Ventura County Star | November 15, 2024
Editorial: A product we cannot do without
In mid-October, three weeks before a disaster struck the heart of Ventura County with the speed of a roaring wind, a town hall meeting was held in Thousand Oaks to discuss what everyone knew was an ongoing crisis — the availability of fire insurance for California homeowners.
The Mountain Fire has again underscored why a functioning insurance market is essential. It destroyed at least 130 structures, most of them homes, and damaged another 88. As inspections continue, those numbers could grow.
As bad as the damage has been, it won’t come close to the destruction of the 2018 Woolsey Fire or the 2017 Thomas Fire, each of which leveled more than 1,000 structures in Ventura County and beyond. Still, the insured losses could reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, given that the tally from the Thomas Fire approached $2.5 billion.
For those who suffered losses, recovery will be a long and expensive process, even with the help of insurance. But without insurance, things would be much, much worse.