Include model info and serial numbers . . . helps in case of theft to have those available as well. Go room by room in your house. Open closets to get a general idea of your clothing. Open kitchen cabinets to get an idea of the contents. A few hours of preparation might save you a ton of headache.
I work in the insurance industry and believe me, everyone and their underwriter is talking about what is happening in CA. Thankfully, there are a few carriers who said they are not leaving CA but rates are gonna go up. Something *has* to change.
"Something has to change' And that will be rates go way up to compensate the Insurance companies for the increased risk they are being paid to take. Shareholders want a return based on the risk they engage in, fire insurance is dirt cheap on the north pole.
@KittyKatty999 so in parts of the US (California being 1). Prisoners are used in land management jobs, which includes fighting wild fires. "Earning" between 4-11$ per day. And in event of thier death no money is passed, or recognition of their efforts are made. It is a very nuanced topic... but it is an area worth highlighting in detail and loudly.
While I get the idea of attracting people to a paid service using exclusive content, it feels wrong when that content has very important information in it :|
So some info from a former prison firefighter's post: You have to volunteer for it. Pay is $5.80-$10.24 per day when not working on an emergency incident. During an incident, they recieve an additional $1/hr on top of that. They earn additional time served credits. They are elligable to have their criminal records expunged. They are elligable to apply for a forest service job as a firefighter upon release, and the forest service maintains a dedicated program for training former prison firefighters. They get to live outside the prison and are allowed humane picnic style visitation from family and friends. They get to eat normal and good food, and get a steak and rib post-incident meal. Excercise involves hiking and running on forest and mountain trails, and they have access to hobby shops to pursure and art and craft hobbies they want between fires. After an incident, there is usually a 24 hour fully paid "rest shift" incident work shifts are _also_ 24 hour. Betwen fires, they usually do community projects such as brush abatement, trail maintenance, etc. To qualify, the inmate needs to have no record of violent or sexual crimes, no arson, and no escape attempts, less than 8 years left on their sentence, minimum security status, no active warrants, and no physical, mental, or psychiatric conditions (medication availability durring an incident might be a real problem, and going off psych meds can be bad, so this is for the inmate's protection too). It's a good program.
You can acknowledge that there are good things about the program and acknowledge that slavery is horrible. $10 a day is unacceptable. The only reason their slavery is legal is because they are incarcerated. They still have to pay thousands of dollars in restitution when they get out.
That's a very shiny take on the program. Sounds like something written by a marketing team. Unfortunately reality doesn't measure up to that optimistic view of events. The forest service may have a program for training former inmates but they don't hire felons. They might be eligible to have their records expunged but it is not guaranteed, in fact it is uncommon to get an expungement. They get to eat normal food and get treats after an incident? Sounds like my dog's training program. You make it sound like getting food is a benefit. Shouldn't all inmates even non-firefighters get to have food? Exercise involves hiking and running up mountain trails. You say that like it is a recreational benefit and not a job requirement. You can dust it with powder, spray it with perfume, and anything else you like to try to dress it up, but a shit deal is still shit.
Yeah, I worked for the California Conservation Corp back in the day. Our pay was officially $3.35 an hour (min wage at that time). But, by the time you deducted room and board, it came out to 2something an hour. The idea seems to be that prisoners paying for room and board is unfair - only honest citizens should pay their own way! As a prisoner, your options are to stare at the walls, or get out and earn a pittance. The pittance (and getting out) starts looking pretty good at that point.
As an Australian, it is absolutely heartbreaking to see these fires and their impact on the people of the area. It's amazing there have only been 25 deaths so far, not that that makes it easier for those people's families.
I’ll never understand how insurance companies can literally build their business on providing people help when they need it, and yet they abandoned those people right when they need the help.
the insurance business is distributing risk, so you need a large pool of people who all face a similar risk and pay a small sum so that when one of them gets hurt they get paid from the collective pool. but if the payout gets too large and too many people get hurt, the small sum that everyone has to pay becomes a big sum so that the collective pool gets big enough, and then insurance companies have 2 choices. either they stop insuring an area or increasing the premiums drastically to keep up, and people will complain equally about both so yeah
Its the end result of a corporate culture that prioritizes dehumanizing customers, having no care for delivering quality, governmental apathy and believing morals don't matter if you make money.
@wdf70 well it's not, lol. The poster you replies to explained it well. You could also Google how insurance works in about 30 seconds. Don't like homeowners insurance? Don't buy it - ezpz
Australian here. Insurance is a nightmare after these types of events. So many assessments to be done. Contractors in short supply with high demand and government red tape causing bottlenecks in approvals to rebuild. It will take years. There could be a law to build fire bunkers, too. Noone will get out of this on insurance alone.
Honestly, I think you make a good point. A friend of mine has land in Ballina and has been told his land is on a flood plain & the council won't let him build a house there. I think areas that are fire-prone (eg, King Lake in VIC) should have a requirement whereby newly built houses have to include a small fire bunker. Edit to add: the government should be subsidising the costs, like with private solar & wind installations.
@@ExhaustedOwl hell houses in fire prone areas need to be built with that in mind. There are houses that have gotten through completely untouched because they were built to be fire proof. Metal roof, no random stuff jutting out to catch fire(like decorative wood window frames) and landscaping that wont catch fire easily.
I think that one thing we have to remember is that the California legislature set a statutory limit to the amount an insurance company can pay premiums. Blaming insurers for pulling out of high-risk areas like wildfire zones or charging high premiums for multi-million-dollar homes overlooks the economic realities of risk management. The broader question is whether regulatory frameworks like Proposition 103 adequately balance consumer protection with market sustainability, particularly in the face of climate change and increasing natural disasters. Rather than limiting insurers' ability to manage risk, policies could focus on incentivizing homeowners to mitigate risks or supporting innovative insurance products that account for these evolving challenges. This approach would better balance fairness to insurers and homeowners alike.
It's extremely tricky to figure out the real value of land and property in areas like L.A. because there's so much competition for land that the land is often worth exponentially more than any house you build on it. Theoretically if the house is destroyed, the land should maintain its value, so the insurance company could reason that they only need to pay the value of the house. On the other hand, if your entire neighborhood just burned to the ground, that land is far less valuable to a buyer because everything nearby is gone. Is that loss of potential resale value an insurable loss? Who is liable for something like that? These are questions that we'll be fighting about a lot in coming years.
Yeah, his comment about the amount of insurance not even covering the land value is bizarre; it's everything else that should be covered, and that's much cheaper! In theory, these areas were just unlucky considering how some of the structures that burned were 100 years old. This wasn't Florida or Louisiana, with parts we might expect to be destroyed around every decade or so. Maybe changing weather patterns will change this, but with sky-high property values and a housing crisis, I can't imagine any managed retreat here. That means that governments will be willing to allow rebuilding, which means speculators will be willing to be a lot for "just land" and insurers won't be paying $10MM a pop for "10-million-dollar homes."
Took me too long to find a similar comment. Like oh my "too bad my 300,00 dollar house" burnt down on this lot worth 2 million. Insurance should cover the house. Land value doesn't matter. @@calmbbaer
@ - I mean, even ignoring the obvious shortage of home-builders, I suspect it's cheaper to knock down an intact home - with a predictable structure and no exposed health hazards - than a ruin with unknown toxic and structural hazards.
As someone who had to deal with the 2018 fire and the Palm Springs fire, even if you evacuate to a town tens of miles away, it looks like you’re living in the suburbs of hell. PG&E knew what they were doing was dangerously negligent, they knew the equipment could start fires and needed to be replaced, but yet they betted against peoples lives; they had the money to replace the hooks, and yet they didn’t care. These ceos were responsible for the deaths of so many people yet they got away with a slap on the wrist. It goes to show just how bad things are. December 4th showed how these ceos need to be taken care of
Last I heard, the Pacific Palisades fire is thought to have started as a house fire that spread to a wildlife preserve/sanctuary/park or something behind the home and it went up like a tinder box. When I last heard something mentioned, they were investigating it as possible arson or an electric vehicle left to charge unattended because firefighters couldn’t contain the structure fire. I haven’t heard anything about it for days now but the person I heard it from lives in Palisades. Also, hot shots are highly trained and in the outside world, pretty well paid considering no formal education is required. Training is also not cheap. Being selected for hot shot training while in prison is considered a high honor. It means they think you’ll do well on the outside & wanna set you up for success.
The Santa Ana winds are something that doesn't happen almost anywhere else. We get hurricane force winds, but the humidity drops to nearly zero instead of rising like in a hurricane. It's prefect conditions for fire. I think in my youth I saw ash flakes from forest fires settling to the ground like snow before I ever saw actual snow falling -- California is just like this.
Question: why do people there still build wooden houses instead of concrete and bricks? I mean wild fires is something that just happens there, same as in Greece, and what was left looks much worse than buildings in Greece after their wild fires this year, and even worse than Warsaw after the uprising.
@@minka1781 (ignore my following response - person above me did the research!) I don't really know, but I assume it's because they're much cheaper and faster, and very easy to service/remodel with. Granted, I'm not a home designer
I live in new zealand ... we get winds like this every October and November where I live. I've been in 100 km/h winds trying to move horses and live stock from under trees that were falling over. It steals the breath from your mouth. We are also fire prone. And earthquake prone. Fires are quite common near where I live but our firefighters do an amazing job putting them out before they harm our houses.
@@dragonstooth4223 it’s the rainfall. we had an extremely rainy winter 2024, then almost nothing for the rest of the year - all the lush vegetation dried out and is just waiting for a single spark to fly, winds carry embers and the rest is history.
When talking about insurance companies leaving due to overwhelming risk in California, you should mention the situation with earthquake insurance. That is another source of catastrophic damage that is very unpredictable in its timing, location, and severity. The state's insurance regulators set up a separate risk pool to cover earthquake damage which you have to purchase separately, if you want it. A similar program at the federal level applies to flood damage. Only by removing these types of damage from house insurance can you get affordable coverage for the other "normal" types of damage.
It's the same up here in Alaska, earthquake damage is not covered unless you get the optional coverage, which is insanely expensive like 10% of your house value per year.
Not really, in California it is very hard to get new products approved. So, with being unable to get a new product that reflects the rapid desertification of California approved by the state, insurers have little choice but to stop insuring.
The problem with insurers today and for the last 40 years is the fact they operate for the gross enrichment of the insurance CEOs and their shareholders as they deny claims to the people who've paid for the new yachts of said CEOs.
You can thank the consulting industry's "cost-benefit analysis" model for persuading insurance companies to pursue a policy of mass denial than simply paying out the policies they wrote and issued.
Insurance is one of the most regulator industries, they have strict rules on minimum payout ratio (money in from premiums, than paid out as claims) for house insurance it’s something like 95%+. If you read insurance companies annual reports, a lot of them are not making as much money or even losing money the past few years. This isn’t an insurance company issue.
The mayor should hold a press conference, just stating the names of the CEOs of the insurance companies to which the residents paid their respective premiums and urging them to do the right thing. Then, she should put on a Luigi hat from Mario Bros and walk off the dais
My dad explained all insurances to me in a few sentences. He said “insurance is a business and like all businesses priority #1 is making money. You’re betting that something bad will happen to you eventually and you’ll come out on top for having a policy. The insurance companies are betting you’ll be lucky and spend a lifetime paying premiums with no claims, essentially giving them free money. When it comes to filing a claim the customer will read the plan with a magnifying glass trying to max out their claim. The insurance company will go over the policy with a magnifying glass to find a reason to not play. None of it is personal, it’s all business.
Even a nonprofit insurance company wouldn't last long if they didn't have a slight house advantage or perfect balance. The problem, IMO, is that insurance companies are not allowed to change the odds until they have a slight advantage! If you've got a 10% chance of losing a $1M house in any given year, the premiums for that policy should be $101,000 per year. But they're not allowed to charge that.
Sounds like the reality of it is many of these regions prone to wildfires or hurricanes will simply be deemed uninsurable. In fact it sounds like that has already started happening.
Cali been told by so MANY important people that funding need to go to fire support stuff. And Cali seems to like to fund other stuff instead. The insurance companies listened and watch Calis gov. and Cali choose NOT to fund where they need.
I'm not American and I have always found it wild that wildfires and hurricans keep destroying homes in the same regions but people seem to just keep building again in the same place and also not taking and preventative measures to reduce future damages
Most areas of the country are prone to one form of natural disaster or another. Fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, windstorms, flooding etc. Different regions have different threats.
@@threecards333 Sure but some regions are much less prone to natural disasters, why should the taxpayers have to pay for these houses that burn up when people know that continuing to building in high risk areas is stupid. When these people can't get insurance they can try to get government coverage, so people are being idiotic and repeatedly building in very risky areas and I need to pay for that?
The wildest part about America as an American is that you can build houses to withstand natural issues, or you can even live in a way that makes you safe from them, but people don't want to. If you tell us to build out of concrete to protect from fire damage, we tell you that the gubment won't tell us how to live our lives.
I'm from Altadena. We moved there in the late 70s when I was 10 months old, and I lived there for over 40 years. I moved about 3 years ago after my mother passed away. And I only found out after she passed that the insurance on the house had been canceled around 2018, because the insurance company dropped it. Our house was almost 100 years old, and was over 100 years old this past year. All the houses in my old neighbood were of the same age as well. And now my old neighborhood is completely gone, including my childhood home. The thing everyone should know about Altadena and the Eaton Fire is that we've had MANY wildfires in the mountains before this, some very much starting in Eaton Canyon. However, even just 15 years ago, we used to have heavy rains during this time of year in Altadena, which would satuate the ground and actually make us vulnerable to mudslides if we went though a wildfire in the summer. But rains like that haven't happened for a few years now. So the dry brush, coupled with the super high winds help lead to this. Places in Altadena that have NEVER been under a wildfire evacuation before (such as my old neighborhood), not only had to evacuate, but are now gone. And who knows how many had their home insurance dropped just like my mom did.
Sadly, not Insurances aren't just pulling out of CA, FL, and other disaster prone areas. My family lost our home insurance last year because, and I wish I was joking, there was a shed next to our land. Not on our land, though I understand why they thought that since we gave that land to my father. What he does and has on his land isn't our problem. Insurance is becoming unsustainable everywhere. Won't be long until Insurances will need to be Government owned. Can't drive without Insurance, and won't be long until we can't even rent without Insurance.
You already can't rent without insurance unless you're going through a small-time owner. Any multi-property landlord with any sense or apartment complex/condo/etc has required a renter's policy for many years.
You don't want govt owned insurance. It's terrible. They are prone to gross financial mismanagement, bad policies and zero innovation (because of a lack of competition). You would pay way more premiums for govt owned insurance and much of that wouldn't be directly in the form of a premium. Govt owned insurance would need to be financed by taxpayer dollars because they'll run multibillion dollar deficits every year. So, your taxes would also go towards your insurance. Govt owned insurance will cover everyone and everything, leading to more expensive homes being built in high risk areas. They'll then pay out the losses, which will increase your share of the burden for someone else's stupidity.
In college we discussed the Smokey Bear era. How our attempts to stop all fires has resulted in forests that are too full of undergrowth that serves as kindling. It creats high intensity fire capable of catching on larger plants such as old trees.
There are plenty of drone footage videos on youtube of the Palisades and Eaton fire damaged neighborhoods out now. One thing you'll notice right away... Many of the large old trees were undamaged by fire with houses around them levelled to ash. The forests and landscape in the mountains and canyons around LA are unlike most other forests around the country. Especially in the foothills and up canyon slopes they are short and dense shrubs. The "undergrowth" IS the forest.
I was told a few years ago that the Insurance companies redrew the fire maps, putting more houses in fire zones that weren't before. They then jacked the prices up.
Because they were. California is an insanely risky area to do business in as an insurance company. I hate insurance companies as much as the next guy. However, insurance is all about minimizing the chance of payout.
They would love to jack the prices up to save their business model in California. The govt doesn't let them, so they are now starting to leave. The reason why they are putting more homes in fire zones is because fire zones are expanding. Climate change is real and they're the first ones to acknowledge it. In order to offset the higher risk of loss, they charge more. Sounds fair doesn't it now?
My father is in his 80s and is slowly on his way out. Consequently I have been spending a lot of time at his house in northern California trying to get his affairs in order. One of those things was getting his home insurance re-upped. State Farm completely cancelled his entire policy a few months ago and it officially ran out about 10 days ago. In order to get insured, I had to go through the California state fire insurance, which cost an absolutely silly amount of money for a 1 year policy. Then on top of that fire coverage, I had to go through a regular agency for regular non-fire coverage, which cost even more.
I see another problem incoming: one of the last insurances that did not abandon everything was the veterans insurance (insurance for military service members, veterans, etc, don't know its name). the other insurances are pulling out of california, causing an influx to them. that might sink them too.
I'm a line clearance tree trimmer in California, I've been in the industry since 2017 and I can tell you that I wouldn't be surprised if faulty electrical equipment caused at least two of these fires. At bare minimum, a good guess would be that the high winds also more than likely took branches of the trees and landed them on powerlines. Another factor is the fact that many properties that we work on have a lot of dry vegetation that could easily catch fire along with very little maintenance of their trees as well. Hell before the fires started, we would get a decent number of refusals of our free service, but after the fires got out of control, we haven't gotten a single refusal so far. We try our best to trim the trees so they last at least a year, but we need homeowners to do their part and actually maintain their properties as well.
100% agree. Work for an insurance company. We do property surveys and send letters to the insured regarding vegetation and trees being trimmed away from structures. The amount of people who scream bloody murder at being required to do basic maintenance to retain their coverage is wild.
Why on earth would a payout for a lawsuit due to a wildfire be subject to taxes? Let's say I own a house that's worth $250,000 and it burns down due to someone else's action or inaction. The insurance pays me for the cost to rebuild the house (I still own the property). A lawsuit is filed against whoever caused the fire. I get $100,000 as my portion after lawyers' fees. That money now belongs to the insurance company, not me. If I keep it, I could be convicted of insurance fraud. If I got $300,000, that would be a $50,000 windfall. Fine, tax that. When I SELL the property, that is taxed. Fine. But taxing a settlement that I have to turn over to the insurance company? WTF?
And if the insurance company paid out, why were they not the ones doing the suing, as they are now the party with damages? The customer was made whole by the claim payout.
Did you not see the part that explained who was responsible for the taxing of the payouts and who was responsible for the removal of that tax, including retrospectively ?
There are LOTS of situations like this. Insurance payouts are often considered income or a windfall by bureaucratic government. Also lots of on paper valuations are not the market rates and this causes lots of issues. People generally like their house valued low for property tax reasons but then the comparison between insurance payout and state valuation may be very different and result in a larger windfall. If the house was on paper evaluated at 200,000 but it has a 300,000 rebuild cost, who eats that 100k and now that there is paperwork on 300k rebuild costs, it probably makes property tax go up.
Objection! While $3 million coverage might only cover the value of the land, the land itself will not be destoryed by fire, only the building on it. Either the land can be sold, or the build re-build on the same site.
@@UndeadFleshgod You should see how many land grabbers swooped through Paradise CA. Corporations will want that as a cheep start to rebuidling McMansions.
Uno Reverse Card Objection! The fires destroy all infrastructure underground. Electrical conduit - burnt and fried. Sewage and water pipes - cracked and burst with that seeping into the charred dirt.
The point is, the land's value has dropped a lot, because entire neighborhoods are just gone now. If your city gets turned into Dresden, it would make it a lot less attractive as a place to live, and it would cost a lot to get everything up and running like it was before. In fact, things may never fully recover.
As a Bay Area native, what absolutely pisses me off about the 2018 fires is PG&E filed for bankruptcy because of the insurance claims. The judge overseeing the case consistently allowed PG&E executives to be paid bonuses. It was absolutely obscene.
i'm not trying to defend insurance companies... ever... there's probably some nuance being missed or omitted by your florida friends. i remember that a few years ago with one of the big hurricanes, there was a batch of articles that came out over a week all covering the same family that was dropped by their insurance. it turned out that the family that was dropped by their insurance company lived in a 40 year old trailer in the middle of a floodzone. insuring them would have been like insuring a wooden pallet being placed in an existing bonfire.
Part of the problem in Florida was a massive avalanche of roof insurance scams a few years ago. Look it up, it's an interesting rabbit hole to go down.
A lot of Florida is still classified as 'Swamp Land', which means they aren't legally required to insure them. Then you throw in the aging Condo Issue and a naturally volatile climate (Hurricanes)...is it any wonder? I have an extended family friend (Dead Grandmother's best friend) that still lives there. She and none her neighbors can get insured because they 'live in a swamp'. They all have their valuables packed always up and ready to evacuate or stored in another state. Seems like a tough way to live in a place that seems to not want anyone to be there.
@@CassandraY Not just the swamp land tag but the geology. Sinkholes are everywhere and can open up without warning, like in the case of the guy that got swallowed up while in bed at night.
I'm so worried about the costs of my California Fair Plan as I'm in a high risk area near Yosemite that all local insurers are fleeing from, and now this? Man...
@@EVANHIRSCHMANG With interest rates being 7.25%, moving to a home with the exact same value as mine today would cost $950/mo more. It is not feasible. (4% vs 7.25% on a 480k mortgage)
I would encourage you to look at what you can do on your own property to protect yourself. I am sure California has information on wildfire preparedness, but doing things like making sure there is nothing flammable within 5 feet of your house will help - if the wildfire doesn't have 50mph winds behind it anyways.
Colorado is having similar issues with insurance companies pulling out after wildfires and the Marshall Fire. I lived most of my life where flood was my biggest concern, and then moved to Colorado 7 days before the Marshall Fire in December 2021. I've gotten a heck of an education in home insurance and urban/wildland wildfire science.
I wonder what happens when all the insurance companies pull out of an area that legally requires some for of home insurance? Anyone in your neck of the woods talking about that?
8:50 you say that in West LA the 3 million USD insured limit basically covers the value of the land alone, but a fire policy is not meant to insure the land itself, but the construction and contents on it, so the value of the land would be irrelevant for insurance purposes, isn’t it?
@@millerrepin4452 If the land was worth 3 million before the fire, it's still worth 3 million after the fire. You don't have to rebuild the land after a fire. You have to rebuild the structures so as jsatrus says the value of the land is irrelevant.
@@millerrepin4452Ok, but in any case if the policy is not enough it is not related to the value of the terrain, that’s what I want to say. The land still remains for the owner to rebuild upon it (of course not exactly as they will need to redo foundations and so)
You're still paying taxes on a vacant piece of land that is worth $3 million, but no longer has any services and utilities going to it. It also doesn't do you any good if the original house was worth another million dollars on top of that, particularly as you'll be still on the hook for that mortgage. So, for example, Mel Gibson apparently lost a $23 million home and all the property therein, which he may never see a penny for.
my heart goes to those who’ve faced loss at the hands of the fires. although this could be an opportunity to become more conscious and concerned for how much this has been happening, in massively larger scales across the world and in the hands of big corporations. i’m from an entirely different continent and everyone here is aware of the LA fires, but when it’s the amazon that’s burning, news outlets don’t seem to be as concerned, even when 20% of oxygen by photosynthesis comes from it. last year, wildfires across the african continent were MASSIVE. if the fire’s gonna fuel something, let it be awareness. we’re all paying the price of this loss.
Hello from Santa Monica, it came so close, watched the flames on the mountain from my kitchen window never thought I would feel the fear of a fire like I did a week ago
Dealing with repairs from a house fire right now. UP YOUR COVERAGE ON EVERYTHING. My basement will not be even sort of finished because the cost of everything went up since I last changed my coverage, back in the eternity ago of 2020. Seriously, cost increases are screwing up everything and the repair company wants $20,000 more to fix what should be covered just years ago.
I'm so glad most of your repairs are covered. These fires have left so many people homeless and destitute, so it's bittersweet hearing about people struggling with manageable losses.
As someone from Spain, I can only wish for the people in California that this passes quickly and with the least amount of destruction, and hope that you get enough help, both local and from abroad.
The saddest part about prisoner firefighters is that we had a proposition up to prevent their horrible treatment this last election cycle but it wasn’t passed, hopefully their prominent coverage right now will help the next attempt at helping them
11:05 There is a VERY IMPORTANT difference between forest fires, that can very much be made less damaging by regular controlled burns, and fires in shrublands, like these fires. The shrublands burn entirely and intensely when they burn. They don't have low intensity understory fires, they just burn up all in all. Shrubland fires will always be a serious risk to structures when we build structures close to the wildlands, and when winds are high. (EDIT) And when human are constantly starting fires, mostly by accident, there can be extensive disasters like this.
They also tax Olympic medal winners. The only thing I know they don't tax is money earned by military members that are stationed in or close enough to a combat zone.
I live in the boondocks of Los Angeles County. There is wild land to the south and west of my home - it is full of brush 15 feet or more tall. It should not be the responsibility of indigenous tribes to burn back this overgrowth of vegetation to make my community safe. This is a problem of modern times, and should be addressed with bulldozers and backfires (during rainy season, assuming we get some rain this year...). The brush was last cleared in ~2008...by a fire...which was stopped at my fence line...by the fire department starting a backfire to keep my home from burning. These are things that we can do to keep fires from destroying homes: we cannot prevent wildfires, but we can keep our residential areas safer. If we do that, insurance companies will be willing to sell us insurance for a reasonable price due to a more reasonable risk.
As someone who works in insurance, I definitely don’t shell for the companies because they’re obviously huge corporations that are there to make money but the amount of people who don’t actually know how it works or what is actually covered by their policy contract is almost universal. And it’s somewhat understandable right, because it’s all legalese and one company’s coverage is not necessarily the exact same as a coverage of the same name from a different company, so it’s all very technical and numbers based and basically impossible to explain to the average person. Insurance agents are often not helpful either, they have a tendency to not gaf after they make the commission and then the customer is on their own because (at least at my company) the customer service department is unlicensed and legally cannot advise people on what they should or shouldn’t do/how much coverage they need, you basically have to know what you need already and most people don’t.
All I know is that they take my money every month and then never give any of it back even when I desperately need it and have done nothing to be disqualified for a claim.
$150B - $6B equals STFU. State Farm won't go out of business if they honor their customers claims. They risk becoming unprofitable, as compared to other years in which they gambled and made massive gains.
Insurance is gambling. You bet against an insurer that your house will burn down, they bet it won't. If the insurer also thinks your house will burn down, they obviously won't take the bet.
The insurance companies themselves can take reinsurance to cap losses in extra bad years (but decrease profits in good years). Swiss Re for instance is an insurance company for insurance companies.
Having worked for them, I don't think they should be public and so profit hungry but it's really not that simple. There's so much that goes into a singular upgrade and to upgrade some circuits you'd have to cut over THE ENTIRE circuit, for example, 4kv old systems have to be cutover to standard 12kv but if it's a large circuit that's so pricey, then multiply that circuit by however many other old circuits there are, and there's just not enough money to do all of it at once. It's just a lot more nuanced than we'd like
I feel bad for the people who are losing so much to this disaster. It’s hard to feel bad for insurance companies though. They’re already one of the most hated industries due to their practices. I think a lot of people are a bit happy that the greedy companies have to swallow a loss. That said, something does need to be done. If areas are so high risk as to be uninsurable, then maybe we need non-profit coverage for those people, incentives to move elsewhere, or maybe even rethink how we build homes. Wood homes are the current standard, but maybe, as the likelihood of disasters grows, we should shift to different materials that stand up to these disasters better.
unfortunately, california is also prone to earthquakes, which is best withstood by wood houses. the only materials that could resist both would be a lot more expensive to build with. i wholeheartedly agree with your comment, but i don't know if there's a better material to switch to. perhaps the focus should be on the space surrounding the homes, especially when it comes to reducing or eliminating fire hazards within a certain distance of buildings.
Guess who does the most research on building materials, methods and codes to minimize property damage? Insurance companies!! Guess who has entire departments that lobby local, state and federal government to implement improved standards? Insurance companies. Guess who gets the hate when people don't listen? Insurance companies.
I can personally tell you how the Hurst fire started. It was caused by downed power lines near the 210/5 interchange in Sylmar, CA. I saw it happen with my own eyes, there was a bright flash near the top of the foothill and suddenly it was glowing orange. Within 10 minutes, it had spread down the hill, pushed by 30 MPH winds.
@godlygamer911 I was at work and closing up shop. I had to call my boss to inform him. there was no time to take pictures because I didn't know if the wind would push the fire towards me. I wanted to be focused and aware of my situation. My house was also potentially in danger and I needed to get home asap.
13:00 Photos of the objects in a house getting destroyed was a big problem in the past with physical photos getting burned or photo rolls that were lying around, but nowadays people make photos with their phones, which they take with them when they evacuate and photos are often stored in the cloud too.
Don't forget the increasing cost of construction materials as a certain someone levies tariffs on our number 1 lumber supplier, Canada. And all of the other imported items it takes to build a new house.
It’s been predicted for decades that extreme weather disasters such as this would get more frequent and more intense. Yet the oil industry, which is the principal contributor, is not asked to contribute to the cost of the consequences. It seems unfair and unsustainable to ask the insurance companies to carry that burden alone. Even if oil companies would move that cost to the consumer, it would reflect the true cost of burning oil better and maybe incentivize us to move to something better.
As a property insurance underwriter, I've been seeing first-hand over the last few years how various carriers have been pulling out of CA. Part of what's exacerbating the issue has been the state insurance commissioner's regulations preventing rate increases to match the ever-increasing risk in the state. We've been unable to meet the needed loss demands with premium to maintain any form of net profit, so pulling out has been our only option.
A small upside is how now that it is all burned down it leaves a blank slate for creating something better. So if people want to make public transit better they can do it now if they want to make structures more reliable. So if this ever happens again, then the structure may only need small repairs such as those chimneys from other buildings seeming perfectly fine sitting where they were building it from scratch will be painstaking of course, but it will also give extra business for people who do build
Building fire resistant structures in an earthquake zone is possible, but wildly more expensive then how things are usually done. A few people with lots of money might rebuild better, but most will not be able to.
With the increase in serious storms and wildfires causing insurance companies to pull out, we really need government action to develop safer homes that can withstand region specific risks and to compensate for people to be rehomes permanently after this stuff
I have heard the winds can carry embers, I understand it mentally, but this video was the first time I've seen it. @1:42. Eye opening. It was one of those "it is not at all how you think it is" moments for me.
I appreciate this, I live in fire country. One December day the Chinook winds gusted 100 mph and in 12 hours 1000 homes burned. People, mostly critics, have no frigging clue. My favorite is the fire hydrants. A hydrant does eff all in that situation, and they aren't designed for all of them to be used at once.
When insurance risks rise, insurance premiums should rise. If you can not afford insurance on a house, you should get one that is either less expensive or has lower risks. That's the correct result: giving people incentives to move away from high-risk areas.
Not really, because properties in Europe are rarely built 100% out of flammable construction materials even a bombed-out city looks very different to somewhere where only the foundations remain. The problem is in the USA people build properties in areas subject to risk but make zero to little attempts to mitigate against the risk.
holy shit legal eagle talking about my back yard... another side effect of the camp fire was that housing prices rose due to the sudden removal of an entire town and a large group of new arrivals... I'm not blaming them, this is how supply and demand works, but it's just another stress factor going into a terrible housing market. Anyway, nationalize PG&E, take away their company if they can't run it
It's absolutely wild how you hear people criticizing Californians like they never do when tornados hit the midwest or hurricanes hit the eastern seaboard or floods happen along any river.
People are absolutely criticized for living in flood zones, like idiots. And Californians should know by now that brush management is an extremely high priority since they have destructive wildfires pretty much every year. But how exactly do you suggest one would go about preventing a tornado or a hurricane?
These fires are preventable (to an extent) proper forest management, controlled burns, adequet water supplies etc, but tornadoes? Hurricanes? Floods? Yeah lets just control weather. Also as a side note, these fires were started as either arson or by human involvement, they weren't natural
@@SgtSupaman And that's exactly why California engaged in its Fire Plan to clear brushes. The problem is that nearly half of California is under federal management and Congress refuses to do anything about it. The Eaton Fire occurred in the San Gabriel Mountains while the Palisades Fire occurred in the Santa Monica Mountains, both of which are under federal jurisdiction. If there should be anyone being criticized, it's Congress for not funding the National Park Service to do this, not the LA Mayor or Fire Chief. They did their part of clearing in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
@@SgtSupaman Seems like you missed the point of this one Sarge, Its almost as if preventing disasters isnt the point, and instead we are discussing how to mitigate the damage, and provide assistance for those affected. As a society, we all benefit from people spreading out into unpopulated areas, and people that can access unique resources as well as take advantage of regional climates, think about crops and other farms, unique ores, etc. Try not to think real hard unless your superior officer tells you to, if you hurt your brain its not insured.
You forgot to mention that California caps the amount the insurance companies collect, which is part of prevents them from charging what is needed to cover the losses.
It'd only cut into their profits and they need those to keep the shareholders happy and the stock price up. It wouldn't do anything to the actual business side
Charge what is need to cover the losses? Really, are you really that gullible to think insurance are not making billions off of the amount they charge already. There's a cap in place to stop insurance from keep raising their rate to ridiculous amount for the same coverages.
@CassandraY That is not how math works. If the income is less than (or equal to) the total of the amount paid out plus expenses to operate the company, the business is dead. Most insurance companies don't make the profit on the actual premium vs. losses, but by investing the money while they hold it in between claim payments. If they are paying money out as fast as they take it in, they cannot do that. That said, there are other ways to spread the risk around. Look into things like a mutual aid society (the Amish and Mennonites have one) or even the ancient practice of splitting up shipments between various boats so that if one sank, no one producer would lose everything. The biggest problem with reducing insurance options come from it's effect on lending. If you cannot insure the collateral for the loan, the lenders would suffer the loss with you. The FAIR (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements) plan that Devon mentioned is a safety net to make sure people can still get loans. However, the FAIR plan is not supported by the government, it is supported by the insurance companies that operate in that state, and their amount of support is usually based the percentage of business that the company does in that state. That means that if State Farm cannot remair profitable and they leave, it effects the people relying on the FAIR plan for insurance.
@@lovemoviesful2 It's not that I am gullible. I'm more like Thomas, and has seen the wounds. I'm not saying that the companies should make money hand over fist. It is up to the state's insurance commissioner to witch those rates and to make sure that rates are not set above an unreasonable level. They usually do this by testing the rates against a representative data set for their state. But when politicians step in and say, "Ignore the math, cap it at this level anyway" they break the basic foundation that insurance is built on: spreading the risk around so that no one person absorbs the whole loss when a risk fails. Many insurance companies try to find ways to maintain their liquidity and profits. They do this but cutting claims support (claims take longer or are done sloppily), cutting sales support (how many times did you have to call the remove the car from you policy), or reducing coverage (We only cover your accident if you were well rested, not on any medications, drugs, or alcohol, and properly buckled in), or by making you carry a larger portion of the risk (You deductible has been changed from $1,000 to 1% of the cost to rebuild your house). Despite what some people think, insurance is one of the most tightly regulated industries because it is the easiest one to check the numbers on. If an insurance company tries to cheat or game the system like that, it quickly becomes noticeable. And it is in the interest of the other insurance companies to keep their competition in line, because the penalty for systemically cheating customers is usually being barring for writing in the state that catches you, and every one of those competing companies would love to get a small slice of the barred company's business (the more customers, the easier it is to absorb a loss).
What we are seeing here is the overall death throws of an industry. John Oliver did a great episode on this, but simply put. . .insurance was never supposed to pay to rebuild entire cities and towns. It was designed for a few houses or cars in a town that are damaged in a storm or something like that. These companies have a responsibility to also generate some form of profit as they are corporate entities, not government institutions. Climate change has moved us to a place where insurance companies find themselves having to rebuild almost whole states sometimes twice or three times a year. . .and our government is ok with that because it means they wont have to flip the bill (and by extension raise taxes). But now, its becoming impossible to pay off these claims and still maintain some sort of profit or expansions. And insurance only works if its constantly expanding. I mean, at a certain point. . .we are going to reach a crisis point where the whole industry impoldes. And thats gonna blow up our whole economy when it does. Rebuilding and updating our infrastructure might buy us sometime by midigating the risk of potential disasters. . .but its only a bandaid at this point
The insurance of last resort is essentially non-profit already, and the premiums are still crazy high. The problem isn't insurance, it's that living in a place where this sort of mass damage is possible is no longer sustainable given the astronomic costs of construction. Even without a single penny of profit extracted, it's simply too expensive for most people to live in these places, but people live there anyway then get upset when presented with reality. It's the same issue with hurricanes in the south. It's just unreasonable to keep building in places that are being destroyed by climate change.
American love communism now? From what I read from the comments, apparently everything needed to be run by the government eventually because corporation BAD.
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Stop building houses near the woods.
Pitch forks and CEOs
What guarantee can you provide none of the donations will go to the Utra rich that can rebuild on their own?
More fireproof building standards, at least for the structure, so that buildings that go through wildfires aren't fully destroyed.
Capitalism
My dad was a forest service firefighter. He died in 2015 fighting a California wildfire. All of this hits home for me. My heart goes out to everyone
Our hearts go out to you as well. Tragic that your father passed while fighting a wildfire.
As a Californian i’m sorry for your loss. Take solace in the fact that your Dad was a hero!
Thank you for your dad's service. I am so sorry for your loss.
Sorry for your loss ❤
Bless Up and I thank your father posthumously. My sincerest condolences.
Bro, I'm from Paradise, and my step-dad is career USFS.
They (PG&E) WERE NOT saddled with poor equipment, they never maintained their infrastructure.
Yeah they have been crappy for years, that is why Sacramento tried to get rid of them in their area. PG&E being money-hungry crud buckets is NOT news.
Yeah, the wording he used was, at best, in very poor taste.
Yep. And another consequence of the Camp fire was preventative rolling backouts as PG&E just shed load instead of (or at least while) doing a lot of long deferred maintenance.
BTW: I went to school in Pasadena back in the 90s. Lived in Altadena for a bit, renting a room in a house which isn't there anymore :(
This. PGE is negligent and scummy and a disgusting company.
@@travcollier I am so glad my county has its own power company instead of relying on PG&E. Other advantages include electricity costing about half as much as PG&E.
My nephew Michael is one of those prison inmates currently fighting this fire. He got into that program a couple of years ago and is due to get out in 2025. It's been a wonderful opportunity for him, He's turned things very much around from his teenage years and we're all very proud.
I hope he gets through this unharmed and is able to turn his experiences into continued positive developments in his life.
We are proud of him too!
I've heard they have basically 0 chance of being a firefighter after getting out with a criminal record so it's not really an opportunity for employment after prison.
@@cyan_oxy6734 The governor signed a law that allows incrassated firefighters to use their experience while behind bars as firefighters to carry over once they are released.
Shame on you. Using slave labour to fight fires.
The frustrating part, is that we were warning people about this for *nearly 2 decades!* I remember people in 2006 talking about how the wildfires would just keep getting worse and that the insurance companies would stop insuring people because it won't be profitable at some point. And *_nobody listened!_*
The sad part is people rarely do.
Anything that stops the mega rich from getting richer will never happen.
Individuals are smart.
People are stupid.
Professional professionals knew as earliest in 1990s we’d be in trouble. Poor management practices. Ecology course.
Yeah, that's why I don't feel sorry for them or any one caught in a natural disaster caused by their own ignorance.
Devin, PG&E had a historical policy known as "run to failure." They didn't think it was good business practice to attend to ANY maintenance on their infrastructure. What could possibly go wrong?
Sounds like my agency's (fed govt) "fix on failure" practice.
BuT THey’Re iN a BLUE sTatE 🙃 so apparently nobody can rail against them like the other terrible monopoly energy companies because this has to be nobody’s fault or it starts looking bad for regulators (which is more important than future fires apparently)
that's just every business
The current LA Dept. of Water (DWP) manager is from PG&E and makes $751K per year.
@@MJB4646 when has anybody said that?
As someone who lost their home in the Paradise Camp Fire, there should be absolutely no leeway granted to PG&E for failing to maintain their equipment. They are 100% to blame for that fire, hence their open admission of guilt.
Kangaroo court. No need for investigation or evidence.
After, Camp fire and then last year's Park Fire, in those Magalia ca, can no longer get fire insurance. They have the Fair fire insurance from CA state but it is not the same. I am not sure if Paradise is going through the same thing. Magalia was not even burned during the Park Fire.
That's right
They should have zero leeway anyway... they give none to us unless forced too.
It would be one thing if they were just scrapping by, but I have this feeling they were making record profits. Meaning that needed repairs just weren't an expense they thought they needed.
lol the government are literally going to do nothing for you and just blame you. You all live in a dictatorship, not a democracy. Stop voting in rigged elections and take back your country from your corrupt government. They are laughing at you.
Prison firefighters get such a bad deal on all sides. They risk their lives for crap salaries and once released, they are not eligable to become standard firefighters!
At least they can still be President.
Supposedly there’s a pathway. For the ones I’ve spoken with, they felt so much pride being able to go to fire camp.
It's voluntary and highly sought-after by prisoners.
Our prisons aren't set up for reform, and you wouldn't want to temp someone by putting them around a building with valuables that insurance would most likely cover it's destruction and if it went missing, you can rationalize as a victimless crime
I think it costs 30k to house a prisoner per year. So their effort is simply paying the system back. You want to pay them a wage on top of that?
Regular civilians, grieving families, surrounding wildlife, these are groups to feel sorry for, not insurance companies.
Feel sorry for insurance, no. . .be concerned. Yes! Because unfortunately, this is something that can seriously affect everyone.
@@Strider91 That's true!
I don't think anyone is concerned about the insurance companies. We should be concerned about the market for insurance. If the market is not good then nobody will be able to get affordable insurance and eventually the government will have to pick up the tab.
It's an act of "god"
@@westlydurkee6230 Insurance companies pull out because they think the chances of the home being destroyed is too high. So high that they can't charge people for insurance, because they expect they will have to rebuild entire neighborhoods after a disaster and the price for that is so high no one could afford to pay it.
Even if all the insurance companies pull out and the government is forced to step in, thats still not an idea situation. If the companies have left, that means the entire city/neighborhood is high risk. Sure the government can help after it gets destroyed to make sure people don't go homeless. But by definition the people living there need to move away because that place is not suitable to live in.
It is important to note that there are many "regular" people that lived in rentals and homes they inherited in those areas. There are a lot more of them hurt than the millionaires that have mansions, many of whom don't even live in their mansions.
I am an underwriter for an insurance company in New Zealand, seeing this is crazy, cannot imagine all the future restrictions, endorsements and premium increasing that will happen on renewal.
Wait until the rainy season arrives.
If California even allows the premiums to increase. Insurance companies started leaving California a year ago when California put price controls on insurance premiums.
@@jpablo700 yeah, its setup for mudslides now.
I thought parts of NZ already can't be insured for flooding?
@@morganmcallister2001 I understand. Is matter of "when" not "if". They need put that premium since they know you will need the money on any time.
Devin, my man. I will never have pity for a corporation like PG&E who makes plenty of money to replace a century old piece of equipment.
Don't forget PG&E raised all our rates here in norcal to recoup their losses from the lawsuits they lost
Wait, is that Legal Eagle's real name!? :o
Literally
@@KittyKatty999 didn't you hear the fire? 😂
PG&E sux
Taking photos of your stuff is always a good idea. I just switched car insurance after a short lapse in coverage, and then hit a deer a week after. My car insurance adjuster told me they wouldn't pay the claim because I didn't have photos of my car prior to the accident. Take photos of your stuff.
Then they should have said that they needed photos when you got the policy .
Ask the adjuster to point out the language in your policy that requires proof of the status of the vehicle beforehand. Seriously. You're being lied to.
Ask them to show you where in their policy it says that.
Argh, I really hate taking photos of any stuff… Wouldn’t a drawing work?
You really can't deal with insurance companies without a lawyer.
"Doing the best with what they have" is fine if they were given the stuff without the time or resources to do anything, but PG&E has spent decades refusing to do even basic upkeep on their infrastructure, instead choosing profits over responsibility. That they are still allowed to be a publicly traded for-profit company is a grave injustice.
Before the pipeline explosion PG&E executives were regularly collecting bonuses because they were 'efficient' with maintenance, spending significantly less than an average of reference utilities.
They weren't "saddled" with aging, poorly maintained infrastructure. They owned and profited from that old infrastructure for most of a century, while not inspecting or maintaining it to reasonable standards.
But it all came out OK for them, as PG&E has been allowed to have the highest electric rates in the country by far, even more expensive than inherently expensive places such as Alaska and Hawaii.
They're still doing the minimum while making rate payers pay for their negligence.
Dont forget how they burned down the city of Paradise then began doing "public safety" power shutoffs at random during the hottest days of the year in obvious retaliation over their getting sued.
Bastards nearly killed my pugs with heatstroke. They suffered enough *with* consistent AC
PG&E is a regulated utility. You are confused.
@@dirkbester9050 They are a for-profit company with shareholders that executives attempt to enrich before bothering to do their jobs. Regulations are an attempt to rein in the greed and get them to actually do their damn jobs, but we've seen how unsuccessful that's been.
And people wonder why Luigi Mangione has a higher approval rating than all of congress, all federal judges, and every insurance company executive.
And the president let's not forget. He's starting with a disapproval rating above 40%. The highest of any US president in history.
Who is the CEO of State Farm?
being pro murderer is an ugly look.
@@kcbowman4042 We un-alived a pretty significant number of British Soilders to establish this nation. So by your logic, that was wrong.
@@kcbowman4042 so be it, who else is guilty i wonder?
Thank you for bringing up the floods and super bloom's roles in the fires. I remember talking to a friend of mine who lives in LA and said it was great to see California was no longer in a terrible drought and was getting all these wonderful flowers blooming, and he said it worried him because it was potential fuel for a wildfire. He's now watching the fire maps religiously to see if he needs to evacuate or not.
This is the same “perfect storm” which caused the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria where 280 people died. Moderately wet early spring and then 90 days with literally no rain and 35°C temperatures.
My cousin is a nurse at UCLA medical center and the Hurst fire is closest to her. She's seen the glow of the flames over the mountain. I've been keeping in touch with her and it's terrifying.
Hurst is both longgggg way out and been fully contained. It was few miles north of me... It's closer to 20 miles from ucla med
Is she not allowed to leave? Like if you can see the glow, it’s time to go
Sounds like she was at Olive View.
Thankfully Hurt is 98% contained.
🙏
Thank you for this and for setting up the donations. I live about five miles from Eaton Canyon. Fortunately, the worst we had was a lot of downed tree branches and ash *everywhere*. The media only shows you so much. Most of Altadena is gone. Those 7,000 structures include schools and businesses in addition to homes. As of 1/16, most residents still cannot go into the area and check on their homes. Nearly everyone knows of someone who lost everything. It's not just the loss of homes - it's the loss of community and livelihoods.
I'm not even local to the area, and a friend of mine lost his family home. Completely burned to the ground. It's so profoundly sad.
So sorry to have this happening! 😢
I live about 15 miles south, but I work about 5 miles away. I actually had to go to work on Thursday and you couldn't even see the mountains. It was raining ash most of the time and the air purifiers couldn't keep up with the smoke. We were all eventually sent home at like 1:30, but the damage was already done.
At least its not 7000 people dying.
So if every insurance company pulls out of the state, yet in order to get a mortgage you legally have to have homeowners insurance, then how would you get a mortgage?
You find a company and pay the sky high prices!!! or you end up with the state plan that is a temp coverage to even get a loan and then scramble to fill in the blanks and it still costs a fortune, but you have the most basic coverage required to get the loan.
Good luck lol. Maybe ask your govt not to chase away all the insurers in the first place.
@@welsonma3911 except that isn't what happened. They are pulling out because those are high risk areas (floods and wildfires). Like devin said they pulled out of florida (a red state) because of hurricane risks.
@@apuapustaja1 yes that is part of the reason, but not entirely. Cali DOI is notorious for being difficult to work with. Ask any actuary friend you have about rate filing in California. They'll tell you all about the nightmare that is.
Unlike Florida, Cali can fix this problem. They can let insurers use better and more accurate predictive modeling (something they immediately announced was going to happen a day after the fire lmaooo), and have better preventative measures against wildfires set in place. This can include stuff like clearing out the brushes, ensuring water supply, having a more robust fire department for a quicker and more effective response, and legislating new laws on homes being built in the area (more fireproof, less fire hazards like tall trees, etc.)
Simply put, climate change is affecting California and insurers are accounting for that risk. The DOI needs to acknowledge those risks, give insurers more flexibility in determining their rates, and pressure the govt in making high risk regions safer for everyone. It's not rocket science.
@@welsonma3911 oh, I didnt know that. Thanks for explaining.
funny how insurance companies are allowed to profit wholesale but when it comes to doing their actual job and paying out..
Smart business plan though! You give them money, they keep that money, business has concluded.
The mayor should hold a press conference, just stating the names of the CEOs of the insurance companies to which the residents paid their respective premiums and urging them to do the right thing. Then, she should put on a Luigi hat from Mario Bros and walk off the dais
Which carriers aren't paying out? Damage from wildfire is covered. Smoke damage from wildfire is covered. Who's denying these claims?
nobody has gotten paid yet. the dude in the video said it himself, they can take up to 40 days to approve or deny a claim @@p99isfun82
But people also blame them for leaving, and for raising premiums, even though that's a clear warning sign of impending disaster.
The silver lining here is that the insurance companies can't litigate their way out of this tragedy.
There's too much money and wealthy people in this natural disaster to try and wait them out or drown them in court cost.
Yeah, we'll see.
@afterdinnercreations936 Jake from State Farm, is that you?
Yeah, they're just going to go bankrupt
Oh boy. I wish I was this naive.
Over the last 5 years, the VAST majority of people in the affected regions had fire damage excluded from their insurance policies. Most just don't know it yet. At the time they were just happy their premiums were lowered. The insurance companies won't have to litigate their way out of covering damages, as they already did that.
These people will get nothing from insurance.
@a5cent ...so if their insurance was canceled why were they still paying premiums? 🤨
I don’t see how a billion dollar business that receives twice monthly payments from their customers can’t afford payouts- sounds like they can’t afford shareholder payouts AND payouts to their customers in need
They can afford the payouts. But if they know they're going to pay out money in the future and the current premiums they are collecting aren't going to cover the loss, then why continue doing business there?
If someone went up to you and asked you for 5$ in return for 4$, you'd say gtfo I ain't losing a dollar. Just because you have more than 5$ in your bank account doesn't mean you're about to start giving away money to everyone.
Edit: state farm is a mutual insurer and they're pulling out. You should read up on who their "shareholders" are. It would surprise you.
@@welsonma3911 And yet somehow they're the 4th worst insurer in the US.
Notice that when a normal person caused a fire during his kids gender reveal he was charged with manslaughter, later when a corporation caused the same situation, no charges filed or even sought. Just a small fine. disgusting...
Corporations are people, except when they don't feel like being people when it benefits them
You can’t exactly put a corporation in prison is the main issue
@@mysteriouszap5489Last I checked corporations are run by people and people can be put in jail.
@@mysteriouszap5489 Why not? Just put the same restriction on the corporation as someone in jail would be facing.
@@mysteriouszap5489 prison sentences for those who are proven to be Negligent in their duties towards preventing accidents and the Company on the hook for Damages,
Honestly when Companies gets involved it should count harsher than Citizen Joe, as it's usually the case that Profits are the reason it happened in the first place,
Though it should be proven first that its clear that a Company indeed was Negligent in their duties for preventing accidents which Could be prevented if covered by the profits
THANK YOU for talking about this, I'm so sick of the attention being on celebrities losing their homes.
I have only seen one channel do that.
It hasn't been through
@@suehowie152 UA-cam channels are not the only source of information... Traditional news papers, tabloids, so on, want the headline grab of "X celebrity loses house in California wildfire" albiet some have explored the wider impact but these headlines are not quite as attention grabbing and therefore user throughput is not as high
As a Norwegian, the celebs are all we've heard about in the news.
I normally think ur dumb but u said the right thing
I really hope they increase multi-unit zoning in the wake of this. We can't keep letting housing get more expensive. It's why insurance can't afford to work in high-risk areas anymore. And a huge step to that will be reducing the single-family zoning that has gone from rich people housing to nearly the entire market. If free market will is so important, let the market decide if an area needs single-family detached housing or duplexes/triplexes/townhomes/small apartment complexes, etc. When you zone it so only a 100 homes fit in the space where you could have 250, of course land and housing is going to cost a lot more.
This sounds like a great idea in concept but quickly falls apart in reality. The reason single house owners are sticking together is because of the realtors. Getting rid of single homes jacks prices even worse. Realtors and developers are sleaze-balls that will jack prices 200% to 400% because of demand. Look at Texas and now Tennessee as examples.
The state of California is even trying to encourage this, it’s getting really bad.
9:56
I love the _Californians_ reference. That fact that you just so happen to be named “Devin” just makes it so much better.
"Devin? Wahrudoinhur?"
Aw, you beat me to it!
What
@@ThatCraftyCorner
It’s a reference to a _Saturday Night Live_ skit, and one of the main characters is named “Devon” or “Devin.” If you’re interested, just searched UA-cam for “SNL The Californians.” There are two compilation videos that you can find which will show what we’re referencing and will make sense of Devin’s accent and speech patterns at 9:56.
@
It's a reference to a Saturday Night Live skit, and one of the main characters is named "Devon" or "Devin." If you're interested, just searched UA-cam for "SNL The Californians." There are two compilation videos that you can find which will show what we're referencing and will make sense of Devin's accent and speech patterns at
9:56.
8:44 Quick correction by an Insurance: Fair is limited to only 3 million dollars off coverage but that is more than enough for the majority of homeowners because your home insurance does not cover the cost of the land or your location of your house just the cost to rebuild your house. Because if a fire comes through your land will still be there so you don't have to worry about covering it. Often times, especially in California the cost of the land/location of your house worth way more your house is.
A great example I use to explain to my clients is a beachhouse. You might have 800sqft beachhouse located on prime realestate worth a million dollar on Zillow. But you only insure it to the reconstruction of $200,000. Because the value is tied up in the location/land not in the actual house itself.
Was looking for this comment - the whole thing about "only insuring the land value" is obvious nonsense. The land is still there. To rebuild, you're talking about structure, contents, and maybe consequential loss while that's happening, and $2-3million goes a lot further there.
Was going to post the same thing. Your insurance just needs to cover site clearance and rebuilding (many people forget to factor in the site clearance when deciding what coverage amount they require).
There’s a ton of incorrect information in this video, not sure why he chose to cover something he has so little knowledge on…
@@Steamaux Ragebait
As experienced in Maui; the land becomes "worthless" for years. In the meantime, you need somewhere to live.
Getting a payout to rebuild is suitable in cases where you can start rebuilding right away.
If you can't rebuild, you have to move out and try and sell the plot.
So yes, you can sell your toxic lot that will eventually be prime real estate again someday, but not at last year's prices right away. Even that will take a long time, since the city will move very slowly on these types of land transfers.
Most of us thought the same way. The land will still be there, we just need insurance for the house...
It doesn't work that way at this scale.
The over inflation of the value of properties in California is part to blame for insurance dropping out. A 3 bedroom is over a million these days.
And he mentioned that $3 million may not even cover the cost of the land.
Like... did the land disappear in the fire, too? Who cares what the land costs, it's still there!
@@streamofthesky I think you may be confused or trolling
They arent being just paid for the land that exists... we are talking DAMAGE to the property.
The land might be there, but the value of land is not just square footage.
Theres a very good reason that a yard in LA is worth more than 5 acres of swamp (or charred forest)
@@Shiftarusok but the properties in the Palisades for example are mostly multi million dollar homes. And I'm talking about the buildings themselves. People need to stop building expensive af shit in high risk areas. It just doesn't make sense.
I lost everything in the 2018 camp fire, I was a renter too, though I had renters insurance, it only covered a small chunk of what I lost (the stuff I was able to prove I owned) and because I was renting an unofficial "in law cottage" I didnt recieve a dime from PG&E. Im still trying to rebuild my life as I am disabled, on a fixed income and with prices are the way they are, I will never be able to completely rebuild.
I justwatched your unboxing video on your channel. Looks like you're life is coming back together and your disability isn't visible. Im so proud of you
@ yeah with programs like affirm and pay on 4 I’ve got a few things.
I know someone else that didnt lose anything in the camp fire themselves but just about any services around them never returned after the fire, it's a ghost town now, insane that even though supposedly a lot of money was paid out by PG&E almost none of it seems to have gone into rebuilding the destroyed communities
@ many renters got screwed.
I’m so sorry
Regarding taking pictures or videos of your stuff, put those pictures in the cloud somewhere. Google or Apple photos, Google Drive, etc. Even creating a private album on Facebook would work. That way if your phone is lost in a fire, you haven't lost your photos too. There are tons of places to store photos for free online.
hell, even posting them on a private instagram account could work.
Include model info and serial numbers . . . helps in case of theft to have those available as well. Go room by room in your house. Open closets to get a general idea of your clothing. Open kitchen cabinets to get an idea of the contents. A few hours of preparation might save you a ton of headache.
I work in the insurance industry and believe me, everyone and their underwriter is talking about what is happening in CA.
Thankfully, there are a few carriers who said they are not leaving CA but rates are gonna go up. Something *has* to change.
"Something has to change' And that will be rates go way up to compensate the Insurance companies for the increased risk they are being paid to take.
Shareholders want a return based on the risk they engage in, fire insurance is dirt cheap on the north pole.
Please! Put the Incarcerated fire fighter video on UA-cam!
It is something that people in the US should know more about.
Please explain 😮
@KittyKatty999 so in parts of the US (California being 1). Prisoners are used in land management jobs, which includes fighting wild fires. "Earning" between 4-11$ per day. And in event of thier death no money is passed, or recognition of their efforts are made.
It is a very nuanced topic... but it is an area worth highlighting in detail and loudly.
@@3_character_minimum if you check out the majority report here on UA-cam they have a segment of a one on one interview with an inmate.
While I get the idea of attracting people to a paid service using exclusive content, it feels wrong when that content has very important information in it :|
@staytuned2L337 I'll check it out. So Majority Report make too many benign videos
So some info from a former prison firefighter's post:
You have to volunteer for it.
Pay is $5.80-$10.24 per day when not working on an emergency incident. During an incident, they recieve an additional $1/hr on top of that.
They earn additional time served credits.
They are elligable to have their criminal records expunged.
They are elligable to apply for a forest service job as a firefighter upon release, and the forest service maintains a dedicated program for training former prison firefighters.
They get to live outside the prison and are allowed humane picnic style visitation from family and friends.
They get to eat normal and good food, and get a steak and rib post-incident meal.
Excercise involves hiking and running on forest and mountain trails, and they have access to hobby shops to pursure and art and craft hobbies they want between fires.
After an incident, there is usually a 24 hour fully paid "rest shift" incident work shifts are _also_ 24 hour.
Betwen fires, they usually do community projects such as brush abatement, trail maintenance, etc.
To qualify, the inmate needs to have no record of violent or sexual crimes, no arson, and no escape attempts, less than 8 years left on their sentence, minimum security status, no active warrants, and no physical, mental, or psychiatric conditions (medication availability durring an incident might be a real problem, and going off psych meds can be bad, so this is for the inmate's protection too).
It's a good program.
You can acknowledge that there are good things about the program and acknowledge that slavery is horrible. $10 a day is unacceptable. The only reason their slavery is legal is because they are incarcerated. They still have to pay thousands of dollars in restitution when they get out.
Thanks for the summary!
A good deal, except for slave wages.
That's a very shiny take on the program. Sounds like something written by a marketing team. Unfortunately reality doesn't measure up to that optimistic view of events. The forest service may have a program for training former inmates but they don't hire felons. They might be eligible to have their records expunged but it is not guaranteed, in fact it is uncommon to get an expungement. They get to eat normal food and get treats after an incident? Sounds like my dog's training program. You make it sound like getting food is a benefit. Shouldn't all inmates even non-firefighters get to have food? Exercise involves hiking and running up mountain trails. You say that like it is a recreational benefit and not a job requirement.
You can dust it with powder, spray it with perfume, and anything else you like to try to dress it up, but a shit deal is still shit.
Yeah, I worked for the California Conservation Corp back in the day. Our pay was officially $3.35 an hour (min wage at that time). But, by the time you deducted room and board, it came out to 2something an hour. The idea seems to be that prisoners paying for room and board is unfair - only honest citizens should pay their own way!
As a prisoner, your options are to stare at the walls, or get out and earn a pittance. The pittance (and getting out) starts looking pretty good at that point.
As an Australian, it is absolutely heartbreaking to see these fires and their impact on the people of the area. It's amazing there have only been 25 deaths so far, not that that makes it easier for those people's families.
I’ll never understand how insurance companies can literally build their business on providing people help when they need it, and yet they abandoned those people right when they need the help.
the insurance business is distributing risk, so you need a large pool of people who all face a similar risk and pay a small sum so that when one of them gets hurt they get paid from the collective pool. but if the payout gets too large and too many people get hurt, the small sum that everyone has to pay becomes a big sum so that the collective pool gets big enough, and then insurance companies have 2 choices. either they stop insuring an area or increasing the premiums drastically to keep up, and people will complain equally about both so yeah
Its the end result of a corporate culture that prioritizes dehumanizing customers, having no care for delivering quality, governmental apathy and believing morals don't matter if you make money.
@@alphmar3778 Sounds like a Ponzi Scheme with extra steps to me.
@wdf70 well it's not, lol. The poster you replies to explained it well. You could also Google how insurance works in about 30 seconds.
Don't like homeowners insurance? Don't buy it - ezpz
@wdf70 yeah, assuming you dont know what a ponzi scheme is. I suggest googling it, its free
Australian here. Insurance is a nightmare after these types of events. So many assessments to be done. Contractors in short supply with high demand and government red tape causing bottlenecks in approvals to rebuild. It will take years. There could be a law to build fire bunkers, too. Noone will get out of this on insurance alone.
Honestly, I think you make a good point. A friend of mine has land in Ballina and has been told his land is on a flood plain & the council won't let him build a house there. I think areas that are fire-prone (eg, King Lake in VIC) should have a requirement whereby newly built houses have to include a small fire bunker.
Edit to add: the government should be subsidising the costs, like with private solar & wind installations.
Government red tape? Like making sure houses are fire rated ? Odd!
@@ExhaustedOwl hell houses in fire prone areas need to be built with that in mind. There are houses that have gotten through completely untouched because they were built to be fire proof. Metal roof, no random stuff jutting out to catch fire(like decorative wood window frames) and landscaping that wont catch fire easily.
I think that one thing we have to remember is that the California legislature set a statutory limit to the amount an insurance company can pay premiums. Blaming insurers for pulling out of high-risk areas like wildfire zones or charging high premiums for multi-million-dollar homes overlooks the economic realities of risk management. The broader question is whether regulatory frameworks like Proposition 103 adequately balance consumer protection with market sustainability, particularly in the face of climate change and increasing natural disasters.
Rather than limiting insurers' ability to manage risk, policies could focus on incentivizing homeowners to mitigate risks or supporting innovative insurance products that account for these evolving challenges. This approach would better balance fairness to insurers and homeowners alike.
It's extremely tricky to figure out the real value of land and property in areas like L.A. because there's so much competition for land that the land is often worth exponentially more than any house you build on it. Theoretically if the house is destroyed, the land should maintain its value, so the insurance company could reason that they only need to pay the value of the house. On the other hand, if your entire neighborhood just burned to the ground, that land is far less valuable to a buyer because everything nearby is gone. Is that loss of potential resale value an insurable loss? Who is liable for something like that? These are questions that we'll be fighting about a lot in coming years.
Yeah, his comment about the amount of insurance not even covering the land value is bizarre; it's everything else that should be covered, and that's much cheaper! In theory, these areas were just unlucky considering how some of the structures that burned were 100 years old. This wasn't Florida or Louisiana, with parts we might expect to be destroyed around every decade or so. Maybe changing weather patterns will change this, but with sky-high property values and a housing crisis, I can't imagine any managed retreat here. That means that governments will be willing to allow rebuilding, which means speculators will be willing to be a lot for "just land" and insurers won't be paying $10MM a pop for "10-million-dollar homes."
In some ways you could claim the value of the land actually increased, demolition is already done! Basically just a vacant lot ready to build on.
Insurance only covers rebuild costs.
Took me too long to find a similar comment. Like oh my "too bad my 300,00 dollar house" burnt down on this lot worth 2 million. Insurance should cover the house. Land value doesn't matter. @@calmbbaer
@ - I mean, even ignoring the obvious shortage of home-builders, I suspect it's cheaper to knock down an intact home - with a predictable structure and no exposed health hazards - than a ruin with unknown toxic and structural hazards.
As someone who had to deal with the 2018 fire and the Palm Springs fire, even if you evacuate to a town tens of miles away, it looks like you’re living in the suburbs of hell. PG&E knew what they were doing was dangerously negligent, they knew the equipment could start fires and needed to be replaced, but yet they betted against peoples lives; they had the money to replace the hooks, and yet they didn’t care. These ceos were responsible for the deaths of so many people yet they got away with a slap on the wrist. It goes to show just how bad things are. December 4th showed how these ceos need to be taken care of
Last I heard, the Pacific Palisades fire is thought to have started as a house fire that spread to a wildlife preserve/sanctuary/park or something behind the home and it went up like a tinder box. When I last heard something mentioned, they were investigating it as possible arson or an electric vehicle left to charge unattended because firefighters couldn’t contain the structure fire. I haven’t heard anything about it for days now but the person I heard it from lives in Palisades.
Also, hot shots are highly trained and in the outside world, pretty well paid considering no formal education is required. Training is also not cheap. Being selected for hot shot training while in prison is considered a high honor. It means they think you’ll do well on the outside & wanna set you up for success.
The Santa Ana winds are something that doesn't happen almost anywhere else. We get hurricane force winds, but the humidity drops to nearly zero instead of rising like in a hurricane. It's prefect conditions for fire. I think in my youth I saw ash flakes from forest fires settling to the ground like snow before I ever saw actual snow falling -- California is just like this.
Question: why do people there still build wooden houses instead of concrete and bricks? I mean wild fires is something that just happens there, same as in Greece, and what was left looks much worse than buildings in Greece after their wild fires this year, and even worse than Warsaw after the uprising.
@@minka1781answer: EARTHQUAKES. we live on a fault line as well. you want the house to sway with the quake, not stay rigid and ultimately crumble
@@minka1781 (ignore my following response - person above me did the research!) I don't really know, but I assume it's because they're much cheaper and faster, and very easy to service/remodel with. Granted, I'm not a home designer
I live in new zealand ... we get winds like this every October and November where I live. I've been in 100 km/h winds trying to move horses and live stock from under trees that were falling over. It steals the breath from your mouth.
We are also fire prone. And earthquake prone. Fires are quite common near where I live but our firefighters do an amazing job putting them out before they harm our houses.
@@dragonstooth4223 it’s the rainfall. we had an extremely rainy winter 2024, then almost nothing for the rest of the year - all the lush vegetation dried out and is just waiting for a single spark to fly, winds carry embers and the rest is history.
When talking about insurance companies leaving due to overwhelming risk in California, you should mention the situation with earthquake insurance. That is another source of catastrophic damage that is very unpredictable in its timing, location, and severity. The state's insurance regulators set up a separate risk pool to cover earthquake damage which you have to purchase separately, if you want it. A similar program at the federal level applies to flood damage.
Only by removing these types of damage from house insurance can you get affordable coverage for the other "normal" types of damage.
It's the same up here in Alaska, earthquake damage is not covered unless you get the optional coverage, which is insanely expensive like 10% of your house value per year.
God I live in TN. We’re two centuries overdue. Scary times
@@PRC533thats crazy. in CA my earthquake insurance is about the same as home insurance.
@@Iceblade269 Maybe volcano insurance for when Yellowstone or Mt Saint Helens blows. And then there's drought insurance.
@@brodriguez11000 Or we just use pooled funds to help people in disasters even if they didnt predict their demise appropriately
A nation whose response to this isn't "how do we house these people?" but rather "who is going to pay for this?" is a nation that has already failed.
I propose you pay for it, so people stop asking.
The mass canceling of insurance policies on December 31st is something that needs to be investigated
Wouldn't be surprised if an exec thought "hmm, maybe we could start some fires after revoking their insurance coverage. Idk, quite a funny idea haha".
Yeah, that shouldn't be legal
"we have investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing"
Not really, in California it is very hard to get new products approved.
So, with being unable to get a new product that reflects the rapid desertification of California approved by the state, insurers have little choice but to stop insuring.
as far as I'm aware, they are not cancelling policies, but rather chose not to renew the policies. that's not the same thing.
The problem with insurers today and for the last 40 years is the fact they operate for the gross enrichment of the insurance CEOs and their shareholders as they deny claims to the people who've paid for the new yachts of said CEOs.
You can thank the consulting industry's "cost-benefit analysis" model for persuading insurance companies to pursue a policy of mass denial than simply paying out the policies they wrote and issued.
@@flyingphoenix113And I think you can thank late stage capitalism for that cost-benefit analysis situation.
Insurance is one of the most regulator industries, they have strict rules on minimum payout ratio (money in from premiums, than paid out as claims) for house insurance it’s something like 95%+. If you read insurance companies annual reports, a lot of them are not making as much money or even losing money the past few years. This isn’t an insurance company issue.
The mayor should hold a press conference, just stating the names of the CEOs of the insurance companies to which the residents paid their respective premiums and urging them to do the right thing. Then, she should put on a Luigi hat from Mario Bros and walk off the dais
Oh please, consulting companies, while totally parasitic, they rubber stamp that stuff.
My dad explained all insurances to me in a few sentences. He said “insurance is a business and like all businesses priority #1 is making money. You’re betting that something bad will happen to you eventually and you’ll come out on top for having a policy. The insurance companies are betting you’ll be lucky and spend a lifetime paying premiums with no claims, essentially giving them free money. When it comes to filing a claim the customer will read the plan with a magnifying glass trying to max out their claim. The insurance company will go over the policy with a magnifying glass to find a reason to not play. None of it is personal, it’s all business.
Your dad doesn't know how insurance companies work.
@@heathen4236 Oh yeah, what did he get wrong?
Insurance is a large-scale casino game. If the house knows or even thinks it can't win, the house locks its doors.
They have to yeah. Its a for profit company....
Even a nonprofit insurance company wouldn't last long if they didn't have a slight house advantage or perfect balance. The problem, IMO, is that insurance companies are not allowed to change the odds until they have a slight advantage! If you've got a 10% chance of losing a $1M house in any given year, the premiums for that policy should be $101,000 per year. But they're not allowed to charge that.
Sounds like the reality of it is many of these regions prone to wildfires or hurricanes will simply be deemed uninsurable. In fact it sounds like that has already started happening.
This literally applies to *ANY* business. If you cant make money offering a service, then you dont offer the service.
Cali been told by so MANY important people that funding need to go to fire support stuff. And Cali seems to like to fund other stuff instead. The insurance companies listened and watch Calis gov. and Cali choose NOT to fund where they need.
I'm not American and I have always found it wild that wildfires and hurricans keep destroying homes in the same regions but people seem to just keep building again in the same place and also not taking and preventative measures to reduce future damages
They do, and premiums go up anyway.
Most areas of the country are prone to one form of natural disaster or another. Fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, windstorms, flooding etc. Different regions have different threats.
@@threecards333 Sure but some regions are much less prone to natural disasters, why should the taxpayers have to pay for these houses that burn up when people know that continuing to building in high risk areas is stupid. When these people can't get insurance they can try to get government coverage, so people are being idiotic and repeatedly building in very risky areas and I need to pay for that?
The wildest part about America as an American is that you can build houses to withstand natural issues, or you can even live in a way that makes you safe from them, but people don't want to.
If you tell us to build out of concrete to protect from fire damage, we tell you that the gubment won't tell us how to live our lives.
@ Exactly, or when people are told that certain areas have a high fire risk, but they continue to build there.
I'm from Altadena. We moved there in the late 70s when I was 10 months old, and I lived there for over 40 years. I moved about 3 years ago after my mother passed away. And I only found out after she passed that the insurance on the house had been canceled around 2018, because the insurance company dropped it. Our house was almost 100 years old, and was over 100 years old this past year. All the houses in my old neighbood were of the same age as well. And now my old neighborhood is completely gone, including my childhood home.
The thing everyone should know about Altadena and the Eaton Fire is that we've had MANY wildfires in the mountains before this, some very much starting in Eaton Canyon. However, even just 15 years ago, we used to have heavy rains during this time of year in Altadena, which would satuate the ground and actually make us vulnerable to mudslides if we went though a wildfire in the summer. But rains like that haven't happened for a few years now. So the dry brush, coupled with the super high winds help lead to this. Places in Altadena that have NEVER been under a wildfire evacuation before (such as my old neighborhood), not only had to evacuate, but are now gone. And who knows how many had their home insurance dropped just like my mom did.
Sadly, not Insurances aren't just pulling out of CA, FL, and other disaster prone areas. My family lost our home insurance last year because, and I wish I was joking, there was a shed next to our land. Not on our land, though I understand why they thought that since we gave that land to my father. What he does and has on his land isn't our problem. Insurance is becoming unsustainable everywhere. Won't be long until Insurances will need to be Government owned. Can't drive without Insurance, and won't be long until we can't even rent without Insurance.
You already can't rent without insurance unless you're going through a small-time owner. Any multi-property landlord with any sense or apartment complex/condo/etc has required a renter's policy for many years.
You don't want govt owned insurance. It's terrible. They are prone to gross financial mismanagement, bad policies and zero innovation (because of a lack of competition).
You would pay way more premiums for govt owned insurance and much of that wouldn't be directly in the form of a premium. Govt owned insurance would need to be financed by taxpayer dollars because they'll run multibillion dollar deficits every year. So, your taxes would also go towards your insurance. Govt owned insurance will cover everyone and everything, leading to more expensive homes being built in high risk areas. They'll then pay out the losses, which will increase your share of the burden for someone else's stupidity.
In college we discussed the Smokey Bear era. How our attempts to stop all fires has resulted in forests that are too full of undergrowth that serves as kindling. It creats high intensity fire capable of catching on larger plants such as old trees.
There are plenty of drone footage videos on youtube of the Palisades and Eaton fire damaged neighborhoods out now. One thing you'll notice right away... Many of the large old trees were undamaged by fire with houses around them levelled to ash. The forests and landscape in the mountains and canyons around LA are unlike most other forests around the country. Especially in the foothills and up canyon slopes they are short and dense shrubs. The "undergrowth" IS the forest.
I was told a few years ago that the Insurance companies redrew the fire maps, putting more houses in fire zones that weren't before. They then jacked the prices up.
Because they were. California is an insanely risky area to do business in as an insurance company. I hate insurance companies as much as the next guy. However, insurance is all about minimizing the chance of payout.
Well has the risk of fire been increasing over time? Seems likely, due to climate change, etc.
They would love to jack the prices up to save their business model in California. The govt doesn't let them, so they are now starting to leave.
The reason why they are putting more homes in fire zones is because fire zones are expanding. Climate change is real and they're the first ones to acknowledge it. In order to offset the higher risk of loss, they charge more. Sounds fair doesn't it now?
My father is in his 80s and is slowly on his way out. Consequently I have been spending a lot of time at his house in northern California trying to get his affairs in order. One of those things was getting his home insurance re-upped. State Farm completely cancelled his entire policy a few months ago and it officially ran out about 10 days ago. In order to get insured, I had to go through the California state fire insurance, which cost an absolutely silly amount of money for a 1 year policy. Then on top of that fire coverage, I had to go through a regular agency for regular non-fire coverage, which cost even more.
Yet you elected Trump, a climate change denier, good luck with that.
I feel for you. Caring for a declining loved one can be exhausting, and people throwing obstacles in your way just magnifies things.
I see another problem incoming: one of the last insurances that did not abandon everything was the veterans insurance (insurance for military service members, veterans, etc, don't know its name). the other insurances are pulling out of california, causing an influx to them.
that might sink them too.
USAA
I'm a line clearance tree trimmer in California, I've been in the industry since 2017 and I can tell you that I wouldn't be surprised if faulty electrical equipment caused at least two of these fires. At bare minimum, a good guess would be that the high winds also more than likely took branches of the trees and landed them on powerlines. Another factor is the fact that many properties that we work on have a lot of dry vegetation that could easily catch fire along with very little maintenance of their trees as well. Hell before the fires started, we would get a decent number of refusals of our free service, but after the fires got out of control, we haven't gotten a single refusal so far. We try our best to trim the trees so they last at least a year, but we need homeowners to do their part and actually maintain their properties as well.
100% agree. Work for an insurance company. We do property surveys and send letters to the insured regarding vegetation and trees being trimmed away from structures. The amount of people who scream bloody murder at being required to do basic maintenance to retain their coverage is wild.
Why on earth would a payout for a lawsuit due to a wildfire be subject to taxes? Let's say I own a house that's worth $250,000 and it burns down due to someone else's action or inaction. The insurance pays me for the cost to rebuild the house (I still own the property). A lawsuit is filed against whoever caused the fire. I get $100,000 as my portion after lawyers' fees. That money now belongs to the insurance company, not me. If I keep it, I could be convicted of insurance fraud. If I got $300,000, that would be a $50,000 windfall. Fine, tax that. When I SELL the property, that is taxed. Fine. But taxing a settlement that I have to turn over to the insurance company? WTF?
And if the insurance company paid out, why were they not the ones doing the suing, as they are now the party with damages? The customer was made whole by the claim payout.
It was a feature of trump’s tax cuts for the rich… he paid for the tax cuts by screwing people who were already victimized by tragedy..
Did you not see the part that explained who was responsible for the taxing of the payouts and who was responsible for the removal of that tax, including retrospectively ?
There are LOTS of situations like this. Insurance payouts are often considered income or a windfall by bureaucratic government. Also lots of on paper valuations are not the market rates and this causes lots of issues. People generally like their house valued low for property tax reasons but then the comparison between insurance payout and state valuation may be very different and result in a larger windfall. If the house was on paper evaluated at 200,000 but it has a 300,000 rebuild cost, who eats that 100k and now that there is paperwork on 300k rebuild costs, it probably makes property tax go up.
Democrats and republicans obey the corporations and wall st empire by giving them all the money
Objection! While $3 million coverage might only cover the value of the land, the land itself will not be destoryed by fire, only the building on it. Either the land can be sold, or the build re-build on the same site.
But who would want to rebuild on, or buy, land where there are no services remaining? No schools, no electricity, no stores, all burnt down.
@@UndeadFleshgodcan’t have everything in life
@@UndeadFleshgod You should see how many land grabbers swooped through Paradise CA. Corporations will want that as a cheep start to rebuidling McMansions.
Uno Reverse Card Objection! The fires destroy all infrastructure underground. Electrical conduit - burnt and fried. Sewage and water pipes - cracked and burst with that seeping into the charred dirt.
The point is, the land's value has dropped a lot, because entire neighborhoods are just gone now. If your city gets turned into Dresden, it would make it a lot less attractive as a place to live, and it would cost a lot to get everything up and running like it was before. In fact, things may never fully recover.
As a Bay Area native, what absolutely pisses me off about the 2018 fires is PG&E filed for bankruptcy because of the insurance claims. The judge overseeing the case consistently allowed PG&E executives to be paid bonuses. It was absolutely obscene.
Florida is another insurance’s nightmare. I got friends there who tell me insurance companies don’t insure homes there
i'm not trying to defend insurance companies... ever...
there's probably some nuance being missed or omitted by your florida friends. i remember that a few years ago with one of the big hurricanes, there was a batch of articles that came out over a week all covering the same family that was dropped by their insurance. it turned out that the family that was dropped by their insurance company lived in a 40 year old trailer in the middle of a floodzone. insuring them would have been like insuring a wooden pallet being placed in an existing bonfire.
Part of the problem in Florida was a massive avalanche of roof insurance scams a few years ago. Look it up, it's an interesting rabbit hole to go down.
A lot of Florida is still classified as 'Swamp Land', which means they aren't legally required to insure them. Then you throw in the aging Condo Issue and a naturally volatile climate (Hurricanes)...is it any wonder? I have an extended family friend (Dead Grandmother's best friend) that still lives there. She and none her neighbors can get insured because they 'live in a swamp'. They all have their valuables packed always up and ready to evacuate or stored in another state. Seems like a tough way to live in a place that seems to not want anyone to be there.
@@CassandraY Not just the swamp land tag but the geology. Sinkholes are everywhere and can open up without warning, like in the case of the guy that got swallowed up while in bed at night.
I'm so worried about the costs of my California Fair Plan as I'm in a high risk area near Yosemite that all local insurers are fleeing from, and now this? Man...
I’m so sorry…this tragedy is so brutal.
We broke the planet. Its only going to get worse. Sell and move.
move
@@EVANHIRSCHMANG With interest rates being 7.25%, moving to a home with the exact same value as mine today would cost $950/mo more. It is not feasible. (4% vs 7.25% on a 480k mortgage)
I would encourage you to look at what you can do on your own property to protect yourself. I am sure California has information on wildfire preparedness, but doing things like making sure there is nothing flammable within 5 feet of your house will help - if the wildfire doesn't have 50mph winds behind it anyways.
insurance companies when they actually have to do their job instead of collect 30% of your paycheck every month:
Colorado is having similar issues with insurance companies pulling out after wildfires and the Marshall Fire. I lived most of my life where flood was my biggest concern, and then moved to Colorado 7 days before the Marshall Fire in December 2021. I've gotten a heck of an education in home insurance and urban/wildland wildfire science.
I wonder what happens when all the insurance companies pull out of an area that legally requires some for of home insurance? Anyone in your neck of the woods talking about that?
8:50 you say that in West LA the 3 million USD insured limit basically covers the value of the land alone, but a fire policy is not meant to insure the land itself, but the construction and contents on it, so the value of the land would be irrelevant for insurance purposes, isn’t it?
That's his point. It isn't enough money to provide adequate coverage.
@@millerrepin4452 If the land was worth 3 million before the fire, it's still worth 3 million after the fire. You don't have to rebuild the land after a fire. You have to rebuild the structures so as jsatrus says the value of the land is irrelevant.
@@millerrepin4452Ok, but in any case if the policy is not enough it is not related to the value of the terrain, that’s what I want to say. The land still remains for the owner to rebuild upon it (of course not exactly as they will need to redo foundations and so)
@jsatrus yeah the insurance companies figured out a way to pay people less.
You're still paying taxes on a vacant piece of land that is worth $3 million, but no longer has any services and utilities going to it. It also doesn't do you any good if the original house was worth another million dollars on top of that, particularly as you'll be still on the hook for that mortgage. So, for example, Mel Gibson apparently lost a $23 million home and all the property therein, which he may never see a penny for.
my heart goes to those who’ve faced loss at the hands of the fires. although this could be an opportunity to become more conscious and concerned for how much this has been happening, in massively larger scales across the world and in the hands of big corporations. i’m from an entirely different continent and everyone here is aware of the LA fires, but when it’s the amazon that’s burning, news outlets don’t seem to be as concerned, even when 20% of oxygen by photosynthesis comes from it. last year, wildfires across the african continent were MASSIVE. if the fire’s gonna fuel something, let it be awareness. we’re all paying the price of this loss.
Hello from Santa Monica, it came so close, watched the flames on the mountain from my kitchen window never thought I would feel the fear of a fire like I did a week ago
Dealing with repairs from a house fire right now. UP YOUR COVERAGE ON EVERYTHING. My basement will not be even sort of finished because the cost of everything went up since I last changed my coverage, back in the eternity ago of 2020. Seriously, cost increases are screwing up everything and the repair company wants $20,000 more to fix what should be covered just years ago.
I'm so glad most of your repairs are covered. These fires have left so many people homeless and destitute, so it's bittersweet hearing about people struggling with manageable losses.
As someone from Spain, I can only wish for the people in California that this passes quickly and with the least amount of destruction, and hope that you get enough help, both local and from abroad.
The saddest part about prisoner firefighters is that we had a proposition up to prevent their horrible treatment this last election cycle but it wasn’t passed, hopefully their prominent coverage right now will help the next attempt at helping them
That’s terrible. We owe a lot to them.
Absolutely was not expecting an SNL Californians reference in this video
11:05 There is a VERY IMPORTANT difference between forest fires, that can very much be made less damaging by regular controlled burns, and fires in shrublands, like these fires. The shrublands burn entirely and intensely when they burn. They don't have low intensity understory fires, they just burn up all in all. Shrubland fires will always be a serious risk to structures when we build structures close to the wildlands, and when winds are high. (EDIT) And when human are constantly starting fires, mostly by accident, there can be extensive disasters like this.
The reference to ‘The Californians’ skit and the fire was top-tier. 10/10.
The IRS taxing settlement money is absolute lunacy
They also tax Olympic medal winners. The only thing I know they don't tax is money earned by military members that are stationed in or close enough to a combat zone.
As a resident of SoCal, the talking fire gag was spot on in its description of what it's like to drive around LA and OC
I live in the boondocks of Los Angeles County. There is wild land to the south and west of my home - it is full of brush 15 feet or more tall. It should not be the responsibility of indigenous tribes to burn back this overgrowth of vegetation to make my community safe.
This is a problem of modern times, and should be addressed with bulldozers and backfires (during rainy season, assuming we get some rain this year...). The brush was last cleared in ~2008...by a fire...which was stopped at my fence line...by the fire department starting a backfire to keep my home from burning.
These are things that we can do to keep fires from destroying homes: we cannot prevent wildfires, but we can keep our residential areas safer. If we do that, insurance companies will be willing to sell us insurance for a reasonable price due to a more reasonable risk.
What's become abundantly clear through this is that the public has an embarrassingly large gap in understanding how insurance works.
As someone who works in insurance, I definitely don’t shell for the companies because they’re obviously huge corporations that are there to make money but the amount of people who don’t actually know how it works or what is actually covered by their policy contract is almost universal. And it’s somewhat understandable right, because it’s all legalese and one company’s coverage is not necessarily the exact same as a coverage of the same name from a different company, so it’s all very technical and numbers based and basically impossible to explain to the average person.
Insurance agents are often not helpful either, they have a tendency to not gaf after they make the commission and then the customer is on their own because (at least at my company) the customer service department is unlicensed and legally cannot advise people on what they should or shouldn’t do/how much coverage they need, you basically have to know what you need already and most people don’t.
That’s by design.
All I know is that they take my money every month and then never give any of it back even when I desperately need it and have done nothing to be disqualified for a claim.
I mean, it's pretty simple. The insurance companies take your money, and then they give you the finger when bad stuff happens to you.
@@ErikratKhandnalie In this instance people are mad because the insurance company wanted to stop taking their money.
Thank you Devon for supporting the people of LA and California.
$150B - $6B equals STFU. State Farm won't go out of business if they honor their customers claims. They risk becoming unprofitable, as compared to other years in which they gambled and made massive gains.
Insurance is gambling. You bet against an insurer that your house will burn down, they bet it won't. If the insurer also thinks your house will burn down, they obviously won't take the bet.
I was NOT ready for him to start talking to a sentient fire. XD
The fire is so Californian lol. Devon!
The insurance companies themselves can take reinsurance to cap losses in extra bad years (but decrease profits in good years). Swiss Re for instance is an insurance company for insurance companies.
PG&E “saddled with old equipment?” Come on man, they’re been around since 1905…
And apparently are still using the 1905 equipment.
Having worked for them, I don't think they should be public and so profit hungry but it's really not that simple. There's so much that goes into a singular upgrade and to upgrade some circuits you'd have to cut over THE ENTIRE circuit, for example, 4kv old systems have to be cutover to standard 12kv but if it's a large circuit that's so pricey, then multiply that circuit by however many other old circuits there are, and there's just not enough money to do all of it at once. It's just a lot more nuanced than we'd like
@@daisy-qx9pubut not doing it at all is the worst choice
I feel bad for the people who are losing so much to this disaster.
It’s hard to feel bad for insurance companies though. They’re already one of the most hated industries due to their practices. I think a lot of people are a bit happy that the greedy companies have to swallow a loss.
That said, something does need to be done. If areas are so high risk as to be uninsurable, then maybe we need non-profit coverage for those people, incentives to move elsewhere, or maybe even rethink how we build homes. Wood homes are the current standard, but maybe, as the likelihood of disasters grows, we should shift to different materials that stand up to these disasters better.
unfortunately, california is also prone to earthquakes, which is best withstood by wood houses. the only materials that could resist both would be a lot more expensive to build with. i wholeheartedly agree with your comment, but i don't know if there's a better material to switch to. perhaps the focus should be on the space surrounding the homes, especially when it comes to reducing or eliminating fire hazards within a certain distance of buildings.
Guess who does the most research on building materials, methods and codes to minimize property damage? Insurance companies!!
Guess who has entire departments that lobby local, state and federal government to implement improved standards? Insurance companies.
Guess who gets the hate when people don't listen? Insurance companies.
Thanks for the explanation about the insurance companies there.
4:34 that's one of the scummiest things I've ever heard of. It's ridiculous that such an unconscionable policy was ever in place.
I can personally tell you how the Hurst fire started. It was caused by downed power lines near the 210/5 interchange in Sylmar, CA. I saw it happen with my own eyes, there was a bright flash near the top of the foothill and suddenly it was glowing orange. Within 10 minutes, it had spread down the hill, pushed by 30 MPH winds.
Those big fires can start from nothing and that's the most terrifying part
Weird that you didn't take any pictures of videos
@godlygamer911 I was at work and closing up shop. I had to call my boss to inform him. there was no time to take pictures because I didn't know if the wind would push the fire towards me. I wanted to be focused and aware of my situation. My house was also potentially in danger and I needed to get home asap.
@dragoninthewest1 is this when the mole people showed up?
@@godlygamer911 begone troll
13:00 Photos of the objects in a house getting destroyed was a big problem in the past with physical photos getting burned or photo rolls that were lying around, but nowadays people make photos with their phones, which they take with them when they evacuate and photos are often stored in the cloud too.
Don't forget the increasing cost of construction materials as a certain someone levies tariffs on our number 1 lumber supplier, Canada. And all of the other imported items it takes to build a new house.
I am critical of living in Indiana, but absolutely nothing happens here. So, maybe I should count my blessings.
It’s been predicted for decades that extreme weather disasters such as this would get more frequent and more intense. Yet the oil industry, which is the principal contributor, is not asked to contribute to the cost of the consequences. It seems unfair and unsustainable to ask the insurance companies to carry that burden alone. Even if oil companies would move that cost to the consumer, it would reflect the true cost of burning oil better and maybe incentivize us to move to something better.
As a property insurance underwriter, I've been seeing first-hand over the last few years how various carriers have been pulling out of CA. Part of what's exacerbating the issue has been the state insurance commissioner's regulations preventing rate increases to match the ever-increasing risk in the state. We've been unable to meet the needed loss demands with premium to maintain any form of net profit, so pulling out has been our only option.
hurray for prop 103
A small upside is how now that it is all burned down it leaves a blank slate for creating something better. So if people want to make public transit better they can do it now if they want to make structures more reliable. So if this ever happens again, then the structure may only need small repairs such as those chimneys from other buildings seeming perfectly fine sitting where they were building it from scratch will be painstaking of course, but it will also give extra business for people who do build
Building fire resistant structures in an earthquake zone is possible, but wildly more expensive then how things are usually done. A few people with lots of money might rebuild better, but most will not be able to.
Technically true, but who is going to dump money into public transport systems for a burnt wasteland?
With the increase in serious storms and wildfires causing insurance companies to pull out, we really need government action to develop safer homes that can withstand region specific risks and to compensate for people to be rehomes permanently after this stuff
I have heard the winds can carry embers, I understand it mentally, but this video was the first time I've seen it. @1:42. Eye opening. It was one of those "it is not at all how you think it is" moments for me.
I appreciate this, I live in fire country. One December day the Chinook winds gusted 100 mph and in 12 hours 1000 homes burned. People, mostly critics, have no frigging clue. My favorite is the fire hydrants. A hydrant does eff all in that situation, and they aren't designed for all of them to be used at once.
They really want to see how far they can push
When insurance risks rise, insurance premiums should rise. If you can not afford insurance on a house, you should get one that is either less expensive or has lower risks. That's the correct result: giving people incentives to move away from high-risk areas.
Damn the bomb comparison isnt far off, the affected areas look like Europe after WW2
Not really, because properties in Europe are rarely built 100% out of flammable construction materials even a bombed-out city looks very different to somewhere where only the foundations remain. The problem is in the USA people build properties in areas subject to risk but make zero to little attempts to mitigate against the risk.
holy shit legal eagle talking about my back yard... another side effect of the camp fire was that housing prices rose due to the sudden removal of an entire town and a large group of new arrivals... I'm not blaming them, this is how supply and demand works, but it's just another stress factor going into a terrible housing market.
Anyway, nationalize PG&E, take away their company if they can't run it
It's absolutely wild how you hear people criticizing Californians like they never do when tornados hit the midwest or hurricanes hit the eastern seaboard or floods happen along any river.
People are absolutely criticized for living in flood zones, like idiots. And Californians should know by now that brush management is an extremely high priority since they have destructive wildfires pretty much every year.
But how exactly do you suggest one would go about preventing a tornado or a hurricane?
These fires are preventable (to an extent) proper forest management, controlled burns, adequet water supplies etc, but tornadoes? Hurricanes? Floods? Yeah lets just control weather. Also as a side note, these fires were started as either arson or by human involvement, they weren't natural
@@SgtSupaman And that's exactly why California engaged in its Fire Plan to clear brushes. The problem is that nearly half of California is under federal management and Congress refuses to do anything about it. The Eaton Fire occurred in the San Gabriel Mountains while the Palisades Fire occurred in the Santa Monica Mountains, both of which are under federal jurisdiction. If there should be anyone being criticized, it's Congress for not funding the National Park Service to do this, not the LA Mayor or Fire Chief. They did their part of clearing in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
@@SgtSupaman Seems like you missed the point of this one Sarge, Its almost as if preventing disasters isnt the point, and instead we are discussing how to mitigate the damage, and provide assistance for those affected.
As a society, we all benefit from people spreading out into unpopulated areas, and people that can access unique resources as well as take advantage of regional climates, think about crops and other farms, unique ores, etc.
Try not to think real hard unless your superior officer tells you to, if you hurt your brain its not insured.
@ohnosmoarlulcatz , no doubt, there is plenty blame to go around.
You forgot to mention that California caps the amount the insurance companies collect, which is part of prevents them from charging what is needed to cover the losses.
It'd only cut into their profits and they need those to keep the shareholders happy and the stock price up. It wouldn't do anything to the actual business side
Charge what is need to cover the losses? Really, are you really that gullible to think insurance are not making billions off of the amount they charge already. There's a cap in place to stop insurance from keep raising their rate to ridiculous amount for the same coverages.
@CassandraY That is not how math works. If the income is less than (or equal to) the total of the amount paid out plus expenses to operate the company, the business is dead. Most insurance companies don't make the profit on the actual premium vs. losses, but by investing the money while they hold it in between claim payments. If they are paying money out as fast as they take it in, they cannot do that.
That said, there are other ways to spread the risk around. Look into things like a mutual aid society (the Amish and Mennonites have one) or even the ancient practice of splitting up shipments between various boats so that if one sank, no one producer would lose everything.
The biggest problem with reducing insurance options come from it's effect on lending. If you cannot insure the collateral for the loan, the lenders would suffer the loss with you. The FAIR (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements) plan that Devon mentioned is a safety net to make sure people can still get loans. However, the FAIR plan is not supported by the government, it is supported by the insurance companies that operate in that state, and their amount of support is usually based the percentage of business that the company does in that state. That means that if State Farm cannot remair profitable and they leave, it effects the people relying on the FAIR plan for insurance.
@@lovemoviesful2 It's not that I am gullible. I'm more like Thomas, and has seen the wounds.
I'm not saying that the companies should make money hand over fist. It is up to the state's insurance commissioner to witch those rates and to make sure that rates are not set above an unreasonable level. They usually do this by testing the rates against a representative data set for their state.
But when politicians step in and say, "Ignore the math, cap it at this level anyway" they break the basic foundation that insurance is built on: spreading the risk around so that no one person absorbs the whole loss when a risk fails. Many insurance companies try to find ways to maintain their liquidity and profits. They do this but cutting claims support (claims take longer or are done sloppily), cutting sales support (how many times did you have to call the remove the car from you policy), or reducing coverage (We only cover your accident if you were well rested, not on any medications, drugs, or alcohol, and properly buckled in), or by making you carry a larger portion of the risk (You deductible has been changed from $1,000 to 1% of the cost to rebuild your house).
Despite what some people think, insurance is one of the most tightly regulated industries because it is the easiest one to check the numbers on. If an insurance company tries to cheat or game the system like that, it quickly becomes noticeable. And it is in the interest of the other insurance companies to keep their competition in line, because the penalty for systemically cheating customers is usually being barring for writing in the state that catches you, and every one of those competing companies would love to get a small slice of the barred company's business (the more customers, the easier it is to absorb a loss).
What we are seeing here is the overall death throws of an industry. John Oliver did a great episode on this, but simply put. . .insurance was never supposed to pay to rebuild entire cities and towns. It was designed for a few houses or cars in a town that are damaged in a storm or something like that. These companies have a responsibility to also generate some form of profit as they are corporate entities, not government institutions. Climate change has moved us to a place where insurance companies find themselves having to rebuild almost whole states sometimes twice or three times a year. . .and our government is ok with that because it means they wont have to flip the bill (and by extension raise taxes). But now, its becoming impossible to pay off these claims and still maintain some sort of profit or expansions. And insurance only works if its constantly expanding. I mean, at a certain point. . .we are going to reach a crisis point where the whole industry impoldes. And thats gonna blow up our whole economy when it does. Rebuilding and updating our infrastructure might buy us sometime by midigating the risk of potential disasters. . .but its only a bandaid at this point
Notice how LETS DO AWAY WITH FOR PROFIT INSURRANCE or THE PROBLEM IS CAPITALISM are never part of the conversation.
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The insurance of last resort is essentially non-profit already, and the premiums are still crazy high. The problem isn't insurance, it's that living in a place where this sort of mass damage is possible is no longer sustainable given the astronomic costs of construction.
Even without a single penny of profit extracted, it's simply too expensive for most people to live in these places, but people live there anyway then get upset when presented with reality. It's the same issue with hurricanes in the south. It's just unreasonable to keep building in places that are being destroyed by climate change.
American love communism now? From what I read from the comments, apparently everything needed to be run by the government eventually because corporation BAD.
The larger conversation needs to be about climate change. Economic systems are a red herring.
the problem is that the country is built wrong.