Residents of the state have filed many thousands of insurance claims from the Camp Fire.
Last year’s record-breaking California wildfires have now generated $11.4 billion in insurance claims. This has made the fires in that month, which ripped their way through Butte County and Southern California, some of the most expensive the state has ever experienced.
The Camp Fire killed 86 people and essentially burned the town of Paradise right off the map.
Three quarters of the losses from California wildfires in November 2018 were the result of the Camp Fire. Eighty six people were killed by the blaze and almost 14,000 homes in and around the town of Paradise were completely destroyed. The majority of the rest of the wildfire damage in the state was from the Woolsey Fire, which burned along the Malibu coastline. It killed three people and ruined hundreds of homes.
The California Department of Insurance recently released these figures as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. They only further placed the spotlight on the struggles many residents and businesses are facing as they attempt to recover in the wake of the devastation. Insurance companies have been processing a record-topping 46,000 payment applications. This is the outcome of entire communities having burned down and working to rebuild once again.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Faces several liability lawsuits after being blamed for the California wildfires.
The PG&E was already contending with a number of large liability suits after having been found responsible for a number of wildfires in 2017. It is now under investigation regarding the role it played in the 2018 fires, as well. Large insurers have chosen not to wait until the official results to the investigations and have already filed their liability suits against the electricity provider.
PG&E recently announced that it is seeking bankruptcy protection. According to Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, who spoke at a news conference at the start of the week, if the utility company goes bankrupt, this could restrict the size of its obligation to cover the losses.
That said, Lara expects that all the California wildfire victims will be fully compensated for their insured losses. “Regardless of who’s at fault, we are confident that insurers have the money to make people whole,” he said.
