Insurance, house fire and health - countries UK and USA compared

Fire Problem 

January 9th and 10th 2025 saw wildfires destroying areas of Los Angeles on west coast USA. I saw news reels showing the destruction of homes, restaurants, and a gas station (which in the UK would be called a garage, with petrol pumps). 

Fire was not a once in a thousand years unexpected event. We have known about the spread of fire since the Great Fire of London, for which there is a monomuent you can see in London, where the fire started in a bakery. Wooden buildings were built close together. Fire just ran along rows of houses from one to another.

I saw something similar happen to the house opposite. A man was gardening. He dropped the flaming weedkiller on the ground to answer the phone or the front doorbell. The weedkiller flame or spark ignited low plants. The flames or sparks reached the row of trees along the fence. The flame ran horizontally along the trees.   

Fortunately, the anxious neighbours in their back kitchen had seen flames near their window and later shoot along their fence and had called the fire brigade before I saw flames appearing above the garage, and thought, oh, a bonfire, wait a minute, that's above the garage which is taller than a six foot man, that's a nine foot high flame right beside a garage with a car in it or beside it, don't wait a minute, call the fire brigade now.

Afterwards the lady fire officer told me that she and her crew arrived just in time. In another fire minutes both houses would have been alight and gone.

So the fire brigades as well as insurance deal with fires in an area and know about fire worldwide and through history. Every househoder landowner landlord and tenant hotel management and hotel guest needs to know what precautions could and should be taken to prevent or to tackle or escape from fire, flood and burglary / invasion by burglars or hooligans or war.

Fire Insurance

Fire insurers (as well as governments doing worst case scenario planning) know what fire prevention measures are taken in each area, the likelihood of fire, and the cost of compensation, for rehousing and rebuilding.

 Home owners complained that a major insurer failed to renew insurance cover for homes and buildings, because a legal cap on the amount the insurance could charge. This was supposed to protect the consumer. However, the insurance companies apparently saw that they risked going broke because of the hire risk of fire. 

Yet some islands of unburned building remained. Brick chimneys standing like towers over the ash of woodden dwellings. The entire Getty museum estate with fire up to its gates.

What was different about the safe areas? Apparently As far as I can tell, precautions are well known but not budgeted for.

Building Construction And Reconstruction

What was not done? 

1 To prevent dry burning bushes by cutting,, or controlled burning of bushes which would catch fire naturally, from sparks from other fires (or from arson). 

2 Water Storage For Prevention

Houses were built of wood, which is good for resisitng earthquakes, but bad for fires. If you build rows of houses together that saves on heating but prevents access to the back and means fire spreads unless the construction is fireproof. If you build out garages to adjoin adjacent buildings, that could make a domino effect for fires, and a gap which is too narrow means you cannot repaint to remove insects animals, humans who fall, work there, trapped cats, mould from leaking gutters, nor provide a fire break.

3 

4 Affordable Insurance

Apparently, the government's laws, designed to protect the consumer, put a cap on the price or percentage increase of insurance in order to make it affordable by the consumer so that people did not risk going without insurance. 

Unfortunately, it seems that the insurance copanies calculated that the see saw balance tipped so that the income would not cover the outgoings in a catastrophe (which was not preventable because the govenment had cut funding of services such as fire brigades, trained officers - bringing in untrained people from ethnic minorities or majorities to provide them with employment and water storage.

Insurance companies are required to hold enough money from income to pay out for scattered or grouped disasters. They might write in clauses warning that they will not (and cannot) pay out for major catastrophic events (such as war and riots) which would require more financial compensation than has been paid in that year (minus the payment for the insurance companies' staff, offices, and shareholders dividends).

Possible Solutions - Water Storage

If water was not stored, use sea water. 

Why was sea water not brought in? 

At first it was. This works in small scale fires if the winds are blowing smoke away from the approaching planes. 

However, in a major fire with huge amounts of smoke blowing towards the incoming planes the pilots cannot operate and even if they want to take the risk they are banned for their own safety and the safety of the aircraft (and those below in the event of a crashed plane) and the cost of more compensation for injured firefighter pilots and loss of firefighters or pilots.

That leaves us with two options for the future.

1 Water Storage

Every house should have water storage and be warned at fire risk times to store water and to water gardens and bushes. 

But you get hose pipe bans during hot times of drought. Yes. So you have to cut down un-needed bushes.

But conservationists say that animals and insects live there. 

Also in London, our local professional gardener, Martin, complained about people concreting over front gardens to make driveways. Cynics, or kind people, might say, that means less work available for gardeners. That affects him. But he is already in high demand. 

Water Drainage - Flood Risks And Prevention

What affects everybody is the risk of flooding, made worse by concrete and roads, because water cannot sink into the ground but flows downhill. It pools above the damp proof course, a horizontal black line which looks like slate between the bricks about a foot off the ground, which you can see on blocks of flats. 

I was sent videos of flooding in Northwood at Sentis Court. It also affects bungalows (such as Hillview Road in Hatch End, and businesses at the bottom of sloping roads (such as the Broadway, (the high street, which American call main street) in Hatch End. So, this could affect housing complexes and hillside streets worldwide. 

Eveything requires the right balance. Too much water (dams not repaired or overflowing) and you get flooding. Too little water, you get fires or cannot put out fires.

Insurance Options

The state (of California) could, and in my opinion should, offer last resort insurance the way that the NHS (National Health Service) in the UK operates. The UK government taxes your income (National Health Insurance contribution) and provides basic health care.

 If every state in the USA including California did this, then each state would take an amount to insure your home and provide health care. The state would also be responsible for rehousing and rebuilding homes for the homeless. 

But the hospitals in the UK are only where the state builds them, and they want big hospitals in one place near cities, so local residents are often heard of running cmapiaagns to prevent th closure of smaller hospitals which the state or local council wants to centralise. Similarly, the state (in Singapore Housing Development Board, HDB for short) provides homes on cheaper land out of town, and sometimes on flood risk land. So, hospitals and homes, are only where the state builds them. (And where government decides to build them.) 

The same applies to local government and commercial and individual decisions. In an ideal world, every individual has the money and sense to take good precautions. Also, and so does the govenment. No ignorance, risk-taking, irresponsiblity, corruption, greed.

If only.

Lessons Learned

Ghetty Museum

1 Concrete Building

Not wood, thick concrete walls.

2 Sprinklers outside. (The Ghetty Museum can't have water inside all over watercolours and oil paintings. 

Modern hotels are different. They have sprinklers to protect people. They don't have heirlooms. Minimal objects, to prevent theft. Furnishings changed every three years anyway because of wear and tear and to update.)

3 Evacuation

When a fire is nearby, museums like the Ghetty get fewer visitors. They can send away ticket selling staff. 

They could just keep a minimum of outdoor firefighters, mostly daytime only, keeping watch. Already outdoors, they could escape in a hurry.

Onlookers From Afar

Those of us far away can only look on with horror at disasters. No. We can learn. To prevent disaster happening to us. (Global warming. Water storage. Budgets for fire fighting. Meritocracy for recruiting firefighters. Insurance.)

And to step in with advice, and financial and equipment help. And sympathy. 

Travel

Meanwhile, for travellers, your travel to Los Angeles or through Los Angeles might be disrupted.

May the rest of 2025 bring better news for all of us worldwide. 

Useful Websites

Daily Mail article on Ghetty Museum

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