Homelessness Crisis Looms For Camp Fire Evacuees

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This topic contains 5 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by  James Mitchner 1 year, 6 months ago.

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  • #4851

    Crow Bar
    Keymaster
  • #4858

    James Mitchner
    Participant

    “Many people who lost their homes in Paradise are uninsured and have nowhere to go.”

    I am really sorry people lost everything and for too many it meant losing their lives.  But I have a difficult time getting my head around them living in such a risky area and not even having insurance!  Now they are angry that FEMA is not taking care of it all.  I think they should be angry with themselves for not being responsible enough to have insured their homes and belongings.

  • #4860

    Crow Bar
    Keymaster

    I am trying to understand how do you own a house, and the bank allows you to NOT insure the house?

    The two homes I have purchased, before we could close, we had to have insurance quoted and ready to go at closing.

    Heard a radio article about homeowners insurance in a wildfire area.  On average it was 2 years before people could move into their replacement home.

  • #4863

    James Mitchner
    Participant

    I wouldn’t even consider not carrying insurance on my home.  If finances were tight I can think of a lot of less important expenses to cut in order to cover my house and contents.

    Too many people these days think they can be irresponsible and then when something happens demand others take the load.

  • #4882

    OldMt Woman
    Participant

    In recent history…..since these Monster Wildfires have begun, insurance companies are dropping accounts in wildfire areas.  Just as they are in other areas prone to flooding, hurricanes,…. tornadoes, earthquakes?   In the west, arid wooded areas …. that’s a lot of real estate.  To get around that obvious dilemma, some insurance companies are requiring owners to have a secondary policy.

    We came home one day last spring to someone in our barnyard.  What looked like a medium sized tanker truck with 3 men inside.  They were dressed in fire-fighting gear.  Come to find out, they were our very own firefighters for the day.  The property owners’ current policy on this property has to include this private company.  They were there to protect the investments of the insurance company and the property owners.  In the process – they protect our possessions inside the house.

    Cuz that day high winds had, once again, ripped electric lines from a house and started a fire.  They’d been battling it for hours and we’d been extremely reluctant to leave …being downwind about a  mile from the fire.  DRY conditions and WIND.  ACK!  But one of our elderlies was in the hospital and after driving to the fire location for intel directly from a firefighter blocking that road, we felt ok to leave for a couple hours.  It was a very small fire and they had it surrounded [so-called ‘contained‘ ].  We came home to find this crew at our place ready to do fast fire mitigation and protect the house, mostly.  They were not there to save our animals, etc.  But hey….this sounded REALLLY good to us once we figured out WHO they were and WHY they were there.

    I believe that’s the only way the property owners were able to get property insurance in our forested area.  I think it’s very creative and a good solution….especially when we get benefits.  Without this creativity, I think many homeowners are denied coverage for wildfire.

    OldMtWoman  …cuz the wildfire situation hasn’t NOT always been like this!

    • This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by  OldMt Woman.
    • #4909

      James Mitchner
      Participant

      History repeats itself.  In the early days of the fire service in our eastern cities like NYC or Boston, it was the insurance companies that supplied the fire protection.  They actually mounted their company plaques on the front of the buildings that they were paid to protect.  Some of those plaques can still be seen today.

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