Estimated CA Insured Wildfire Losses Could Reach $150 Million
The Angora, California wildfire near South Lake Tahoe that has so far consumed about 3,100 acres and destroyed over 300 structures since June 24th is estimated to result in insured losses of between $100-150 million, according to Risk Management Solutions (RMS). RMS is the world’s largest provider of products and services for catastrophe risk management.
"The Angora fire is the largest to have occurred in the Tahoe region in over four decades," stated Don Windeler, director of wildfire risk modeling at RMS. "The area impacted has abundant surface fuel to burn, and a dry winter has only exacerbated the susceptibility to fire. RMS considers large areas of South Lake Tahoe adjacent to the fire as high to very high hazard."
Last year, RMS launched a suite of wildfire assessment tools that provide a robust and integrated solution to help the insurance industry reliably identify locations exposed to wildfire risk. The methodology incorporates the latest techniques in wildfire risk assessment using advanced fire behavior calculations to evaluate wildfire hazard, threat, and susceptibility in wild land, rural, and urban areas. The data considers varying weather conditions, annual frequencies of fire occurrence, surface fuel types, canopy cover, and topography, and is also the only data on the market to consider the likelihood of ignition in determining wildfire hazard.
RMS will continue to monitor this event and will update its loss estimates appropriately.
Published on July 2, 2007
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