Arizona lawmakers are discussing a bill that would protect facilities from lawsuits related to massive fires, a step that is likely to send a shock through the insurance industry.
The draft law will make it difficult to prove that the facilities are responsible for forest fires that began with wrong or bad maintenance equipment while reducing damage. In exchange for reducing responsibility, the facilities will need to provide plans every two years, in detail, in detail the steps they take to reduce the risk of forest fires.
The bill does not require, as is currently written, accompanying the adherence to these plans. If the utility does not follow its plans or neglecting to maintain its equipment, it is still protected from the claims.
The insurance industry was suffering from forest fires, and the invoice could have an unintended effect of converting the burden of forest fires from facilities to homeowners insurance companies.
“There is no free lunch in this,” Marcus Osborn, a member of the pressure groups on the insurance company, He said In a public hearing on the draft law. “You will either pay the higher insurance installments or will pay the costs of the higher facilities.”
Some home owners in Arizona I saw her triple rates This year, while others have decreased their coverage.
This is largely the result of the insurance companies trying to cover their losses with the accumulation of instinct fire claims. Hippo, an insurance emerging company, was published in 2021 in 2021 $ 42 million of losses As a result of Los Angeles’s recent fires. Lemon juice, another emerging Open In 2020, he is expected to lose 45 million dollars From the same disaster.
Double risk of forest fires has given other startups. Kettle, for example, reinsurance and models sell the results of potential wildfires to help other companies decline the risk of firefighting. However, the total trend was towards high costs of homeowners.
The Arizona State Bill is offered, as countries throughout the western United States are struggling with the threat – and repercussions – from forest fires that have worsened due to climate change and a century of fire suppression.
For decades, fires were sealed in the United States as quickly as possible. Before, low -density fires were racing through garbage, killing weak seedlings and converting dry leaves to rich ash fertilized soil. But when the fires were suppressed, the disabled infection grew with a brush and years of accumulated leaves.
These conditions have created what the forest fire experts call “peace fuel”, which helps in carrying low -density fires from the floor of the forest to the canopy, where they can convert catastrophic.
Against this background, climate change doubled the risk of high -density umbrella fires. High temperatures have been exacerbated, according to study It was published in November, by increasing evaporation. In other words, what ends with a little rain on Earth ends in the atmosphere more quickly than before, which leads to more dry conditions.
The warmer winter was also blamed. Low snow leads to more dry beating conditions, and insects whose population is usually kept under examination due to the bitter cold temperatures was prosperous. For example, warm temperatures and evil pine beetles More than 100 million trees were killed In California between 2014 and 2017. These dead trees became an ideal fuel that led forest fires in subsequent years.
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