Annie Tsai

No one should have to watch their home burn down. 

Of course, social media is going nuts on all sides, with celebrity footage and then commentary on celebrity homes burning down, to some pretty wild algorithm and mind-bending misinformation, to amazing camera footage of incredibly precise water drops putting out fires. You name it, it was filmed and shared online. 

Given all that consumers are being fed online, I know it’s hard to stay focused on this but it’s worth saying over and over again — for every celebrity that lost their multimillion dollar house in Southern California this week, thousands of hard-working regular people watched their lives crumble in those fires. And with the winds cycling up to 70 mph again this week, crews are anticipating more dangerous conditions. 

Pacific Palisades and its surrounding inland area alone represents over $13 billion in insurance liability exposure for the state of California’s FAIR Plan, which was created in 1968 to be a last resort for homeowners who could not find coverage after the likes of State Farm or others dropped their policies for “wildfire risk.” Important to note, in the last year alone, FAIR Plan liability exposure has increased just over 60% year over year to $484 billion as of September 2024. This is not surprising given so many were dropped by private insurers that in 2024 alone the FAIR Plan wrote 123,000 new policies. 

The current estimation for potential total insurance liability exposure for the Southern California fires is in the mid-$20 billion range, but no one will know until claims begin coming in what the true numbers end up being. Will this be a repeat of the Northridge earthquake in 1994 when the FAIR Plan had to draw funding from private insurance companies to pay claims? That is the question of the hour for everyone in the state who still has a home intact as this path inevitably leads to increased costs for most other policyholders in the state. 

Now back here in San Mateo County, we have been pretty lucky as far as catastrophic natural disasters go (knock on wood) with the most recent “most” catastrophic event being just over 35 years ago. I was 10 and had started watching the Oakland Athletics vs. San Francisco Giants in Game 3 of the 1989 World Series on the TV when our home in Millbrae started shaking from the Loma Prieta earthquake. At the time, I had never felt an earthquake before, but we had done enough drills at Meadows Elementary so I knew to run and duck and cover underneath the dining table. 

Pretty shaken up and with only landlines, radio, local cable TV and 911 at our disposal, my sister and I sat under the dining table and waited for our parents to get home from work as the aftershocks were steadily rolling through. The cat freaked out and was nowhere to be found. Dad came home with pizza. Thankfully, when all was said and done, our home was undamaged and we were thankful for it, especially given the level of damage and loss of life that had occurred in the San Francisco Marina District, Bay Bridge, Cypress Freeway and elsewhere around the Bay Area.

According to USGS, there is a 72% chance that the San Francisco Bay Area will experience an earthquake measuring magnitude 6.7, and a 51% chance for an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude between 2003-32. Loma Prieta was 6.9 (some report 7.0) on the Richter Scale to jog your memory. 

Are we ready? Are you ready?

Here’s where I make the plug. The California Residential Mitigation Program was formed in 2011 to offer grants of up to $3,000 (or up to $7,000 for income eligible) for raised foundation homes and up to $13,000 to retrofit soft-story homes so homeowners can retrofit their houses as a way to shore up the foundation and mitigate against earthquake damage. Since that time, the program has supported something like 23,000 home retrofits. Rebates are funded by either the state or the Federal Emergency Management Agency depending on the program into which you are accepted. We applied to the Earthquake Bolt and Brace program in 2023 and were lucky enough to be accepted via a drawing, with work completed in April 2024. The process was completely seamless from my purview as the contractor took care of nearly everything and the work took one day.

It’s an easy step toward mitigating earthquake damage by up to 65%, especially if you haven’t yet tacked on that very costly earthquake insurance rider to your policy. The Earthquake Bolt and Brace program for raised foundations application opens Jan. 15, where the Earthquake Soft-Story program for homes with living spaces over garages is open now. Learn more here.