Frances Bischetti said she learned last year that the annual cost of homeowners insurance from Farmers Insurance for her Pacific Palisades home would jump from $4,500 to $18,000. This is an amount he cannot afford.
He also couldn’t qualify for the California Fair Plan, which offers fewer benefits, because he said he needed to cut down 10 trees around his roof to reduce the risk of fire. It was another thing the 55-year-old personal assistant thought would be too expensive to manage. .
So he decided to “go naked,” or buy no insurance for his home in the community’s El Medio neighborhood. Given the property’s location south of Sunset Boulevard, he thought that year-round watering might be enough to protect it.
It wasn’t. The worst fire disaster in Los Angeles history destroyed the home where he lived for most of his life on Tuesday, and more than 10,000 other homes and structures were damaged or destroyed. Sixteen deaths were confirmed in the prefecture.
“It was surreal,” he said. “I’ve lived here on and off for 50 years as an adult. I’ve never experienced anything like this in all my time here.”
Farmers Insurance declined to comment, saying it does not discuss individual policyholders.
“Train accident falling off the tracks”
Mr. Bischetti was not the only homeowner in the Pacific Palisades, Altadena and other fire-prone hilly areas. They were struggling to maintain coverage as costs rose rapidly and many insurers decided not to renew policies to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire claims. Even if you are a long-time customer. Many fire victims report that their insurance companies canceled their policies last year.
The fire, expected to be one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history, deepened the crisis in the state’s home insurance market, which was already in turmoil before the disaster.
State Farm General, the state’s largest home insurer, announced in March that it would not renew insurance policies on 30,000 homeowners and condominiums once they expire, including 1,626 in Pacific Palisades.
Chubb and its subsidiaries have stopped writing new insurance policies for high-value homes with a high risk of wildfire. Allstate stopped writing new policies and Tokio Marine America and Trans Pacific Insurance Company withdrew from the state, although Mercury Insurance Company offered to take on customers.
Liberty Mutual was sued last month by a homeowner who accused her insurance company of firing her over false claims of mold on her roof.
“Driven by a desire to maximize profits, property and casualty insurance companies are following an alarming trend of dropping California homeowners’ insurance policies like flies,” the complaint filed in San Diego County Superior Court states. There is.” A Liberty Mutual spokeswoman declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The lack of coverage is reflected in the number of policies covered by the California Fair Plan, which totaled about 452,000 as of September, up from more than 203,000 four years ago. did. According to FAIR Plan’s website, the company has nearly $6 billion in claims exposure in the Pacific Palisades alone.
“It’s been like a train wreck on the tracks for some time now,” said Rick Dinger, president of Crescenta Valley Insurance, an independent brokerage in Glendale.
Not enough insurance money to rebuild
Peggy Holter spent decades as a television journalist, traveling the world, but there was one place she called home and always returned to. It was a condo in Pacific Palisades that I moved into on January 1, 1978. Everything has changed. After Tuesday’s firestorm, her apartment complex was gutted along with the remaining 36 units in the Palisades Drive complex.
Mr. Holter, 83, who retired just last year, is now facing uncertainty because he said State Farm did not renew his personal condominium insurance because of the condition of his roof.
But because I lost my documents, I don’t know if or when my insurance expired. We also hadn’t yet secured a new airline. This insurance typically covers your personal belongings and interior furnishings, and provides benefits such as living expenses if you can no longer use your condo.
“I’m not one to keep things very carefully, but I had photos and albums all over the walls of places I’d been and pictures of my family.When my mother was 52 years old, she rode a camel and saw the Sphinx. I had a picture taken in front of it,” Holter recalled. “The only thing I’m worried about is the future, because that’s what you have to do.”
Her biggest question is whether it can be rebuilt. The homeowners association had a basic FAIR Plan policy, but it totaled just $20 million. If the complex is not rebuilt, each unit would cost only about $550,000, far below recent condo sales of more than $1 million. The land could be sold to a developer.
Holter currently lives in the Hollywood Hills with her son and had finished paying off her apartment.
After the fire was extinguished, she returned to the apartment complex to take a closer look at the damage. There was nothing left of her unit, but the complex’s koi pond survived with fish.
State Farm declined to comment on the non-renewal, saying in a recent statement: “Our top priority at this time is the safety of our customers, agents and employees affected by the fire and supporting our customers in the midst of this tragedy.”
“California doesn’t cover anything.”
Matt Knight considers himself lucky. Like Bischetti and Holter in the Palisades fire, he and his family could have lost everything in the Eaton fire.
The problems began last year, he said, when he received a notice from Safeco Insurance that his insurance on the Sonoma Drive home in Altadena, where he lives with his wife and three children, would not be renewed because of a tree overhanging the garage. spoke.
The 45-year-old Covina Elementary School teacher said she diligently trimmed the tree, but was told that the ivy growing in her garage was also a problem. After removing it, he said he was told the damaged stucco had to be repaired, which meant painting the house and replacing the old roof in the process. But even after spending $30,000 on repairs, he said he still can’t get insurance.
A spokeswoman for Safeco, a subsidiary of Liberty Mutual, said the company does not comment on individual policyholders.
“So we went from company to company, and some of them said, ‘No, we don’t cover anything in California.’ They said, ‘We’re not doing any new policy.’ There was also a voice. “Some people said, no, we’re not going to do 91001 because it’s in a fire zone. We thought, ‘That’s crazy.'”
The day before his insurance expired last summer, Knight said he was finally able to secure similar coverage with Aegis Insurance. But in the rush to implement the policy, the home he had lived in for 16 years was left with less than $300,000 in insurance. The home is valued at $1.13 million on Zillow.
When the power began to go out Tuesday night due to the ferocious winds that fueled the Eaton Fire, Knight decided to drive her children to her parents’ home on the other side of Altadena and have them do their homework there. From there, he witnessed a fire start on a street surrounded by mountains near what appeared to be power lines.
“Within minutes it was captured on the hillside. It was unbelievable,” he said.
His parents’ home on Roosevelt Avenue was spared any catastrophic damage, so he drove all night to check on it. By 6 a.m., he joined a brigade of homeowners fighting the flames as they approached Sonoma Drive. “All the neighbors were grabbing hoses and trying to put out the fire,” he said.
By late afternoon, he said, homeowners and firefighters alike were out of water, forcing him and his neighbors to pack up and leave. He was sure he would lose his home, but the wind died down.
“I think this was the ultimate stroke of luck,” he says, although some other neighbors weren’t so lucky.
Biscetti wasn’t so lucky either.
On Tuesday, as the fire broke out in the hills and all of his Palisades neighbors began packing up their cars, Bischetti remained at home and continued to hose down his property, including his lawn, roof, rafters and walls.
“I thought everything was relatively safe,” he said. “I kept trying to protect my house by spraying water on it.”
Gradually, he began packing his car with a change of clothes, one of his guitars, tax documents, property deeds, and a computer hard drive. He left the computer itself at home, along with his amplifier, music equipment, and tools.
By 5 p.m., his entire street was a ghost town. By that time, Bischetti had already watered his property multiple times. It was dusty and smoky, and a voice in my head told me it was time to leave. “I’m going to come back tomorrow for this,” he recalled thinking. “I don’t want to put stress on the car.”
That didn’t work.
Bischetti was driving near Palisades High School when he saw a house on the corner of his street start to burn. As the vehicle continued down El Medio Street, black smoke billowed out and flames appeared on both sides of the vehicle. He begins to panic and realizes that he cannot get through.
After reaching his sister’s house in Mar Vista, he learned from a neighbor that all the houses on his block had been destroyed.
Bischetti said his brother lost family memorabilia and photos, and he lost thousands of dollars worth of tools and instruments. They had also spent nearly $4,000 on repairs to the house to rent out some rooms.
Bischetti and his family have signed up for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund to help clean up the site, which could cost at least $10,000, he said.
“I was preparing for this,” he said of his solo firefighting efforts. “That was the last hurray.”
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