Home insurance: mitigation
Make your home easier to insure.
Insurers look at how a home would stand up to embers and flames. These are the steps that can matter.
The home itself
The features insurers tend to ask about first. Each one helps keep embers out.
- A Class A fire-rated roof. Wood shake doesn't qualify.
- Ember-resistant vents with fine metal mesh
- Enclosed eaves
- Multi-pane windows, or shutters
- Noncombustible material on the bottom 6 inches of exterior walls
The space around it
What sits next to the house can matter as much as the house.
- A noncombustible zone in the first 5 feet around the house
- Vegetation and debris cleared from under decks
- Sheds and other combustible outbuildings at least 30 feet away
- Defensible space that meets state and local rules
- Spacing between plants and structures
Your community
Some insurers also look at what your neighborhood has done together.
- Neighborhood programs such as Firewise USA
- California's Fire Risk Reduction Communities, a recognition for local agencies that meet fire planning standards
California's Safer from Wildfires rules
Safer from Wildfires is California's list of home, yard, and community steps like the ones above. A state regulation requires insurers to recognize these steps in their pricing, and the Department of Insurance says each one can qualify for a discount.
How much a step counts depends on the insurer and the home. We'll tell you which steps your insurer recognizes, and we never promise a discount or an approval before an insurer confirms it.
Safer from Wildfires at the California Department of Insurance
Ask for your wildfire risk score
Insurers typically give a home a wildfire risk score. Under the Safer from Wildfires regulation, an insurer has to give you your property's score when you apply for a policy and before a renewal or non-renewal, and explain it.
If you believe the score is inaccurate, for example because you've finished wildfire safety work since it was calculated, you have the right to appeal it to the insurer. If the appeal is denied, you can ask the California Department of Insurance for help.
The Department of Insurance's questions and answers on the regulation
Check the state fire map, with one caution
The State Fire Marshal classifies land into Moderate, High, and Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones, and you can look up your address on its map.
CAL FIRE says the maps evaluate hazard, not risk. Insurers use their own risk models, which take in more factors, including how vulnerable a building is to fire. So the steps on this page can matter whatever zone your home is in.
Fire Hazard Severity Zones at the Office of the State Fire Marshal
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