Insurance companies send crews to protect homes
The AP:
Insurance companies began sending crews to wildfires around 2006, said Paul Broyles, former head of fire operations at the National Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates federal firefighting efforts from Boise, Idaho. Land use changes in the past two decades have allowed more homes to be built in or near wildfire-prone areas, prompting the insurance companies to offer such a service, said Michael Barry of the New York-based industry funded Insurance Information Institute.
…
“It’s an added layer of protection for our clients,” [Kevin Fuhriman of Chubb Personal Insurance] said. “From a business perspective? It’s an extremely advantageous business proposition.”
Completely privatized firefighting is an exceptionally terrible idea for a lot of reasons. But in addition to a public fire department? It kind of strikes me as fundamentally unfair that one should be more protected from having their life destroyed solely by dint of having more money, but not really in any way I can argue.
Maybe we could just stop cutting fire budgets in states.