Lloyd’s of London offers Oregon wildfire insurance with $50 million deductible

Fire West of Cascade
Fire south of Cascade, SD, July 16, 2012. Photo by Bill Gabbert

(UPDATED April 20, 2015)

The state of Oregon decided to buy the wildfire insurance from Lloyd’s of London. The policy was purchased through the Oregon Department of Forestry, and provides $25 million in coverage. The coverage will kick in when firefighting costs exceed $50 million, with the policy providing as much as $25 million to cover these costs. Premiums for this coverage are being split between state and private timberland owners, whom have agreed to pay $3.75 million into the policy.

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(Originally published April 4, 2015)

For decades the state of Oregon has purchased insurance from Lloyd’s of London to help defray the costs of suppressing wildfires, the only state that does so according to OregonLive. This year the company has almost doubled the annual premium from $2 million to $3.75 million while increasing the deductible from $20 million to $50 million.

If the state decides to accept Lloyd’s offer, up to $25 million of their costs of suppressing wildfires will be reimbursed.

The last two consecutive bad fire seasons had state officials rightfully worried that they would have to pay more for the policy this year, especially after spending $75 million on managing wildfires in 2014.

State of Oregon’s wildfire insurance premium may increase after the 2014 fire season

Beaver Fire
The Beaver Fire, August 12, 2014, in northern California. Photo by Bill Gabbert.

The state of Oregon has an insurance policy with Lloyd’s of London that helps to cover the cost of suppressing wildfires during busy fire seasons. The premium for that policy has been about $2 million. But before the state receives any payout from Lloyd’s they have to spend $20 million to cover the deductible, after which the insurance company will cover the additional costs up to $25 million.

Two consecutive bad fire seasons has state officials thinking that they may have to pay more for that policy next year.

Below is an excerpt from an article in the Bend Bulletin:

…Like car insurance, where premiums go up when drivers have accidents, one thing is clear: If the state can land another policy through insurance giant Lloyd’s of London to help with rising wildfire costs, it’s going to have to cut a bigger check.

“We’re fully expecting that based on the experience of the last two years that we’ll probably be paying more for insurance if we can get a policy in the coming year,” Rod Nichols, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Forestry, said Wednesday.

The prospect of missing out on wildfire relief has rural lawmakers talking about thinning and clearing fuels from forests and addressing the effects of climate change.

“One of these years we’re going to light up Southern Oregon and have a fire season you won’t believe,” Sen. Alan Bates, D-Medford, said.

Oregon has had a wildfire insurance policy for nearly four decades…

Wildfire briefing, September 4, 2014

Kilauea lava flow in Hawaii emerges again from ground crack, continues advancing eastward, ignites forest

The following photos and videos were released by the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (USGS) (Dated September 3, 2014 and September 1, 2014) .

Lava flow
This view looks east at the far end of the June 27th lava flow. In the center of the photograph is an isolated pad of lava which came out of ground crack last week. Further movement of lava within ground cracks has enabled the flow front to advance farther east, with lava issuing from a ground crack in the upper left portion of the photograph, where plumes of smoke mark the location of lava burning forest. (USGS)
Lava flow
One small portion of the flow front was quite vigorous, with an open stream of lava moving through the forest. (USGS)

More information about the lava flow.

Woman who bragged about setting fire, sentenced to prison

The woman who posted on Facebook about setting a fire was sentenced to more than a year in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Marco Hernandez on Wednesday. She was also ordered to perform 200 hours of community service in the fire-damaged area.

“You owe them much more than that,” Judge Hernandez told her.

Sadie Renee Johnson said she was suffering from alcohol and drug problems and told the judge she would turn her life around.

On July 22, 2013, two days after throwing a firecracker into vegetation to start a fire so her firefighter friends would not be “bored”, Ms. Johnson, 23, wrote on her Facebook page: “Like my fire?”

It grew to become the 51,480-acre Sunnyside Turnoff Fire on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Oregon, the 15th largest fire in the United States in 2013.

Ms. Johnson pleaded guilty on May 19 to the crime of setting brush and timber on fire.

Another insurance company offers homeowners proactive protection from ongoing fires

The Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company has expanded its wildfire program to include response services, which may include the application of gel or retardant solutions to a policyholder’s home and surrounding vegetation. The Wildfire Response Program, which already included wildfire assessments and extensive wildfire preparation for homes and land, now provides a complimentary additional layer of protection to eligible Prestige Home℠ policyholders who enroll.

During a wildfire, actions to defend a home may include:

  • Removal of combustible materials from around the home
  • Set-up of a perimeter sprinkler system
  • Spray the home or surrounding property with a fire-blocking solution.

The Wildfire Response Program is currently offered in the following states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

LA County brings on an Air-Crane and two scoopers

As they have done for the last 21 fire seasons, the Los Angeles County Fire Department has contracted for two water-scooping air tankers. The CL-415s, leased from the Quebec government, started at the first of this month and will be able to carry up to 1,620 gallons of water with each drop. Due to numerous fires late in 2013 and the Colby Fire in January, 2014, they worked several weeks beyond their planned December termination date last year.

The department also brought on a Helitanker, an Erickson Air-Crane S-64F that can hold 2,650 gallons of water or retardant.

More information and photos are at Fire Aviation.

Colorado’s multi-mission aircraft is in service

The state of Colorado has a temporary version of their multi-mission aircraft officially in service while the two they purchased are being outfitted and configured. It is being operated and maintained by Bode Aviation under contract to Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC). Until the Division of Fire Prevention and Control (DFPC) personnel have completed their training, SNC will be providing qualified “Sensor Operators.

Today, for training purposes, the aircraft and crew are using its sensors to detect and map a prescribed fire near Gypsum, Colorado.

More information and a photo are at Fire Aviation.

 

Wildfire briefing, February 25, 2014

Sign at the Myrtle fire
Fire Prevention sign at the Myrtle Fire in South Dakota, July 23, 2012. Photo by Bill Gabbert.

Insurance companies cancel policies

Some homeowners in the Scripps Ranch area near San Diego have received notices that their policies are being cancelled. The residents live near the areas that burned catastrophically in 2003 or 2007, fires that destroyed thousands of homes and took 16 lives. According to an article at 10news, one of the homeowners said, “They canceled us and also several people on our street, saying they couldn’t renew our policy because we were too close to the brush line.”

Which area near Colorado Springs will be next?

Some residents in the Colorado Springs area are a little concerned about the vulnerability of their homes after the fire disasters of 2012 and 2013. Last year the Black Forest Fire just north of Colorado Springs destroyed approximately 480 structures, and in 2012 the Waldo Canyon Fire on the other side of the city wiped out 347 homes. There is concern now that the Broadmoor area could be susceptible to fires that start in the Cheyenne Mountain area. Fox21 news has more details.

Two Senators on the same page as President Obama about fire funding

Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have praised President Obama for proposing that wildfires be funded in a manner similar to other natural disasters. Monday the President met with most of the nation’s governors and told them that wildfire funding in the administration’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2015 would be similar to provisions in a bill introduced in the House, the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act of 2014 (H.R. 3992), which would create an emergency funding process for fire response. If enacted, it would mean the federal land management agencies would no longer have to rob dollars from routine ongoing non-fire activities to pay unusually high fire suppression expenses.

Tom Zimmerman lectured at the University of Montana

Tom Zimmerman, a former Area Commander and Type 1 Incident Commander, lectured at the University of Montana on February 20. He was the first speaker in the Mike & Mabelle Hardy Fire Management Lecture Series which was established through an estate gift from Mike Hardy, a 1939 alumnus of the School of Forestry. Now the President of the International Association of Wildland Fire, Dr. Zimmerman, had a key role when he worked for the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service in promoting, training for, and establishing procedures for managing wildfires that are not fully suppressed. In fact, he has the dubious honor of being instrumental in coining some of the terms for these fires, including “fire use fire” and “fire for resource benefits”. Below is an excerpt from an article in the Missoulian about his lecture.

“…Fire has a natural role in the environment and we need to embrace that and accept that,” Zimmerman said. But we also need to keep preventing human-caused, unwanted fires. And we have to understand that the firefighting tools we have aren’t designed to protect the thousands of private homes that now stand at risk of wildland fires.

“You’ve got to keep working with your communities to explain what’s going on,” Zimmerman said. “You’ve got to keep laying out the facts. But there’s a threshold to understanding, and I don’t know if you can keep that buy-in for very long when people are breathing smoke all summer. We talk about restoring fire as a natural process, and then you have one that burns five times as much as the plan calls for. You can’t say, well we won’t burn anything for the next five years.”

Cartoon: insurance company engines protect policy holders’ houses

wildfire cartoon chubb insurance comany enginesSam Wallace has created another cartoon about wildland fire. This one refers to the Chubb insurance company sending fire engines to protect the homes of their policy holders during the Fourmile fire last month near Boulder, Colorado. At his web site, Mr. Wallace wrote this about the cartoon:

This is not a jab at firemen or the fire department. They do a great job. This is for the private fire fighters hired by insurance companies. (Extra special coverage, as long as you have paid for it.) Why would they help, if you were not a policy holder. Some how it does not seem right to me.

Earlier we showed you some of Mr. Wallace’s other cartoons about wildfire. His work appears at the Longmont, Colorado Times Call and at his own web site. The cartoon is published here with his permission.

Insurance company sent engines to protect homes at Fourmile fire

The Chubb insurance company, which specializes in policies for high-valued homes, dispatched fire engines to the Fourmile fire near Boulder, Colorado earlier this month. Due to a memorandum of understanding they signed with Boulder County earlier this year, the company was able to send engines directly to their policy holders’ homes after obtaining clearance through the Incident Command Post.

Customers of the company that have homes valued in excess of $1 million are eligible to sign up for the free service that will send privately owned fire engines to their homes if threatened by a wildfire. Chubb contracts with Wildfire Defense Systems out of Red Lodge, Montana, which provides crews for emergency fuel mitigation, zone sprinkler system setup, fuel break preparation and fire blocking gel application.

WDS owns Type 3, 4, and 6 wildland engines that are outfitted and inspected per Federal Best Value standards. According to their web site they also have access to a “network of established and qualified engine companies operating under WDS supervision”. Currently these services are offered to qualified policy holders in 13 western states.

The Fourmile fire, which destroyed 169 homes and caused an estimated $217 million in damages, was the first wildfire in Colorado at which insurance company engines worked alongside government-paid fire resources. The company was not completely successful at the fire, since of the 13 customer homes affected, 10 survived but 3 burned.

We have written about these services provided by Chubb previously, HERE and HERE. And, we have no association with them or WDS.