California Fires

[BushMasterBoy]

Like!

[hollohas]

After a round of fires in '18, insurers had to pay out $23 billion, which was twice the collected premiums. When the state would not approve rate increases, they decided not to insure certain areas.

Twice the amount of collected premiums in what time period? And just for that area or nationwide?

[eddiememphis]

Twice the amount of collected premiums in what time period? And just for that area or nationwide?

Same time period- 2017 and 2018. From what I can find, it looks like that is the California premiums.

In 2017, insurers nationwide wrote $552 billion in net premiums with a $23 billion net underwriting loss. That improved in 2018 to $613B net and only $424m in payouts, plus other underwriting expenses for a paltry $100 million net underwriting loss.

[flogger]

Newsom should be kicked out of office, riding a log like in "Brother where art thou". Maybe now the people won't forget his lack of leadership and clueless recognition of priorities.

If he gets elected again by the people of California, it will be a disgrace.

[BushMasterBoy]

How can Malibu burn when it is right next to the ocean? No lack of water there. My understanding was the reservoirs ran dry. And flogger is right, we just have a lack of leadership.

[theGinsue]

Has anyone else seen the satellite video images of 3 of these fires starting simultaneously? Rather curious events.

Newsom should be kicked out of office, riding a log like in "Brother where art thou". Maybe now the people won't forget his lack of leadership and clueless recognition of priorities.

If he gets elected again by the people of California, it will be a disgrace.

Unfortunately, bad voting choices reflect poor decision making ability in general. I don't anticipate, even in light of current events, that this will change. The folks who continue voting these idiots into office can't seem to see that their choice for office is directly responsible for all of the negative consequences they have to deal with. Forrest Gump said it best: "Stupid is as stupid does".

I put some of the blame for these bad decisions on the elected officials - and the rest on the constituency. People WANT to elect those whose priorities are out of line because it typically means someone (hopefully themselves) will be getting something they haven't earned for free. Most people fail to understand that the money isn't endless and that it has to come from somewhere. Spending for one thing takes money from something else and that "something else" is almost always a necessary expense (like Public Safety...fire, EMS, law enforcement). Buy hey, so long as we can feel good about one particular issue why does it matter that we didn't have funds to keep my house from burning down; right?!




I'm scheduled to travel VERY close to the burned/effected areas next month. With over 30,000 displaced individuals (due to evacuations or home loss), my team had to get reservations for our hotels immediately to ensure we had a place to stay while out there. If I get a chance I'll try to check out the affected areas (maybe even get some pics to share if I can).

Any way you look at it, this is a tragic situation that could have been avoided and there are now thousands of families/individuals whose lives are forever impacted by these fires. I hope and pray that they can quickly find a way to recover.

[buffalobo]

Are the C130s from Peterson out there? I thought the fancy equipment in the back had some installation time requirements, but that is a fuzzy memory from the unreliable Gazette.

I don't know if they are flying these fires(I think their typical "season" for the Forest Service is April to Sept or Nov) but the crews that run the MAFFS systems can be loaded and ready to go pretty damn fast.

Maybe our resident MAFFS expert will check in.

Sent from my SM-A037U1 using Tapatalk

[theGinsue]

I can't say for certain, but I believe the MAFFS folks are currently deployed "someplace else" and aren't available to assist.

[.455_Hunter]

Ignorant questions here...

Are the hydrants on the same water system as the houses and businesses?

In times of dire emergency, would it make sense to pump water into the hydrant system from the ocean? Would the pumps required to make any difference be so large and impractical for being useless 99.999% of the time? What about a levee type pumping station from New Orleans?

[theGinsue]

The salt content of sea water quickly damages equipment.

CA has been dealing with water shortages for some time, yet there is an abundance of sea water available.

While desalination plants are expensive to build and maintain, had CA invested in desalination plants years ago (as they should have), they could have more drinkable/usable water than they could ever use - even for huge wildfire firefighting efforts.