As many of you know, insurance affordability and availability are of significant concern to residents of fire-prone areas in the West. Increasingly, residents are turning to federal elected officials asking for solutions to this growing problem.
To help federal decision makers better understand the impacts of wildfire on homeowner’s insurance, AWR commissioned the respected actuarial firm Milliman, Inc. to produce a report summarizing the issue and offering insights on how federal decision makers can meaningfully address this growing crisis. You can find a copy of the report on our website.
Fortunately, solutions do exist, including the development of a federal community wildfire risk reduction program, as called for by the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission and as included in S. 1462, the Fix Our Forests Act. As was discussed at length in the Commission, and as noted in the report “[w]hen insurance becomes widely unavailable, unaffordable, or both, a necessary part of any solution is to reduce the risk.”
We encourage you to read the Milliman report and share it with your local elected officials to help them better understand insurance issues and can be done to increase insurance availability, affordability, and reliability.