State Farm: No new California homeowners’ policies

UPDATE 06/02/2023 — Allstate and Farmers join State Farm in denying new homeowner policies in California. State Farm quit selling new homeowner policies on Saturday, and now a second major carrier, Allstate Insurance, has confirmed it ended new homeowners’ policies in the state last year. On top of that, ABC-7 News reported that Farmers Insurance is now limiting policies for new customers. All three companies are still serving existing customers, and more than 100 other companies are still issuing new homeowners’ policies, but homeowners across the state will have a tougher time buying coverage.

State Farm will no longer provide home insurance to new California customers because of wildfire risks and increased construction costs. The company quit accepting new applications for business and personal lines and casualty insurance in California, USA TODAY reported.

California construction costs
Estimation QS
Building Cost Estimating, Construction, Outdoor Projects and Activities

State Farm said it will still work with the California Department of Insurance and lawmakers and will still serve existing customers.

The Oregonian reported that last year, California became the first state to require insurance premium discounts for those with wildfire protection safeguards at homes or businesses. That change was in response to soaring insurance costs for customers in high-risk areas.

“State Farm General Insurance Company made this decision due to historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market,” the company said in a statement.

Top ten states by acres burned
Top ten states by acres burned, 2016-2020.

CNN reported that scientists and California officials blame the climate crisis for the intensity of fire seasons. About 25 percent of the state’s forestland burned in the last 10 years — more than triple the previous decade.

The factors behind Illinois-based State Farm’s move are beyond the agency’s control, Michael Soller with the California Department of Insurance said. State Farm, with its affiliates, is the largest provider of auto and home insurance in the U.S.

California’s ALERT camera network now publicly accessible

Cal Fire and other agencies are using a network of over 1,000 cameras across California to track wildfires — and now the public can access the network, too. FOX News reports that the University of California San Diego and state fire agencies have partnered to launch a public website for people to view live camera feeds from across the state.

ALERTCalifornia camera network

ALERTCalifornia uses a network of more than 1,000 live cameras to track fires. “We’re trying to understand the impacts, the cascading disasters after these events,” said Dr. Neal Driscoll, a professor of geology and geophysics at the UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. “I’m a professor. I study earthquakes, I make sensors, and here these sensors lend themselves to other events, such as atmospheric rivers and wildfires.”

View live feeds here: cameras.alertcalifornia.org

As the ALERTCalifornia camera network grows in size and sophistication, UC San Diego researchers are using new technology to study natural disaster patterns in the West. ALERTCalifornia provides state-of-the-art technology supporting data-driven decisions to prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural disasters. Based at the University of California San Diego, ALERTCalifornia is a public safety program focused on fires and other natural disasters featuring a world-class camera network.

“These cameras are on mountaintops that we can access, and so if we get a 911 call from someone reporting smoke, we can — one click away — just get on the computer and see if there is actually any smoke in the area,” said Capt. Brent Pascua, PIO with Cal Fire. “We can use multiple cameras to pinpoint the location and get a better location as well.”

“Five or six years ago they had to send a battalion out or an aircraft to confirm ignition,” says Driscoll. “Now they can turn to our cameras. They can immediately move the camera, and image that area, and confirm ignition.” The high-definition cameras can pan, tilt and zoom, with a view as far as 60 miles on a clear day and 120 miles on a clear night, according to Scripps Institution of Oceanography. New cameras were recently installed in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Madera counties since the new year.

Sutter Buttes camera today
Sutter Buttes camera today

Only fire agencies can control the movement of the cameras, which are placed on tripod platforms that can be removed seasonally with little to no impact on sensitive habitats or tribal lands. The camera network started 20+ years ago in 2000, with numerous improvements to the technology over time. The network was originally created to study earthquakes. Since then, it’s expanded to monitor fires and other natural disasters. Public access to the camera feed was launched last week.

California Sen. Bill Dodd leads an oversight hearing Tuesday on state wildfire response

Chairman of the California state’s Senate Governmental Organization Committee, Bill Dodd, D-Napa, will hold a hearing tomorrow to review “improvements to wildfire preparedness and prevention,” including legislation and investments undertaken over the past five years. The Daily Republic of Solano County reported that the committee will hear from state and local agencies including Cal Fire and the Legislative Analyst’s Office, and will take public comment.

Back in February, the Lake County News reported on Sen. Dodd’s announcement of legislation to create the Wildfire Mitigation Planning Act, to better prevent and contain wildfires. In the aftermath of the 2018 Camp Fire (which leveled the northern California town of Paradise and evacuated not just Paradise but also Magalia, Centerville, Concow, Pulga, Butte Creek Canyon, Berry Creek and Yankee Hill), Dodd co-authored AB 1054, which created a framework for electric utilities to evaluate their wildfire risk and plan for their wildfire mitigation investments and activities — overseen by the Office of Electric Infrastructure Safety within the California Natural Resources Agency.

alifornia Wildfire & Forest Resilience Task ForceThe California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force, a multiagency effort to identify needs and develop strategies for wildfire risk, has produced plans to better manage risk.

“With this cycle of heavy rains and prolonged droughts, we cannot take our eyes off of the risks that major wildfires present to communities across the state,” said Dodd. “The Legislature made good progress on wildfire safety and we must ensure our proposals and investments do what they are intended to do,” he said in a statement announcing the hearing, which will be held tomorrow after Senate adjournment.

The hearing will be available live at senate.ca.gov — background information is available at https://sgov.senate.ca.gov/sites/sgov.senate.ca.gov/files/wildfire_oversight_background_3.28.23.pdf

What a wet West Coast winter foretells for fire season 2023

The above-normal winter precipitation in California and over parts of the American West has already raised the question — even before the floodwaters have receded — of how this winter precip might either dampen the fuel beds or spawn a monster crop of fine fuels come spring and summer of 2023.

There’s a lot of winter and spring to come, and the first-of-the-month fire outlooks are 10 days out, but many are sensing that fire season in wetter locales will begin later. This delay is more likely in California, which is coping with a walloping by deep and repeated atmospheric rivers, resulting in near-record snowpack and flooding that may be familiar historically but not during the most recent drought decades.

Consider the California snowpack as of Jan. 20, 2023. Whether by graph or map, the message is clear: the snowpack is significant and snowmelt periods will likely be extended. Statewide the snowpack is at 126% of the April 1 normal, but 240% for the current water year-to-date.

Calif Statewide Snowpack years 2023-01-20
California Statewide Snowpack as of Jan. 20, 2023. https://cdec.water.ca.gov/snowapp/swcchart.action

With a focus on California’s rapid switch from drought to flood, it’s clearly a banner water year to analyze — which is too painfully clear to the many who are working through a long recovery from flood damages estimated to exceed $1 billion. As CNN reported, at one point an estimated 90% of California’s population was under some form of flood watch, which equates to 10% of the US population.

Per California Water Watch, the state is at 167% of average precipitation for this date, but storms aren’t a universal event. While the map for accumulated water year precipitation beginning Oct. 1 shows higher departure from average over most of the state, the most-intense  “purple” is being collected in the higher elevations in the central and northern mountains, and sopping the lower coastal regions that were hit full-force by the atmospheric rivers.

See California WaterWatch for regular updates.
See California WaterWatch for regular updates: https://cww.water.ca.gov

As damaging as the storms have been for so many communities, much of the West continues to feel the effects of long-term drought. A broader west-wide map of  precipitation of the past three months shows the patchiness of these bomb cyclones.

January 19, 2023 90-Day Percent Precipitation
Precipitation for the past 3 months.

Looking ahead, a range of analysis tools foretell the potential of a warm summer and the likely impacts of long-term drought returning. The five-month lead for June-July-August (JJA), from the North American Multi-Modal Ensemble (or NMME), paints a warm picture for North America, with most of the U.S. West at 70% or higher likelihood for warmer than normal temps. Which will in turn elevate the evaporation potential during growing (and curing) season.

NMME ensemble temperature forecast for JJA 2023.
NMME ensemble temperature forecast for JJA 2023. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/NMME/prob/images/prob_ensemble_tmp2m_us_season5.png

The same JJA outlook indicates a potential for most of North America to receive normal summer precip (though normal is often quite dry for much of the Western regions), with wetter likelihood for Alaska and drier than normal for western and northern Canada, the Pacific Northwest, the lower Mississippi Valley into Texas and south to Mexico and Central America.

NMME ensemble precipitation for JJA 2023. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/NMME/prob/images/prob_ensemble_prate_us_season5.png

How these ensemble outlooks play out will depend in part on a projected switch from La Niña to neutral or potentially El Niño conditions. And the impact of the winter’s snowpack will depend on how early and warm the spring temperatures rise. More on that potential when we look at the February outlooks.

Thanks to the Analysts … Many of these resources are digested from the outlooks and links prepared and shared by National and Geographic Area analysts. So a thanks for the work these folks do, season in and season out. This update owes much to the analysts who produced the January outlooks for Northern California and Southern California.

Section of Hwy 41 designated as the Gary Helming Memorial Highway

Gary Helming Memorial Highway
On November 13 a section of Highway 41 in California was designated as the Gary Helming Memorial Highway. USFS photo.

On November 13 a section of Highway 41 in California was designated as the Gary Helming Memorial Highway. The Santa Barbara County Fire Department, CAL FIRE, and Los Padres National Forest Service were among those who attended the dedication Sunday along with a group of family, friends, and co-workers.

The Battalion Chief with the Los Padres National Forest was killed August 31, 2017 in a vehicle accident on the highway. He was returning from a wildfire on the Sierra National Forest.

According to the U.S. Fire Administration a Ford F-350 traveling in the opposite direction suffered a tire failure, crossed the middle of the road and struck Chief Helming’s vehicle head-on.

The accident occurred on Highway 41 just south of state Route 33 in Kings County, California.

In the video below, a CAL FIRE OV-10 lead plane honors Battalion Chief Gary Helming as the section of Highway 41 was renamed November 13, 2022. Video by Joel Lane.

After the accident an unofficial memorial appeared at the site.

Roadside memorial Chief Gary Helming
Roadside memorial for Chief Gary Helming who was killed in a vehicle accident at this location August 31, 2017. Photo by John Szalay, September 17, 2017.
Roadside memorial Chief Gary Helming
Roadside memorial for Chief Gary Helming who was killed in a vehicle accident at this location August 31, 2017. Photo by John Szalay, September 17, 2017.

Chief Helming started out as a seasonal firefighter and spent 22 years with the U.S. Forest Service. During his career, he also worked with the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service but returned to the USFS in 2013. He was stationed in Santa Maria as Battalion Chief with the Los Padres National Forest. His wife, Andrea, has served as Air Tanker Base Manager for the agency at Santa Maria. They have three children.

On January 21, 2015 Chief Helming was honored by the Santa Maria Elks Lodge as Outstanding Firefighter of the Year for Los Padres National Forest’s Santa Lucia Ranger District.

Gary Helming

Scientists fight climate change by cloning sequoias and planting them farther north

sequoia clone climate change
CBS News

Devastating fires over the last three years in California have endangered the limited number of giant sequoias to the point where scientists are cloning the huge trees and planting them farther north where climate change may produce suitable growing conditions.

Preliminary surveys found that in a two year period, 2020 and 2021, almost 20 percent of all giant sequoias in their natural range over four feet in diameter were killed by fire (and neglect) or will die in the next few years. In 2020, 10 to 14 percent of the entire Sierra Nevada population of giant sequoia trees over 4 feet in diameter were killed in the Castle FireEarly estimates after two fires the following year, the KNP Complex and the Windy Fire, 2,261 to 3,637 sequoias over four feet in diameter were killed or will die within the next three to five years.

At this rate, with this climate, we could lose the rest of these massive trees in just a few years.

A team of expert horticulturists is using cloning technology to replant redwoods and sequoias and save their genetic material.