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When Is the California Wildfire Season in 2022?
By Martha C. White MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
As wildfire season deepens, California braces for the worst: an extended season exacerbated by climate change.
The hotter, drier weather attributed to climate change has prompted some fire experts to say that the California wildfire season, which traditionally peaks in intensity in late summer, is becoming a year-round event.
Janet Ruiz, director of strategic communications for the Insurance Information Institute, based in Hidden Valley Lake, California, agrees with that observation. “It’s an all-year season now. However, we are early in the worst part,” she says.
There are also fears that the season may be more prolonged than usual. “If we don’t get significant precipitation in October, then we can have fire season go through November,” says Craig Clements, professor of meteorology and climate science and director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San Jose State University.
Cal Fire, the state agency tasked with wildfire management and firefighting, warned in its 2022 Fire Season Outlook that the state “continues to experience longer wildfire seasons as a direct result of climate change.” It remains to be seen how the season will play out this year, but experts warn that climate change is worsening conditions.
Dry conditions to start the year combined with an uncharacteristically warm spring, and a fire weather forecast for more of the same this summer and fall, means that the conditions are prime for high risk to people and property. And of course, for homeowners, the elevated threat has significant ramifications for the availability — not to mention affordability — of homeowners insurance.
California’s fire season is getting more diverse and damaging
More than its increased length is worsening California’s wildfire season. Affected areas and total damage are also on the rise. “Unfortunately, due to the hotter, drier weather and the drought conditions, we’re seeing wildfires up and down the state. This year alone, we’ve already had more acreage burned than last year at this time,” Ruiz says.
The year had an especially inauspicious start: A January wildfire in the Big Sur region characterized by the National Weather Service as “surreal” devoured nearly 700 acres over a roughly two-week stretch starting in late January. Clements says that the prospect of early-season wildfires could have been much worse if not for unseasonably cool weather in the San Francisco Bay area. The heat wave blanketing the Pacific Northwest in late June, which coincided with the Rices Fire in the Sierra Nevadas, was another foreboding sign.
And California is entering its third consecutive year of severe drought, with some of the driest conditions in its history. The U.S. Drought Monitor showed that 60% of California was under conditions classified as “extreme” or “exceptional” drought as of the end of June.
How to prepare your homeowners insurance for wildfire season
Preparation is key for the 2022 fire season. You can plan for fires by protecting your personal property with adequate wildfire provisions. If you’re trying to buy a home insurance policy, start early and shop around. People in the highest-risk areas of the state might want to give themselves as much as a 60-day head start because they may have more difficulty finding an insurer to cover their property.
Here are some tips to ensure your home insurance policy is in as good a shape as it can be.
Review your fire insurance coverage with your agent
It’s always a good idea to review your policy with your agent. Key questions to ask, Ruiz says, are whether you have the right type of coverage and if you have appropriate limits.
Keeping policy limits up-to-date is especially important for keeping up with inflation. “Getting supplies and contractors is more expensive than it used to be, so the first thing I suggest to homeowners — and what I’ve done myself — is [to] check what is the average cost per square foot to rebuild in your area,” Ruiz says. “That’s risen dramatically.”
Additionally, when it comes to wildfires, the insurance industry has become a lot more selective about where they will write policies. Insurers use sophisticated modeling software to identify high-risk areas and price premiums accordingly. Since companies use different models, Zebratski urges homeowners to work with an agent or broker who represents multiple insurers.
“Go to an independent agent,” she says. “They will know generally which company will be willing to take that particular risk.”
People who live in the most wildfire-prone areas will find it challenging to get protection at any price, warns James “Chip” Stuart, corporate chief sales officer and practice leader for the North American real estate specialty of insurance broker HUB International. “Premiums are doubling and tripling and quadrupling as we go along,” he says.
Create a home inventory
Insurance pros say it’s essential to have an up-to-date inventory of all your belongings. If your home sustains fire damage, being able to refer to a catalog of your possessions and their value will help streamline your personal property coverage claim.
If you have art, antiques, jewelry or other unique valuables, get them independently appraised, and make that appraisal part of your inventory. Scan and save your receipts so you can provide them to your insurer in case of wildfire damage.
A home inventory that includes how much you paid and when you bought the items is helpful for when the insurance company is determining your loss settlement. This document makes filing a claim easier on you (so you don’t have to do all of this after you’ve had damage) and helps maximize payout.
Experts recommend storing all of these details, as well as your home insurance policy documentation and your agent’s contact information, in a digital format using a cloud-based service. You want to make sure you can easily access your inventory document in an emergency when displaced from your home, so storing it virtually is best.
Minimize your home’s fire risk
Fire prevention and insurance professionals in California alike urge homeowners to undertake mitigation measures — often referred to as “hardening.” By doing this, you reduce or eliminate the amount of flammable material on the property footprint.
Clearing dry, dead vegetation is an essential step. Make sure your gutters are free of debris, like dead leaves and pine needles. Clear brush, branches and the like away from your home’s foundation, and keep trees trimmed back so a crown fire — when fire jumps from one treetop to the next — doesn’t start an inferno right above your roof.
Aside from cleaning up the exterior of your property, there are other things you can do to harden your home and reduce insurance claim likelihood — like re-roofing your home with non-combustible materials, for example.
In spite of these efforts, some homeowners might still find it difficult to obtain adequate fire protection coverage. “One of the most frustrating things that consumers are dealing with now is that, because of the catastrophic modeling, they can do everything they can possibly do to harden their home… but they can’t get insurance because the general area is at extreme risk of wildfire,” Zebratski says.
For California homeowners, the last resort option is the California FAIR Plan. Insurance pros warn that this option isn’t cheap because it only covers damage from wildfires but not other common perils. Policyholders still have to purchase wraparound homeowners insurance coverage, which would be on top of the cost of FAIR plan fire insurance.
“Now we’re down to very few insurers and very, very high premiums,” Stuart says. “I’ve been doing this for 35 years and we’ve always had these wildfires, but now we’ve built homes in tracts where the wildfires go all the time — and now everybody’s shocked that Mother Nature doesn’t change the way she does business,” he says.
