Homeowner Irrationality is Equally to Blame
Today, climate change is in evidence around the globe, and except for those unscientific or irrational enough to ignore its ramifications, buying or building a home within what is known as a high-risk area due to either flood, storm surge, wildfire, hurricanes or tornadoes without taking protection seriously, is a fool’s gambit.
Insurance companies are being painted as the bad guys, and usually I would agree, but not in this case. Today it is municipal jurisdictions and willfully ignorant homeowners who need to take the blame. Insurance is not meant as a panacea for the greedy, the entitled or the ignorant. If you build in a location where the risk is high or extreme, you will likely not be protected by an insurance carrier, specifically if you have been warned that a loss may result in what is deemed as negligence or ignoring the advice of a carrier.
Rivers flood, ocean front properties are susceptible to storm surge, hurricanes will affect low lying areas, and living in a forest or wild land and wildfire area that is known to be susceptible to drought and where fire on the landscape is common, — while not taking the necessary physical precautions is, at least in my mind, illogical and unwise, — to be kind.
Insurance carriers normally will provide would-be homeowners with information and advice in relation to buying property with considerable risks. The most honest of them will actually refuse your business if the risk is extreme or price an insurance policy so high, that any normal person will consider other options.
As a former Fire Chief and Fire Protection Planning Consultant, I can tell you up front that many people across North America clearly know that the location they want to live or build on or in, is fraught with risk, yet they will then go ahead and build, ignoring both advice and their own doubts about its rationality. Worse, they will then attempt to blame both the jurisdiction they built in and the insurance company that provided them the protection to build in the first place.
So Who Is To Blame When it All Goes To Hell
There is little doubt, for anyone with even the most modest of intellect, that building anywhere the aforementioned conditions exist is not in their best interests. However, what is even more galling is the fact that those who have the most money, are also the most entitled. They will argue that they have the right to build in a given location, irrespective of changing climate conditions and the apparently ever-worsening realities it imposes.
Building in forested areas today, is without doubt a risky proposition. Building on low-lying islands, sandbars, mangrove swamps or in poorly protected communities where historical flooding records already exist, is to be blunt, stupid behaviour.
Being rich and entitled and arrogant, is even more foolhardy. Those that spend millions on property in locations like Malibu, should need to be self-insured. Building in canyons where drought combines with increased wind speeds and steep terrain, where low-humidity and drought occurs is, today, looking for trouble.
For those who still choose to live in these environments, there are mechanisms and systems that will help mitigate the risk, such as non-combustible construction, external structure sprinklers, fire deflectors, fire shutters and home coatings that offer intumescence. The problem is that jurisdictions are just as irrational as the homeowners and developers they court, allowing construction where no construction should be.
In some locations in Canada, as has been evidenced by the loss of whole communities like Lytton, British Columbia burned to the ground when climate change created unprecedented high temperatures, unheard of in Canada (52 C.) Fort McMurray, Slave Lake, Jasper, all in Alberta have seen massive damage and loss to wildfire.
It’s obviously way past time when ignorance can be used as an excuse. Today, if you want to build irresponsibly by design based on the known risks, then insurance companies and policy holders who choose to live in safer locations and take the necessary precautions should no longer under-right the losses and increases in insurance.
As an example of how massively climate change has affected wild land fires, in Canada in 2023, 17 million hectares or 42 million acres burned. Approximately nineteen times worse than on an average year! That is an area twice the size of Ireland.
Not climate change? Only a lunatic would believe that.
Insurance is a privilege, not a right. No insurance company should fear bankruptcy because it is required to protect irrational and ignorant behaviour.
Take responsibility for your own actions and be prepared to protect your property. Failure to do so is no one else’s fault, but yours.
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