Playing the Odds on the Next California Wildfire

Driving through California’s Sonoma County, the remnants of last year’s fire season—and the season before that—are impossible to ignore. Blackened trees still line the highway. A sign, one of many like it in the county, reads, “From the ashes, we will rise.”

Indeed, new homes in various states of construction are rising in neighborhoods that were recently reduced to cinders by the 2019 Kincade Fire, which destroyed more than 350 structures on 77,000 acres in Sonoma County, and the 2017 Tubbs Fire before it, which was smaller but more devastating. Many California homeowners chose to rebuild, but insurance companies have preferred to retreat. Over 340,000 Californians were stripped of their wildfire insurance plans between 2015 and 2018, according to the insurance news site Gavop; other residents were served with premiums that jumped by up to 500 percent.