wildfire-mitigation-insurance-savings

Jennifer Howard has spent years reducing wildfire risk at her West Marin County home. She removed vegetation near the structure, replaced vents, added gutter guards, enclosed eaves and, when she needed a new roof in 2020, installed a standing-seam steel one. Howard began the effort in earnest after moving there following the 2017 North Bay wildfires.

Yet after losing conventional insurance in recent years, she wound up on the California FAIR Plan, effectively the state’s insurer of last resort, paying about $11,000 annually for FAIR Plan and difference-in-conditions coverage. When she first insured the house, she said, coverage had cost about $2,000 a year.

About 50 miles to the east, Phil Burton faced a similar problem in Pope Valley, northeast of the city of Napa and east of the main Napa Valley. Burton estimates the area has roughly 150 properties and 400 residents. He said his Pope Valley Fire Safe Council contacts owners of about 60 to 65 properties.

Burton, a former assistant chief of the Pope Valley volunteer fire department, had been dropped by insurers more than once before turning to the FAIR Plan. His annual fire premium eventually topped $10,000 despite thousands of dollars of work intended to make his property safer.

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Wildfire home hardening" mitigation work such as removing vegetation and other combustibles in Zone Zero (within 5 feet of the structure), closing in under the porch and installing ember-resistent vents helped the Burton family get off the California FAIR Plan for their 2,300-square-foot home in Napa County's Pope Valley and secure a conventional policy in 2026. (Phil Burton)

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Wildfire "home hardening" mitigation work such as removing vegetation and other combustibles in Zone Zero (within 5 feet of the structure), closing in under the porch and installing ember-resistent vents helped the Burton family get off the California FAIR Plan for their 2,300-square-foot home in Napa County's Pope Valley and secure a conventional policy in 2026. (Phil Burton)

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Wildfire "home hardening mitigation work such as removing vegetation and other combustibles in Zone Zero (within 5 feet of the structure), closing in under the porch and installing ember-resistent vents helped the Burton family get off the California FAIR Plan for their 2,300-square-foot home in Napa County's Pope Valley and secure a conventional policy in 2026. (Phil Burton)

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Those experiences are taking on greater urgency as the FAIR Plan prepares to apply higher rates to policies issued or renewed on or after Oct. 15. The average statewide premium increase will be 29.1%, reduced by the California Department of Insurance from the 35.8% average increase the FAIR Plan sought in its rate case. Properties in areas with greater wildfire exposure can see increases above that statewide average.

At the same time, wildfire-prevention groups, local governments and insurers are increasingly testing whether intensive home hardening and neighborhood-scale mitigation can help property owners move from the FAIR Plan back into the conventional insurance market.

From $11,000 to under $4,000

For Howard, the transition has already happened.

Her Paradise Ranch Estates community has about 140 homes on Inverness Ridge just northeast of Point Reyes and overlooking Tomales Bay. Residents share a road system but are not organized as a homeowners association. Instead, the community has an existing association and communication network that has helped residents coordinate Firewise activities and share information about wildfire preparation.

Howard worked with Mercury Insurance to identify the remaining changes needed on the company’s wildfire-mitigation program before the company would insure her property. Her annual insurance cost subsequently fell from about $11,000 to below $4,000.

“I’m saving $7,000 a year,” Howard said.

She estimated that the final work needed to obtain the policy cost between $10,000 and $15,000, giving her a simple payback period of roughly 1½ to two years at that level of annual savings.

Burton also obtained coverage after documenting mitigation at his Pope Valley property. His projects included clearing the first 5 feet around the home, installing fire-resistant vents and gutter guards and addressing combustible materials near the structure. He said he and his wife had spent about $10,000 on mitigation work, in addition to their own labor.

His FAIR Plan fire premium had been more than $10,000. The Mercury policy initially came in at about $7,000, with additional savings after Burton documented double-pane windows and fire-resistant vents.

“Mercury has committed to increasing its California homeowners policy count by more than 38,000 policies over the long term, beginning with more than 6,000 additional policies during the first two years, with an emphasis on wildfire-distressed areas and helping homeowners transition from the FAIR Plan to the admitted market,” said Holly Sacks, director of portfolio underwriting and catastrophe management for Mercury Insurance. The company also said it is expanding commercial property coverage in California for businesses, nonprofits and homeowners associations.

Mercury is one company appearing repeatedly in North Bay mitigation efforts, but it is not alone in a market that consumer advocate Amy Bach said has begun showing more competition in the Golden State. She said Allstate and State Farm are reopening for business, Farmers has loosened restrictions on its agents, CSAA is rewarding homeowners who obtain an IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home certificate, and CIG has become more proactive about writing additional homes in California.

“There’s more competition now than there had been, and all of that translates into some measure of relief for property owners,” said Bach, executive director of San Francisco-based United Policyholders.

The California Department of Insurance said about 24,000 policies left the FAIR Plan during April and May, while overall FAIR Plan growth slowed significantly compared with 2024 and much of 2025. The department cautioned that it cannot say all those policies shifted to admitted carriers.

Marin builds a mitigation pipeline

Marin officials are trying to address several obstacles at once: determining what work a home needs, finding contractors who know how to do it and helping homeowners pay for it.

The Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority’s Ember Ready program is supported by about $700,000 a year for two years — roughly $1.4 million — from the Marin Community Foundation. The funding supports two employees plus software upgrades used in Marin’s defensible-space and grant programs.

Ember Ready provides one-on-one help to residents interpreting wildfire inspection reports, creating Zone Zero — the first 5 feet surrounding a structure — and completing other home-hardening work.

Another Marin effort targets the contractor shortage.

Fire Safe Marin used about $215,000 from a separate two-year Marin Community Foundation grant to create Fire Safe Academy, an online training program for contractors. The course takes just under five hours of case studies and tests on how wildfire attacks homes, common structural vulnerabilities and mitigation techniques.

The instructor is Stephen Quarles, a Fire Safe Marin board member and retired scientist with the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS). About a month after the program launched, 75 people were enrolled, including 46 contractors, and 26 contractors had passed the course. Fire Safe Marin also partnered with the Marin Builders Association.

Marin County-based Fire Aside assists the broader effort through its community wildfire resilience planning software used to capture inspections and help residents work through findings in their reports.

Financing is another piece.

Marin officials said Redwood Credit Union is preparing a program offering unsecured loans of up to $25,000 for five to seven years at 6.99%, compared with a regular unsecured-loan rate of 12.99%. The program was still being finalized when officials were interviewed. They said philanthropic or private support for a loan-loss subsidy potentially could reduce the rate further, to 3.99%.

Local test for a statewide model

Lake County is taking a different approach as one of the demonstration areas for the California Wildfire Mitigation Program.

The program stems from Assembly Bill 38, enacted in 2019. The legislation directed the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to create a joint wildfire-mitigation effort. The program is intended to harden structures and establish defensible space in high-fire-risk, socially vulnerable communities.

Ukiah-based North Coast Opportunities administers the Lake County demonstration project in Kelseyville Riviera.

Lake County Supervisor Jessica Pyska said the county was selected for the pilot in 2021 after enduring major wildfire losses for more than a decade. She said nearly 70% of the county’s land mass had burned during a roughly six-year period and about 5% of its housing stock was lost.

Kelseyville Riviera offered another advantage: Most of its homes were built during the 1980s and 1990s and require similar retrofits. That relative uniformity makes neighborhood-scale mitigation easier than in communities where adjoining houses can require very different fixes.

California Wildfire Mitigation Program Authority Executive Director J. Lopez said 75 Lake County homes had been retrofitted by late September. A Sept. 10 program status report listed 73 completed Lake County sites and 12 more in progress, reflecting the program’s progress earlier that month. Statewide, the report listed 190 completed sites and 30 in progress.

The program can cover the full cost of eligible retrofit and defensible-space projects — potentially more than $40,000 — for homeowners earning up to 120% of area median income. Higher-income participants have cost-sharing requirements.

Pyska said grants alone cannot solve the statewide problem.

“Now that we know that it works, we have to have a pathway for everyone to be able to complete this work on their home,” she said.

Napa’s harder-to-standardize homes

Napa County Supervisor Anne Cottrell represents a district that includes Calistoga, St. Helena, Yountville, Angwin, Pope Valley, Berryessa and the northern edge of Napa. The area has experienced repeated major wildfires over the past decade, including the 2017 Atlas and Tubbs fires and the 2020 LNU Lightning Complex, Hennessey and Glass fires.

Cottrell said she has heard fewer stories recently of people being forced onto the FAIR Plan and more accounts of residents finding other carriers. But she cautioned that greater availability has not necessarily translated into large premium reductions.

Napa also poses a different mitigation challenge than Kelseyville Riviera.

Cottrell noted that Lake County benefited from having many homes of similar ages requiring similar work. In communities she represents, homes of different ages and architectural styles can stand next to one another, making standardized retrofits more difficult.

“We have very different types of homes right next to each other, and so figuring out the blanket solution will be challenging,” Cottrell said.

Napa County and its partners have invested millions of dollars in defensible-space and landscape-scale wildfire work, while Napa Firewise serves as an umbrella for 24 local fire safe councils.

Cottrell said a continuing challenge is connecting that community-level investment — as well as work on individual homes — with the prices and coverage decisions insurers ultimately make. For example, Napa Valley Vintners has contributed more than $2 million toward wildfire prevention, including having excavation equipment available to create access roads ahead of last year’s 6,800-acre Pickett Fire, helping to prevent the evacuation of Angwin.

For Burton, the savings matter, but there’s a larger payoff.

“The ultimate thing is that our house is a lot safer,” he said. “I mean, you lose your house you’re not talking $3,000 or $4,000 or $10,000. You’re talking a lifestyle change that most people would rather not do, especially with the older folks around.”

Jeff Quackenbush joined North Bay Business Journal in May 1999. Reach him at jeff@nbbj.news or 707-521-4256.

© 2026 The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, Calif.). Visit www.pressdemocrat.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.