Insurance Companies Pushing Colorado Mountain Residents to Firescape
Colorado’s average fire season has been a double-edged sword for Brett Gibson, a volunteer fire department chief in the tree-covered hills west of Boulder.
He appreciates the lower threat of fires. But he is having difficulty getting residents to do some of the work that would ease fire risks even more-cutting down nearby trees and brush to create “defensible space” between forest and home, and storing firewood and combustible chemicals.
But Gibson is getting some help from a persuasive source: insurance companies, which are starting to inspect properties to see if owners are firescaping and taking other precautions to mitigate the fire threat. Insurers are starting to deny new policies and stop renewing others if they don’t see an effort.
“It’s on the radar of every single insurance company, but the difficulty is getting people’s attention,” said Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association. “If they don’t take preventive steps, they do lose their home. It’s difficult to make people understand that people can reduce the risk by doing defensible space.”
Jim Frederikson, executive director of the Arizona Insurance Information Association, said insurance rates are being determined by how much firescaping is done and whether homes have been built or remodeled with more fire-resistant material.
Gibson, who has approximately 450 homes under his watch, said it was easier to persuade people to work on their properties during the high-risk fire season last year. He said only about 100 homes have been firescaped “to some point.”
Insurance companies in California have the government behind them: laws requiring defensible space have been on the books for decades. It was a step taken as more and more people moved into the mountains, raising the stakes of a devastating fire, said Jerry Davies, director of communications of the Personal Insurance Federation of California.
Davies said people are still filing claims from 2003 fires that burned in Southern California, killing 24 people and causing more than $2 billion in insurance claims. He said companies are asking some residents to replace their shake roofs with more fire-resistant ones. “I have heard that people have been told that they must get defensible space done to their homes or their policies won’t be renewed,” he said.
West of Boulder, Jay and Annette Donaghy said they were against firescaping until they spoke to residents who lost their homes in a 1989 fire that roared through the nearby Sugarloaf community, causing $10 million in damage. They got rid of trees and cleared out grass and low-growing bushes.
The Donaghys are remodeling their home with different roofing, fiber-cement siding, fire-resistant wood and synthetic-wood decking. They got help from a federal grant. “We saw a definite reduction in our insurance premium,” Jay Donaghy said.
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