Rich People in California Got Their Own Private Firefighters to Help Tackle Raging Wildfires
Typically, insurance is what you turn to to help cover costs after some sort of disaster strikes—say, for example, the catastrophic wildfires that swept through Northern California last month. But for some homeowners, their high-end insurance plans are offering something more than just a financial benefit. Instead, they’re offering a private forms of what is ordinarily a public utility: fire fighters.
As the Wall Street Journal reported this weekend, tens of thousands of people are currently enrolled in insurance programs which offer private firefighting crews. Some of these people used them during the California fires.
Per the Journal, these for-hire teams are deployed out of insurer-run command centers, and work in coordination with actual public fire crews:
The private crews seek to clear combustible items from a property: wood piles, outdoor furniture including cushions, weeds, straw floor mats and leaves in gutters. They may set up sprinklers with water available at the location, or with water they bring to the site, along with sprinkler lines and a generator to operate them.
Insurers sometimes spray a property’s perimeter with fire retardants, such as foams or gels. The may even spray the home itself, though they typically don’t take this step until a fire is closing in.
For the privilege of having their own private team of fire fighters working to save their property, policy holders can pay anywhere from “thousands of dollars in annual premiums with these firms to more than $100,000″ depending on the type and number of properties being covered. And, as the Journal notes: “the services mostly have been available at insurers of the well-to-do.”