Private fire crews protected homes during Sonoma County fires
Most of these services are targeted at wealthy homeowners who live in rural enclaves, where insurers are exposed to heavy losses when homes are burned to the ground. But a growing number of insurance companies are offering similar services to all of their customers, part of an effort to reduce the risks to clients living in fire danger zones.
Last month, insurers dispatched teams to protect more than 450 houses in
Most were small crews trained to take emergency measures to reduce fire risk. These activities may be as simple as closing windows and doors left open during the residents' frantic flight, pulling straw doormats or combustible patio furniture away from a house, or getting on the roof with a leaf-blower to clear away flammable leaves.
But it might also include wetting down a house and property, setting up sprinklers, dousing embers or applying fire-suppressant gels and foams during a fire.
Insurance providers say their crews are not private firefighters.
"We're not there to combat a structure fire," said
AIG, which claims to insure roughly 40 percent of Forbes' 400 richest Americans, pioneered the use of wildfire mitigation services in the wake of the 2003 Cedar fire, which destroyed 2,820 structures in
"A lot of the properties we insure are remote, estate-type homes," Poux said.
Similar programs available through premier insurance providers like Chubb and
Such programs are increasingly available to the masses. The
"I think some of the other carriers do focus on high-end property, but ours is available for everyone,"
AIG employs only former firefighters and wildland firefighters to staff its Wildfire Protection Unit and provides regular training, tools and equipment to take emergency actions as a wildfire encroaches, Poux said.
Other companies provide fire protection services through third-party partners. Both Chubb and
Much of the structure damage caused by
But over the next week or more, particularly in areas of the Nuns fire that were threatened after the initial onslaught -- in the
Much of their work occurs before fires break out. AIG's Wildfire Protection Unit focuses largely on counseling clients on defensive strategies like resilient landscaping and non-flammable building materials in advance of any specific threat of fire.
During visits to clients' homes, they may offer advice about brush removal or defensive buffers that create space between structures and combustible vegetation or wood piles. Another key strategy is installation of ember-resistant vents that screen out the kind of broadcast embers that were prevalent during October's wind-driven firestorms, Poux said.
But their role changes when fires erupt.
But
"If they get in trouble, then we have to go in and save them," Brownell said.
Fire mitigation teams are required to check in with incident commanders before entering a fire perimeter, complying with requirements for protective gear and documentation for each parcel they intend to visit.
In general, Cal Fire prohibits private firefighting crews from entering areas that are off-limits to the general public. If an evacuation order is in place, private crews are supposed to be out of the area, too, agency spokesman
But there is a certain amount of negotiation that may occur, depending on the size of a fire perimeter, the area that is burning, the intensity of the flames and other factors, Crawford said. If an evacuation is under way, for instance, a private crew may be allowed to work until the deadline for residents to leave.
With the recent fires, "most of the time they were coming into places that the fire had already been or the fire wasn't going to go to," he said.
"I tell the guys that if they come and there's issues with them, then I will basically kick all of the companies off a fire," Crawford said.
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