Colorado could become the first state to force property insurers to incorporate wildfire mitigation steps into insurance prices and coverage decisions.
Colorado’s insurance commissioner is drafting legislation to help residents and businesses get and pay for coverage as insurance has become increasingly scarce and costly across the state.
The effort comes as officials nationwide are scrutinizing the insurance industry’s reliance on “catastrophe models” to measure wildfire risk and decide whether to cover a property and at what cost.
But the models do not reliably account for the millions or billions of dollars spent by households, communities and governments to reduce potential wildfire damage, said Michael Conway, Colorado’s top insurance regulator. The industry itself has urged mitigation to reduce wildfire risk and — in theory — increase insurability.
