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I live in a 'high risk area' e.g. not a paved hellscape. We are a fire safe community.
https://cafiresafecouncil.org/resources/map-of-fire-safe-councils/
My father built the house in 1981. Everyone in the community has been paying insurance premiums for 40 fucking years and because PG&E didn't do necessary maintenance on their lines in paradise, the insurance companies have been pulling out.
Nice thing about "paved hellscapes" is they don't tend to have runaway fires that cost millions to deal with.
High premiums is the price you pay for high risk. It applies market pressure against such activities while allowing those who really want the risk to continue doing it, at a cost. I only hope California doesn't step in to subsidize things like they tend to do...
What would likely be more cost effective long-term is to offer a fair market value buy-out of high-risk homes so you can relocate to someplace less "tinderboxy".
Current firefighting techniques allow fires to take their course in unpopulated areas. Since we are a fire safe community we all have defencable space. The son of the folks at the top of the hill is a wildfire fighter. We know the risks and minimize them. Hell a couple of Teslas burned up and the fire was contained. Due to their batteries it probably took longer to put out than anything that grows around here.
You pretend like insurance companies know best, and 'market forces' are these perfect righting forces. I call bullshit.
I pretend nothing. You're taking this too personally - I don't care about you and your situation.
Of course they will make mistakes, nothing is perfect. But there will also be many people moving into high-risk areas and forcing others to risk lives and spend money to save them when there is a fire. The same thing happens with floods due to the FEMA flood insurance program. You see homes being destroyed and re-built in flood-risk areas that should simply be moved to a better location instead.
Difference is that, as was already stated, PG&E are the major cause of a lot of the fires that result in places being deemed as high risk.
This isn't the same thing as hurricanes: humans can absolutely help stop fires from being the issue that they are
Living up to that bootlicker tag I gave you
I see PG&E mentioned a lot, but as an outsider, I have to ask, are they just being used as a scapegoat? If you have a tinder-dry forest, yes, the most likely spark is going to be from a faulty electrical line. But sooner or later, that forest is going to burn. If not by an electric wire, then by a lightning strike, random static discharge, sparks from a bit of metal dragging on a car, or some random idiot with a cigarette butt.
I'm honestly curious if there has been any kind of study on this. Do acres near PG&E lines statistically burn at higher rates than those not nearby these lines?
Look up the status of the coupling that caused the camp fire and you'll see that it very much isn't, there are pictures of how worn the fucking thing was that they didn't replace for something lime 80 years despite knowing it was in bad shape
They're a monopoly that raises prices to cover the cost of the fires they caused through negligence
While our forest management isn't perfect by any means, if PG&E had done basic line maintenance then multiple of the worst fires we've seen wouldn't have happened.
And that's on top of all the usual monopolistic horse shit they pull on us normally, they're a shit company to begin with BEFORE you factor in the fire starting
Fires will happen, yes, they happen in cities too. San Bruno for example (hey that was PG&E too).
As long as you take the proper precautions (defensable space), fire retardant building materials, etc, the increased risks of living in a wooded area isn't that great. Certainly not as great as is reflected in the rate increases.