Hawaii Insurance Commissioner Gordon Ito films a wildfire burn risk demonstration at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, Monday, April 29, 2024. Some property insurance companies in Hawaii and other states have stopped providing coverage to residents because of increasing wildfire risk and climbing construction costs.
The same thing happened in Colorado after the 2021 Marshall Fire destroyed 1,100 homes in Boulder County, causing an estimated $2 billion in damage, said Colorado Division of Insurance deputy commissioner Jason Lapham. Last year, Colorado lawmakers authorized the creation of the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan, which is expected to provide bare-bones property insurance coverage for residents who can’t get insurance from a private company starting in 2025.
Research shows that protecting homes from blowing embers using fire-resistant roofs and gutters and keeping the area around a home free of easily flammable material makes a big difference, Cope said. Once one building in a community catches fire, the problem quickly compounds — while forest fires and other wildland fires generally produce small blowing embers that are quickly extinguished, structure fires create much larger embers that can be as big as a human hand, Cope said. Those big, chunky embers carry enough fuel with them to keep burning once they land on another structure, quickly setting it aflame.