Estimates of the cost of the recent L.A. fires runs as high as $275 billion. Given the scale of the disaster and the cost of real estate in the region, that isn't surprising.
But one has to question whether it's actually worth rebuilding, given the risk of anything built just burning down again....?
I guess that for a while at least there simply won't be sufficient vegetation in those regions which have suffered the most damage to be burned out again, the roots the last fires took aren't going to be available for a while.
However after five or ten years if we have wetter winters and no fires over summer, there may well be sufficient foliage to create sufficient fire risk again.
Maybe LA has an effective nature-management plan in place to mitigate the risk... but I don't know if that's possible... trees are going to grow back where they once were, and it's not possible I don't think to have sufficient bare earth to prevent tiny embers from travelling to start fires in other areas, you'd need such an astronomically huge bare-earth area in a dry-summer, high-wind situation that wouldn't be economically viable.
But it sounds like rebuilding is going to go ahead anyways...
The crazy insurance policies means US taxpayers bail out LA homeowners....
Insurance premiums on housing in California don't truly reflect the risk of total loss due to fire damage. California has for years applied controls which forbid insurance companies using climate modelling to calculate 'catastrophic risk', they can only use historical data.
As a result insurance companies have had to resort to restricting pay-outs as part of their policy, having capped maximums, which means that home owners are liable for a hefty chunk of the cost of rebuilding their homes after a fire.
However, The Federal Emergency Management Agency covers losses if homeowners are “under-insured”, and as a result taxpayers the nation over are going to be covering some of the costs of rebuilding those L.A. homes, some of which are going to be hefty 6 figure sums. Although in most cases the bail-out isn't full, so the average homeowner is going to see their debt increase.
Final thoughts.
So is it worth rebuilding, well if you're a homeowner and the FED is going subsidise your rebuild, then why the fuck not.
Of course if America was a proper free-market economy this wouldn't be viable.
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For decades, coastal homeowners in places like Malibu have tried to keep the hoi polloi away from what many of them consider to be their beaches, even though under the law the beaches are open to the public. Maybe those properties in particular should not be rebuilt. But inland properties will probably be needed for housing.
And with lots of bare earth, they’re be inviting having huge mudslides affecting other built up areas.
It's such a warped use of shared resources...
They have to face up to climate change altering the risks. Fuckwit Trump may be in the pay of the oil companies, but the facts are established. The current wild UK weather may also be a sign of things to come. Building in an area prone to fire will not end well. It will end up with people not being able to get insurance as the companies won't be viable otherwise.
I know some people hate the term 'woke', but we need to wake up!
I think reform of the insurance thing is already underway... and yes they need to face facts but the rich don't care about climate change they can afford to defend themselves against it...
This isn't just affecting the rich and they may find that others object to their indifference.