As fires become more frequent and expensive, some insurers pay for private firefighting crews
By Mark Maremont of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"[former Olympic gold-medal sprinter Michael] Johnson pays about $5,000 a year to lease the system, a pump-and-hose apparatus that can draw large amounts of water from his swimming pool to help fight the progress of wildfires and backstop the city’s municipal firefighters and hydrants.
Just as Johnson and his wife started hosing down their property in hopes of preventing any embers from igniting, a man sent by the system’s supplier, Fire Defense Service, showed up to help them. The Johnsons soon evacuated, believing they would never see their house again. But the man from Fire Defense stayed behind to help protect their house and a neighbor’s who was also a client."
"former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rick Caruso, who used a team of six private firefighters to save his high-end shopping center in Pacific Palisades, while nearby properties were destroyed. Caruso defended his use of the crew in an interview with the Journal. “It freed up resources of the city to help protect the neighboring area,” he said.
While there are some firefighters-for-rent battling the Los Angeles blazes for the well-heeled, most so-called private firefighters aren’t hired by homeowners or business owners, but by insurance companies.
As fires have become more frequent and expensive for insurers, some have taken matters into their own hands by paying for private firefighting crews. Insurers, including Chubb and USAA, feature the private-firefighter service in homeowner policies they offer in fire-prone areas across the U.S.
The insurer-paid firefighters say they don’t favor more expensive properties during a fire, but give priority to client properties that are most at risk, whatever their value. They generally don’t directly battle blazes. Instead, their crews try to get to client homes ahead of a fire, sealing off vents to keep embers from getting in, moving combustibles away from the structure, and sometimes spraying fire-retardant gel on the house.
As these private crews hopscotch among neighborhoods with client maps in hand, they bypass homes without such coverage."
"Wildfire Defense Systems in Bozeman, Mont. . . . has responded to more than 1,400 fires, and sometimes has thousands of insured properties to service in any given incident."
"teams typically spend 30 to 60 minutes helping make a home fire-resistant before moving on."
"Although his teams can’t always get to a property in time, when they do, the company says, more than 99% of structures end up surviving."
"Fire Defense Service’s pool-pump system was developed in part by a Los Angeles Fire Department firefighter, Jim Prabhu, who realized during past fires that pools were often an untapped source of water equivalent to dozens of 500-gallon firetrucks. Prabhu spent much of the past week on the front lines—for the city—fighting the Palisades fire.
Private firefighting crews “are additive” to publicly paid firefighters, said James Wessel, CEO of Capstone Fire & Safety Management, a private firefighting outfit in Escondido, Calif., that works all over the western U.S."
[there is] "a 2018 California law requiring them to check in with authorities, seek permission to use official radio frequencies, limit their work as much as possible to prefire treatment of structures, and refrain from using flashing lights or decals indicating they are with official emergency services."
Related post:
Private fire fighting (2020) It discusses what a public good is and whether or not fire fighting fits the definition which includes non-rivalrous consumption & high exclusion costs.
Also see While California Fires Rage, the Rich Hire Private Firefighters: A small but growing number of wealthy people are hiring their own teams by Ethan Varian of The NY Times from 2019.
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