Insurers Step Up Pressure on Fire Risks

Brett Gibson, a volunteer fire department chief in the tree-covered hills west of Boulder, has been having difficulty getting residents to do some of the work that would ease risks during Colorado’s fire season.

But he is getting some help from a persuasive source: insurance companies, which are starting to inspect properties to see whether owners are using fire-resistant landscaping 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 -- such as cutting down nearby trees and brush to create “defensible space” between forest and home, and safely storing firewood and combustible chemicals.

“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 Assn. “If they don’t take preventive steps, they do lose their home.”

Jim Frederikson, executive director of the Arizona Insurance Information Assn., said insurance rates were being determined by how much fire-resistant landscaping was done and whether homes had been built or remodeled with more fire-resistant material.

Gibson said it was easier to persuade people to work on their properties during the high-risk fire season last year.

“People move to the mountains to be in the forest,” he said. “Now we’re asking those people to pull the forest away from their homes.”

Gibson has been butting heads with George Jayne, who has lived in a Boulder-area subdivision for more than 20 years. His white-brick home is surrounded by 2-foot-tall grass, bushes and pine trees. A collapsed barn sits nearby, a wood shed is attached to the home and scrap wood is strewn about.

Jayne is a former volunteer firefighter who has battled wildfires. But he said he wanted to keep all the plant life he had because a previous owner of the property logged trees around the area and Jayne said he hadn’t been able to grow anything since.

“If the house goes, I’d rather it all go, even though I don’t want it to go,” he said.

Jayne said he hadn’t been contacted by his insurance agent yet, but “I’ll deal with it when it comes to that 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 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 were 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 were 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.

State Farm Insurance began a fire-resistant landscaping pilot program three years ago in six states, including Arizona and Colorado. Agents assess high-risk properties for what needs to be done and allow residents up to 29 months to get the work done.

Steve Niccolai, the company’s fire operations supervisor and loss mitigation coordinator, said the program was started to limit expensive claims.

“We looked at our own book of business and at the rising trend of fires, and we see that we’re starting to get larger ones, ones that are thousands and thousands of acres. And we’re looking at more people moving into more wooded areas.”

Niccolai said the pilot program covering 26,000 customers had been successful.

West of Boulder, Jay and Annette Donaghy said they were against fire-resistant landscaping 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.

“I had a hard time with the trees. I cried when they were cut down,” Annette Donaghy said. “But now, I’ll never look at them the same again. I look at them as fuel for a fire.”

The Donaghys are remodeling their home with new roofing, fiber-cement siding, fire-resistant wood and synthetic-wood decking. They got help from a federal grant, and say they are seeing their work pay off with a better view of the mountains and more money in their pockets.

“We saw a definite reduction in our insurance premium,” Jay Donaghy said.

The Donaghys say they are also doing this as an example for their neighbors -- help that Gibson said he would gladly take.

“In the city, you need to go out and mow the lawn and clear your gutters,” he said. “Here, you need to mow your trees to clear your gutters of pine needles.”