Quartz, January 2025
Two weeks of raging fires, driven by winds of more than 100 miles per hour, have created a dystopian hellscape in drought-stricken northern Los Angeles — burning hundreds of thousands of acres, devouring more than 12,000 structures, and leaving at least two dozen people dead. Embers whooshed across the landscape, igniting trees, hedges and the roofs, decks, and sidings of wooden houses that had been built to survive earthquakes, but never a fire of these proportions.
Hundreds of small businesses have been vaporized, and thousands of people have been forced to flee from the potential path of the fires. While weather forecasters say there won’t be significant rainfall until next month, one thing we know now: While the physical damage will be calculated in tens of billions of dollars and the economic damage in the hundreds of billions, only a fraction of that is covered by insurance. Yet even that fraction is expected to force massive changes on the insurance market, in California and across the U.S., and change the face of Los Angeles.
