Insurance

In the wake of the Los Angeles fires, State Farm asked for an “emergency” premium increase of 22% on average for California homeowners. Lara today denied the request pending more information.

After saying it would run out of funds by March, California’s last-resort fire insurance provider will impose a special charge of $1 billion on homeowners and insurance companies, the first such move in more than three decades.

Sen. Jeff Golden (D-Ashland) plans to reintroduce a bill to help wildfire-affected communities. Golden’s past attempts failed, but wildfire funding remains a priority for lawmakers.

The state’s plan to fix the insurance crisis had barely rolled out when the Los Angeles fires began. Can the market recover and stabilize?

Insurance companies that stopped providing home coverage to hundreds of thousands of Californians in recent years as wildfires became more destructive will have to again provide policies in fire-prone areas if they want to keep doing business in California under a state regulation announced Monday.

A new pilot program in Oregon will provide state liability coverage for prescribed fires.

This week staff at a Klamath Falls community mental health program asked county commissioners to help them find insurance.

Oregonians can look up specific tax lots to see how susceptible they are to wildfires. The map won’t impact homeowner insurance plans. State law prohibits insurance providers from using it to determine premiums or coverage.

Insurance companies and residents alike are struggling to adapt to a new era of risk in the face of climate-driven wildfires, and property owners in rural communities are on the front lines.

California can’t legally require insurers to write either residential or commercial property policies. But the state expects insurers to comply with the options unveiled today because they get something they want in return: catastrophe modeling.

Lawmakers want mitigation measures to be tracked, updated and accounted for to help insurance availability and affordability.

Major insurers in central, southern and eastern Oregon have dramatically pulled back, forcing some homeowners to go to an insurer of last resort.