RPF0494-Planning_for_Wildfires
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00:00:51.700 | Men and Clothes. Today's question comes in from Aaron in California. Hi, Joshua. I love
00:00:57.940 | listening to your podcast. I know you've had a few episodes recently in reaction to current
00:01:01.600 | events. As a resident of the Bay Area, I hope you could do an episode in relation to wildfires.
00:01:07.100 | Well, Erica, I'll give it a crack. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated
00:01:28.900 | to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live
00:01:32.400 | a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or
00:01:36.660 | less. Today we will tackle this wildfire topic. I'll do the best that I can with the goal
00:01:42.740 | of helping you to preserve your life, your property, and the life and property of others.
00:01:51.500 | If you're anything like me, I would imagine that you have watched with great interest
00:02:02.420 | and fascination at the events of the California wildfires of the past few days. Certainly
00:02:10.180 | extremely, extremely destructive. Just to watch the fire spreading all throughout parts
00:02:15.440 | of California. Many, many fires and the stories that are coming out are just incredible. The
00:02:21.380 | videos that are coming out in our modern era are really, really stunning. Really, really
00:02:28.020 | stunning. If you're interested, I've just shared a number of ones that I found on my
00:02:31.620 | Twitter feed, twitter.com/joshuasheats. You can go and find some curated links there to
00:02:37.980 | videos of people who've been interacting with these wildfires.
00:02:42.060 | So in the course of today's show, I'm going to try to give you some helpful ideas and
00:02:45.500 | suggestions that will be broadly applicable. There are a lot of factors that would deeply
00:02:53.340 | affect your experience with a wildfire. Big difference between being part of a suburb
00:02:58.500 | versus being out in a rural area. But I think that there are some lessons that all of us
00:03:03.140 | could learn from watching the news and reading about some of the stories because in some
00:03:09.420 | ways disasters are unique and wildfires are certainly unique. Get to that in a moment.
00:03:14.980 | But in some ways disasters are common. There are many parallels between some of the things
00:03:22.020 | I've done shows on in past days, preparing for a flood or preparing for a hurricane.
00:03:27.260 | In many ways, these things have parallels. When you boil it all down in the end, basically
00:03:32.700 | you're trying to make sure that you ensure physical safety for lives. That's the most
00:03:38.340 | important thing. Ensure physical safety for you and for your family, your loved ones,
00:03:43.380 | your pets, and then to ensure physical safety for property whenever possible. And so we
00:03:48.860 | can take mitigation plans and do our best to protect our property. There are different
00:03:54.180 | techniques that we can use to protect property. And then if we suffer the loss of property,
00:04:00.060 | then we want to make sure that we attend to the human needs, the human comforts, and that
00:04:04.340 | we attend to figuring out the best way to get the property reestablished. I mean that's
00:04:10.380 | basically the function and flow of it. And in that way, all disasters are common. Most
00:04:16.900 | of the time, you're going to stay put right where you are unless the disaster will cause
00:04:21.220 | you to be unsafe where you are. And then your number one goal is to get out. You want to
00:04:25.860 | make sure that you get out with the supplies, as many supplies as possible to sustain you
00:04:30.260 | and your family in as much comfort as possible and as much safety as possible. And then you
00:04:34.980 | want to protect your property to the greatest degree possible. Sometimes that means loading
00:04:38.420 | the property up and getting it out of the danger zone. Sometimes that just means putting
00:04:42.140 | things in place to protect it from an inundation with a flood or a fire, et cetera.
00:04:48.420 | So in that way, we can learn some lessons. And then I'll try to share some other things
00:04:53.000 | that are specific to fires. Now, wildfires are very different or are different in many
00:04:58.760 | ways than home fires. I've done quite a bit of thinking and research around home fire
00:05:03.980 | safety and I believe that it's an important area of focus for us. There are very few disasters
00:05:12.800 | more devastating than a complete and total destructive fire, whether that's a home fire,
00:05:19.000 | somebody dropped a cigarette in their bed and lit the bed, lit the house on fire or
00:05:21.920 | cooking fire or something that spread, or whether it was the cause of a wildfire. You
00:05:25.600 | look at a house that has been burned down and it's very easy for everything to be lost.
00:05:31.760 | And then whatever does remain sometimes is just so inundated with smoke that it's destroyed.
00:05:39.040 | It's very common. Even if I think of the second most catastrophic or the third most catastrophic
00:05:44.840 | thing, something like a tornado would be a very catastrophic natural disaster. But oftentimes
00:05:50.760 | you may have things in the basement that will survive the tornado or maybe you have things
00:05:55.520 | that are in a safe that will survive the tornado. Well, the fire doesn't discriminate. You've
00:05:59.680 | got a long and hot fire and your fireproof safe doesn't do any good. When the fire is
00:06:04.800 | long enough and hot enough, it'll destroy everything inside of it, no matter how good
00:06:08.320 | your safe is. If there are no firefighters coming who can put the fire out in an hour
00:06:14.280 | or two, even the best of fireproof safes will give way and the contents will be destroyed.
00:06:20.840 | Even something like a flood, floods are devastating because they can really ruin everything. But
00:06:24.560 | in many ways, if the first floor of your house floods, maybe there are still items on the
00:06:28.360 | second floor that are okay. Or maybe the flood inundation comes in slowly enough that you
00:06:33.800 | can take your property and move it to higher ground or put it into plastic Tupperware containers.
00:06:40.440 | Of course, I'm being optimistic, but just demonstrating the point that I can't think
00:06:45.000 | of anything more destructive than a fire. And then the speed with which a fire comes
00:06:49.240 | is especially destructive. If you're dealing with a home fire, something that just happened,
00:06:57.800 | electrical wire shorted out in the attic and caught the insulation on fire, you got to
00:07:01.400 | get out. And so it's a matter of, we got to go. And these wildfires, one of the most awful
00:07:07.160 | things about the current wildfires has been the speed with which they have spread. Headline
00:07:12.400 | from Monday, October 16, 2017, Wall Street Journal put it this way, "Wildfire victims
00:07:19.060 | had only seconds to make choices." Sub headline, "California's deadliest blazes advanced
00:07:25.560 | 100 yards every three seconds." That is incredible. I mean, you put yourself in a situation like
00:07:34.400 | that, from end zone to end zone on a football field in three seconds. Things are moving
00:07:43.160 | fast. Understatement of the day right there. We're going to save the topic of home fires
00:07:47.360 | for another occasion today, talk about wildfires. And one quick caveat for you, I have no personal
00:07:55.120 | experience in dealing with wildfires. I've had an interest in it, especially since watching
00:07:59.600 | the devastation of the Fort McMurray wildfires last summer up in Canada. And so I've taken
00:08:04.120 | an interest in studying the subject. But if I get anything wrong, if there's anything
00:08:08.680 | that you observe from those of you who are in fire country that I got wrong, please correct
00:08:13.960 | me on it. But I think that I've got – I wouldn't be recording the show if I didn't
00:08:17.800 | believe that I have some useful ideas and commentary to make that will help you, even
00:08:22.980 | due to my own personal lack of experience. Thing one, get out. Now, we've talked about
00:08:29.120 | this and it's complicated in a wildfire. But one of the most valuable aspects of preparedness
00:08:35.200 | that you can make for yourself is make a plan to get out of the danger zone, to get out
00:08:40.040 | of the problem area. If you can simply physically not be where problems are, you'll have a
00:08:46.920 | much easier time surviving personally and the care for your life and the life of those
00:08:52.080 | you love is the most important thing. And you'll have a much easier time recovering.
00:08:56.840 | It's very hard to recover from a disaster when you've gone through it. It's much easier
00:09:00.520 | to come in on the other side when – and try to pick up the pieces than it is to make
00:09:04.760 | it through and then try to pick up the pieces. And so your goal is if there's a problem,
00:09:10.260 | to get out early and not be one of those who films a video that becomes famous on YouTube.
00:09:16.440 | Now, this is complicated by the way that wildland fires work. Many people may live on the perimeter
00:09:25.980 | of a wildfire and they may live in a state of uncertainty for many weeks. Wildfires seem
00:09:34.800 | to have – sometimes they have an ability to contain them but then sometimes a quick
00:09:38.420 | change in the weather may make all of the difference. And so I'm not pretending that
00:09:43.160 | the simplistic advice of get out and be fine with being gone for all of fire season, it
00:09:47.960 | just doesn't work. But it is important that you pay careful attention and if you see danger
00:09:53.120 | or you see prospective danger, start making preparations to get out.
00:09:59.320 | When people are living in a zone of danger like a wildfire all around that may affect
00:10:04.680 | their community, different people have different responses. But the best response for you is
00:10:08.320 | at the very least to do planning and preparation. Now, it may not be appropriate for you to
00:10:13.560 | evacuate two weeks – for two weeks. That may not be doable. That may not be appropriate.
00:10:18.880 | But at least you can go ahead and make preparation. One thing that all of us need to have prepared
00:10:24.200 | at all times is an evacuation checklist. We've thought through some of the biggest decisions
00:10:30.680 | in advance. For example, many people are flummoxed when faced with the need to evacuate from
00:10:36.880 | their home to their own safety. They don't know what to take with them. So it's good
00:10:40.760 | and important for us to have a list of what are we going to take with us. If you have
00:10:45.480 | family members, husband, wife, children, you want to make sure that that list of things
00:10:49.960 | to take with us when possible is divided by who can load this up, who can get these certain
00:10:56.120 | things, so we don't miss something important. How are we going to get out? Do we have a
00:11:00.080 | car? Do we have a van? Do we have a trailer? How much stuff can we get out? Many people,
00:11:04.320 | if you're facing fire, you should seriously consider which items are going to be the most
00:11:08.400 | important if my house burns down and can I get them out of here physically. If you're
00:11:13.980 | leaving at the last moment and you've got a small car to get into, you're not going
00:11:17.040 | to get much out. But if you've got time, perhaps it'd be worth it to load up a couple of things
00:11:23.000 | that are larger but very valuable to you. Where will you go and what route will you
00:11:27.760 | take to get there? This needs to be thought of in advance. In a previous show, I talked
00:11:32.160 | about looking at a map and choosing directions and a few places to go in all four cardinal
00:11:38.960 | directions. You can't choose which direction a fire is going to come from, although you
00:11:42.600 | can study in advance and understand the likely movement of the fire based upon the wind patterns
00:11:47.080 | and the changes in terrain. But you can't choose which direction it's certainly going
00:11:52.040 | to come from and the wind may change. And so you need to have potential destinations
00:11:57.000 | to go and stay with friends or families or at the very least to have a destination of
00:12:01.400 | a hotel in all four directions. So if you choose a hotel that's an hour and then maybe
00:12:07.040 | one that's two or three hours away from your house in all four directions, just choose
00:12:10.800 | a reasonable hotel and then have a goal of having that hotel's phone number written down
00:12:16.760 | so that you can quickly call and make a reservation. That's very helpful so that you have an idea
00:12:20.880 | and a destination. So in a situation like this, when someone has thought through in
00:12:25.560 | advance, "If I need to go, what do I need to take with me? How are we going to gather
00:12:30.280 | these things together? How are we going to leave? And what are some of the routes and
00:12:34.600 | where will we go?" If you've thought through some of these big questions, then you're
00:12:38.680 | not going to be caught so flat-footed when the disaster comes. And you can look at it
00:12:43.040 | and make your assessments at the time and not be quite so worried about it.
00:12:50.500 | You should maintain for yourself a checklist of the most important things. And ideally,
00:12:55.400 | these important things should always be kept in a central location where you know, "I
00:13:02.520 | can grab all of these things quickly." It's one thing to have a week or two weeks of warning
00:13:07.260 | on a fire. It's another thing to be awakened by a fireman banging on the door saying, "You
00:13:13.560 | got to get out now." I recommend that you keep either possibly a file system, a foldering
00:13:20.120 | system, a bag of some kind handy where you can quickly and easily make sure that you
00:13:26.720 | have everything that's important, your cash, cash reserves, currency reserves, checkbooks,
00:13:32.680 | banking information, credit cards, the backups of your computer files and hard drives, all
00:13:39.640 | of your proofs of insurance, your insurance paperwork, your deeds to your house, anything
00:13:45.800 | to keep your phones going and other things like that. And then all the physical things
00:13:50.880 | that you need, prescription medications, everything loaded up, eyeglasses for those of you who
00:13:54.640 | wear eyeglasses. Make sure that you have all of those things prepared and planned and that
00:13:59.200 | you have, that you keep a list of them at the very least, a list so that you can gather
00:14:04.360 | them quickly. And don't waste the time of preparation. If there's a fire coming and
00:14:08.960 | you haven't done that, then go ahead and get those things together.
00:14:12.840 | Once you have those most essential things gathered, if you're facing danger and you
00:14:17.200 | have advance warning, go ahead and get together the most important things, the mementos, the
00:14:21.560 | things that aren't going to sustain your life but that you'd be devastated to lose and pack
00:14:25.840 | them up, pack the car. Much easier to pack the car and have it all loaded up and then
00:14:30.920 | have to unpack it than to have to hit the road without those important things and come
00:14:34.680 | back to a flattened house.
00:14:35.840 | Now, in just a moment, I'll talk about planning for having to get out in a hurry when you've
00:14:41.240 | got 30 or 60 or 90 seconds of warning, when you got to go right away and what to do to
00:14:47.280 | be prepared for that.
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00:18:05.640 | Now let's talk about what to do if you got to get out in seconds. The only way to be
00:18:09.400 | prepared to evacuate your home in a few minutes is to have the most important things pre-packed.
00:18:20.180 | Every member of your family should, including your pets, every member of your family should
00:18:24.200 | at all times have a bag or a suitcase, a backpack, a duffel bag, a suitcase, even a box of some
00:18:31.080 | kind that's packed with the basic things that would be necessary to sustain themselves,
00:18:36.080 | to sustain you, and to sustain each of them for at least about three days. If you go on
00:18:40.360 | the federal disaster websites, you'll find lists at the FEMA disaster websites of what
00:18:45.860 | you should keep in a kit, of a 72-hour kit. Commonly in the online world, they call it
00:18:52.040 | a bug-out bag if you got to bug out, if you got to get out in a moment.
00:18:56.200 | Now the contents that you should put in such a kit will vary. The importance of the contents
00:19:00.860 | will vary depending on what type of emergency is forcing you to leave. For example, if you
00:19:05.880 | are fleeing from a wildfire that is attacking your neighborhood, the most important content
00:19:14.400 | of your 72-hour bag is going to be your backups of your electronic documents. I recommend
00:19:23.680 | to you that you make a digital backup and archive of all of your most important documents.
00:19:29.840 | You can do this easily if you have a scanner or have access to a scanner. Many people have
00:19:35.220 | a scanner that they can use at work. That would be fine. Or if you just simply use your
00:19:39.600 | phone and install a scanning app on your phone and scan the pictures of your most important
00:19:44.720 | documents. For example, birth certificates, marriage licenses, all of the insurance information,
00:19:52.120 | copies of your insurance policies, or at the very least, you should maintain an Excel document,
00:19:58.440 | a spreadsheet that contains all of the numbers of the insurance policies, contact information,
00:20:04.040 | etc. All of these items need to be prepared in advance. I recommend that you save the
00:20:10.120 | files, that you create a directory, you should create an Excel spreadsheet that has a listing
00:20:15.360 | of all of your property, serial numbers for anything that you own that has serial numbers
00:20:19.480 | on it. Again, bank account information, login information, that file should be carefully
00:20:26.360 | encrypted. It should be stored in an encrypted vault on a memory stick of some kind, SD
00:20:33.760 | card works well or a USB memory stick works well. You should take very, very careful with
00:20:41.360 | that information. If I were you, I would recommend using an encrypted file within an encrypted
00:20:45.800 | container within an encrypted drive. You've got triple encryption. Now, if that's beyond
00:20:50.400 | your skill level with encryption protocols, then simplify that and do something a little
00:20:56.840 | bit easier for you. But that information needs to be protected. On there, you should have
00:21:01.960 | photographs of all of your property, especially anything that you're going to need to demonstrate
00:21:06.880 | for your insurance claims. So you should photograph your property. You should regularly do a video
00:21:14.560 | tour of your home to demonstrate the value of the property that's in your home. It's
00:21:18.680 | not unusual for people to accumulate tens of thousands of dollars of furniture and other
00:21:22.760 | property and you may need that when it comes time to filing your home insurance claim.
00:21:27.800 | You should keep on there current photos of your family members. And this file and this
00:21:31.760 | drive, it should be duplicated. One should be stored with you. One should be stored in
00:21:36.880 | an off-site location, in a secure location, but completely off-site, whether that is something
00:21:42.520 | that you have access to, for example, a safety deposit box that you maintain, or whether
00:21:46.920 | that's in somebody else's safety deposit box or somebody else that maybe somebody else
00:21:52.020 | in their personal safe. It should be stored in another location as well in case you can't
00:21:57.000 | get out or you can't get it out. But that should be in your bag. That will have applicability
00:22:01.240 | long – in many things more than just in a fire. But it will come into place in a fire.
00:22:06.920 | For example, one thing that I recommend is that you maintain in there relatively current
00:22:10.680 | photos of every member of your family in case that photo needed to be put on a missing persons
00:22:16.560 | poster. One of the major challenges right now in California is there are, in my memory,
00:22:22.720 | over 40 people confirmed dead, but there are about 150-ish people who are missing right
00:22:27.680 | now. And hopefully most of those people will show up, but it's valuable to have a photo
00:22:33.040 | that can be distributed carefully. And it's nice to have one that is just this very simple
00:22:37.080 | photo of your children in case they were ever missing. And it's nice to have that available
00:22:41.280 | to you. So very quickly you can pass that along to the authorities who will then distribute
00:22:45.460 | it to help you to get your children back. It takes time to go through and put these
00:22:50.400 | things together. But once you've done it, for the most part, you've got it.
00:22:56.400 | And so here is a list of things that I recommend that you consider and make sure that you have
00:23:02.080 | for the future. So information such as social security cards, copies of your driver's
00:23:06.840 | licenses, birth certificates, copies of your passports, marriage certificates. And of course
00:23:12.440 | here I'm talking about both physical copies ready to go in a moment's notice, but also
00:23:17.040 | digital backups in case your physical copies are burned up. Records on all of your financial
00:23:21.920 | accounts, all of your bank, investment, credit cards, loan accounts, all of the information
00:23:27.720 | on how to access those accounts, a backup of your password database should be included
00:23:33.400 | there, phone numbers and account numbers for all of your accounts. Health records, very
00:23:39.120 | important and valuable to have. So that's immunization records or information on your
00:23:43.120 | allergies, dietary restrictions, current medications or past medical and surgical treatments. That's
00:23:49.600 | particularly valuable. Pet information, descriptions of your pet, photos of your pets, contact
00:23:55.880 | information for your vet, any medical notes or medications that they may be on. Listings
00:24:00.320 | of all of your property, information on your car, your home, any kind of home inventory
00:24:05.520 | items, photos, a video tour is also excellent and valuation estimates can be useful as well.
00:24:12.920 | Insurance documents, all of the insurance documents and especially having those things
00:24:16.880 | with you because sometimes if your home's burned down, you're going to be filing insurance
00:24:20.840 | claims from a hotel room. Copies of your wills and medical directives and then any other
00:24:27.080 | valuable things like photographs or other things that can be digitized. In today's world
00:24:32.840 | where storage has become so cheap, there's no reason not to digitize all of your important
00:24:37.920 | and valuable photos and keep those on a secured computer drive in an off-site location backed
00:24:44.680 | up.
00:24:45.680 | So if you got to get out quick, grab your bags, get in the car and go. Now a couple
00:24:49.920 | things that are important. Hopefully your car needs to work and this is one of the reasons
00:24:54.200 | why as with anything, we need to give good attention to our vehicles, make sure they're
00:24:59.240 | in good working order. Nothing like a good disaster movie when the car is sitting there
00:25:03.720 | and not starting. Dante's Peak was one of my favorite years ago and I think there was
00:25:10.720 | a scene like that in there. The mountain is blowing up, got to get off the volcano mountain
00:25:15.080 | and of course the cars don't want to start when they need to. So keep the car going and
00:25:19.040 | make sure there's always gas in the car. That's one of the reasons why I recommend making
00:25:22.520 | a habit to keep the car at least always a third or half full and make sure that you
00:25:26.720 | have enough gas in the car in case you ever need to go.
00:25:30.240 | One interesting story, let me read to you now from the Wall Street Journal article,
00:25:35.320 | Wildfire Victims Had Only Seconds to Make Choices. This was the lead to the story. Ukiah,
00:25:41.880 | California. Hurtling down a mile-long dirt driveway, the wildfire closing in, Eli Monroe
00:25:46.640 | pulled to a stop at a crossroads. He sat for a moment with his girlfriend, his parents
00:25:50.720 | in the car behind them deciding which way to turn on Tomkey Road. The fastest way out
00:25:56.000 | was to the right, toward Route 101, a freeway they had hoped would take them to safety.
00:26:01.560 | Flames licked the roadsides in that direction. A left turn would lead to creeks and backcountry
00:26:06.120 | dirt roads they hadn't traveled in months, a route that carried the risk of a death trap.
00:26:11.040 | They went left. As they passed a few cars speeding the opposite way, Mr. Monroe, 34
00:26:16.600 | years old, recalled thinking, "Why are we the only ones going this direction? Are we
00:26:20.400 | digging our own grave?" Now dropping down in the story, we read this about Mr. Monroe.
00:26:28.120 | Mr. Monroe and his family got their warning call, more on that in a moment, at 12.48 a.m.
00:26:33.520 | Monday and began alerting neighbors. Less than 45 minutes later, they were in their
00:26:37.360 | cars deciding if he should turn left toward the dirt road through the woods. He thought
00:26:42.200 | he could recall the way from past trips to the Eel River during summers growing up there.
00:26:48.800 | Once they hit the dirt road, the fire began to recede. A tire on Mr. Monroe's mom's
00:26:52.760 | car blew out after the last creek crossing, but by then they were safe. On Wednesday,
00:26:58.200 | they learned their home and most of the others around them off Tom Key Road were destroyed.
00:27:02.880 | So one of the most important things, you need to keep your vehicle in good working order
00:27:06.240 | so that it can get you out of there when you need to. You need to have the equipment, the
00:27:10.440 | fuel to get you there. But then it's important to have those routes and that route information
00:27:15.320 | on hand. One of the things that has made combating these fire or getting people notification
00:27:21.760 | warnings in this particular wildfire incidents, these incidents in California has been that
00:27:28.440 | the cell phone service has not been working reliably. Some of the cell phone towers have
00:27:32.400 | been burned and so the cell phone coverage has been fairly spotty. This has made it difficult
00:27:37.400 | to issue evacuation alerts for the authorities in some cases. It's resulted in some people
00:27:42.120 | not getting the alert. But this can be a real problem if you depend only on your cell phone
00:27:47.800 | for the knowledge of where to go and how to get out. And frankly, most of us do. We're
00:27:53.360 | so accustomed now to having our GPS on our cell phone that many of us don't maintain
00:27:57.560 | maps in our cars. Many of us don't have external GPS units and many of us don't pay as much
00:28:02.780 | attention as we probably should to knowing how to navigate around our own houses. So
00:28:08.120 | that can be a major problem. I recommend that you always keep a GPS unit in your car that's
00:28:13.360 | not connected to the cell phone grid. You can buy a GPS unit today for a brand new one
00:28:18.440 | from Garmin or TomTom or whomever for a hundred bucks for a cheap one. You could probably
00:28:24.320 | find a used one for less. And the great thing is those types of GPSs don't require the cell
00:28:31.200 | phone network to work like our phones do. And so if you all of a sudden have the normal
00:28:36.400 | way that you would go out to the right, but it looks like there's fire there and you've
00:28:40.960 | got to go take the back roads to the left, that GPS may very well get you out. And I
00:28:46.960 | think even in navigating, some of the videos of people trying to navigate through the actual
00:28:55.200 | fire, people who couldn't even – who couldn't drive because they couldn't see, I think
00:29:01.400 | even there a GPS unit would be helpful. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work
00:29:05.320 | in the middle of the fire. I know for me when I'm driving in foggy conditions, I rely
00:29:09.520 | upon the GPS as a secondary safety device to help me make sure I'm anticipating the
00:29:13.520 | curves that are coming up in the road and it helps me to see better. Another thing of
00:29:16.960 | course is maps, having maps of your area, state maps and local maps so that if you do
00:29:21.440 | need to get out on back roads that you're not used to driving all the time, that you
00:29:24.960 | know the way out and you can work your way out on a map.
00:29:28.840 | One more comment – two more comments on evacuations. One is with regard to when to
00:29:34.120 | go, one of the interesting controversies that's emerging from this current fire situation
00:29:39.560 | is the notification system. It's important that if there is a notification system in
00:29:44.800 | your area that you put yourself on it. That's being a part of the official local emergency
00:29:49.680 | preparedness app or getting on the reverse 911 phone system or being able to get those
00:29:54.680 | alerts. Sign up for the alerts so you make sure that you have the information that you
00:29:57.760 | need. In an emergency, information is crucial and so you should have multiple ways of getting
00:30:04.280 | information. Yes, the local Facebook group or yes, the local fire page is going to be
00:30:08.560 | very valuable but make sure that you also have a radio that's not dependent upon the
00:30:13.960 | cell phone network. Make sure that you're also signed up for the text alerts which may
00:30:18.120 | come through when your data access isn't working on your phone. So make sure that you
00:30:22.160 | have the information but listen to it and make your own decision. You've got to always
00:30:29.000 | filter information from government officials by recognizing the fact that they are responsible
00:30:34.800 | for the masses. The emergency managers there in – I forget which county it was – in
00:30:43.120 | California, here, Sonoma County – let me read from the Wall Street Journal article.
00:30:48.440 | Hannah User, a spokeswoman for Sonoma County, said officials decided not to send a wireless
00:30:53.800 | emergency alert which would have gone to every cell phone in the area. "Emergency managers
00:30:59.160 | noted potential risks of these types of alerts causing clogged roads and unnecessary panic,
00:31:05.640 | making it hard for those who were in the most significant danger to get out safely," Ms.
00:31:10.720 | User said. "We chose the best tools available to ensure residents who were in the most significant
00:31:16.160 | danger had the safest path possible to get out." Officials said they planned to analyze
00:31:21.480 | the decision after the fires were over. For now, they said they are focused on protecting
00:31:25.280 | people from further harm.
00:31:27.760 | Government officials always have to think in terms of the masses. That's usually not
00:31:31.800 | going to be good for you because you're not concerned with the masses. You're concerned
00:31:34.960 | with you and you're concerned with those that are close to you. You've got to always
00:31:41.040 | do what's right for you and make sure to care for yourself. And you've got to do it
00:31:46.280 | a little bit out of sync with the masses in order for things to work properly.
00:31:52.120 | Here in Florida, we're coming to the end of hurricane season. Right now, I can go down
00:31:56.600 | and I can get all the plywood that I want to get with no rationing. I can get all the
00:32:01.760 | bottled water that I want to get with no rationing. I can get as many generators as I want. I
00:32:06.600 | can fill up as many gas cans at the gas station as I want. I can get all the canned food.
00:32:12.240 | I can load up my house with all the materials that I need to get me through a hurricane.
00:32:16.680 | And there's no problem. I'm not causing any problems for anyone else and they're not causing
00:32:19.540 | any problems for me.
00:32:21.520 | But as soon as there's a hurricane that's headed our way, the rationing starts, the
00:32:26.040 | supplies dry up because the masses start to move in that direction. Don't be part of the
00:32:32.120 | masses. If there's a fire that's threatening and emergency officials are thinking about
00:32:37.240 | notifications, they don't want to clog the roads all of a sudden because then they'll
00:32:41.000 | get accused of saying, "Hey, you clogged the roads and now 300 people died because the
00:32:45.040 | roads were clogged." That's a valid concern that they have to face, but that's not your
00:32:49.480 | concern. So you get out.
00:32:53.560 | Now let's talk about some equipment that's unique to fires. I think it's important that
00:32:58.560 | you prepare for a fire evacuation. Now, one simple way to do this, a few pieces of equipment
00:33:05.440 | that are important in your bug out bag and your 72-hour kit, you should always have something
00:33:10.640 | like leather gloves. When fires start to come, heat starts to occur. This is the same in
00:33:15.460 | house fires. One thing in a house fire, you should keep in your home fire emergency kit,
00:33:21.080 | thick leather gloves that would help you be able to get out of the house if your home
00:33:24.400 | was on fire with just you, a normal house fire, not even a wildland fire. Those should
00:33:28.920 | be in your fire kits.
00:33:31.900 | One of the videos that I watched from California was a cell phone video of two young men who
00:33:36.240 | were trying to get out of the fire and one of them had to get out to open a gate. He
00:33:42.200 | couldn't open the gate or he opened the gate, but he burned his hands because the metal
00:33:46.400 | was so hot. So gloves would have protected his hands. This should be a standard part
00:33:50.220 | of your earthquake kit if you live in California. Obviously, you face a major risk and anywhere
00:33:56.600 | where earthquakes are likely. You face a major risk of an earthquake and if there's an
00:34:03.400 | earthquake and there's a building collapse around you, you want to make sure that you
00:34:06.800 | have gloves available to you in your emergency kit so that you can dig your way out or possibly
00:34:11.640 | dig to save a family member, something like that. So gloves are very valuable.
00:34:16.680 | With regard to fire safety, one of the things that I would think is a very valuable accessory
00:34:22.300 | to have is one of those smoke hoods or air hoods that is commonly sold for escape from
00:34:29.440 | house fire. There are good ones on the market that will last you for about an hour of use.
00:34:35.540 | In a wildfire, a wildfire sucks up all the oxygen and it kills people just if you're
00:34:39.780 | even in the middle of it. You may not burn your flesh, but it can destroy your lungs
00:34:43.980 | and it can kill you just from there not being any air to breathe.
00:34:48.180 | In the same video with the two young men, if you're interested in seeing it, go to
00:34:51.900 | my Twitter page, twitter.com/JoshuaSheets and you can find it and watch it on YouTube.
00:34:56.180 | The same video, the guy got out of the car and he couldn't breathe. He got back in
00:35:00.740 | the car. He said, "I can't get out again because I can't breathe." There was no
00:35:03.060 | air out of the car for him to breathe. So you can have some of those smoke hoods available
00:35:09.300 | to you. Those can save your life in a house fire, allow you to get out without experiencing
00:35:14.200 | smoke inhalation, and they can save your life in a wildfire.
00:35:19.020 | Hopefully those ideas, although I'm sure they're incomplete, are helpful to help
00:35:22.900 | you plan to protect life, which is the most important thing.
00:35:25.980 | Now what about protecting property? Here, there are things that you can do long in advance
00:35:31.900 | and things that you can do a little bit in advance. I'm sure that if you live in a
00:35:36.140 | wildland fire area, you receive information and advice on preparing your home for fire.
00:35:42.180 | Of course, whether or not this will be effective, obviously it depends. The fires that have
00:35:47.460 | been going through some of the neighborhoods essentially look like they're just going
00:35:50.980 | house to house. If you've chosen to situate your house in a subdivision where you're
00:35:57.340 | very close to your neighbor's houses, well, if your neighbor's houses catch on fire,
00:36:01.260 | very likely it's going to catch your house on fire. They're just simply that close.
00:36:04.540 | It's different than being out in a rural area. But there are a lot of things that can
00:36:08.300 | be done to fight fire. Years ago, I first became interested in permaculture design.
00:36:14.220 | One of the things that most interested me, I started reading publications by Bill Mollison,
00:36:18.900 | who was one of the founders of what is called permaculture, which is a design strategy for
00:36:27.140 | basically designing life intelligently, life systems, life-supporting systems intelligently.
00:36:32.620 | I was fascinated to read and to listen to some of his stuff on fire prevention. I had
00:36:38.260 | never thought, not being from the country and being from Florida, I'd never thought
00:36:40.980 | about designing a property in order to be protected from fire. But I've become convinced
00:36:46.740 | that it's very doable to actually think about how you situate your house and think about
00:36:51.380 | these things in order to limit the risk.
00:36:55.060 | If I ever were to develop a property where I had the space to do it, I would try to take
00:37:00.180 | into account all of these things and design the property to be protected from fire. One
00:37:06.260 | of the things that interested me after the Fort McMurray wildfires last summer, I started
00:37:09.780 | researching why some people would say, "I'll stay behind." Even knowledgeable people would
00:37:13.780 | say, "I'll stay behind and fight the fire." I, not having been through a wildland fire,
00:37:18.660 | hadn't understood how they spread. But since then, I've learned that fires, wildland fires,
00:37:24.100 | are very fightable, at least under appropriate conditions. Many times, the way that they
00:37:30.100 | spread is through throwing embers out. And if you can just fight the small fires that
00:37:36.020 | can spring up, you can probably protect a house. The firefighters themselves will often
00:37:45.100 | put themselves in a situation where they can protect houses. One of the things that wildland
00:37:48.460 | firefighters do is they protect houses.
00:37:51.500 | So let's talk about planning. First, the things that you do will be helpful to physically
00:37:56.540 | protect your house, but the things that you do will also be helpful to encourage and invite
00:38:01.500 | other people, namely firefighters, to protect your house. One thing I learned in researching
00:38:06.220 | it a year ago is that firefighters, wildland firefighters, have guidance on the houses
00:38:12.260 | that they can protect, and it's based upon how well the house is squared away. So if
00:38:19.380 | there's a fire and the firefighters are in a safe enough zone, and there are structures,
00:38:23.500 | the fire team will put firefighters at the house or on the property to try to fight any
00:38:28.300 | small fires that may be started, and they'll often do it with good success. But there are
00:38:33.420 | certain risk factors that they look for. I looked up, when researching it, I looked up
00:38:38.580 | what's called the incident response pocket guide, the IRPG, which is passed out by the
00:38:43.980 | Forest Service to wildland firefighters. And in the very beginning of it, they give the
00:38:48.400 | firefighters the guidance to know whether or not they can decide that it's good for
00:38:54.260 | them to go ahead and defend a structure. And here are some of the things that will help
00:38:59.260 | them to defend a structure if these things are not there, that they'll evaluate. They'll
00:39:05.180 | evaluate the access. So reading from the incident response pocket guide, it says, "If there
00:39:10.140 | are narrow roads, unknown bridge limits, and septic tank locations, that makes it hard
00:39:14.620 | for them to get their trucks and equipment in. So make sure that your home has good access
00:39:18.180 | if possible. If there are ornamental plants and combustible debris that are sited next
00:39:23.340 | to the structure, that will discourage them because they know how much harder it is. But
00:39:27.100 | if you don't have ornamental plants and combustible debris next to the structure, they'll be willing
00:39:32.400 | to put resources into protecting and defending your home. Wooden siding and/or wooden roof
00:39:37.220 | materials, that's a no-no. So go with the fire safe or fireproof siding materials. If
00:39:45.060 | the house has open vents, eaves, decks, or other ember traps, that's a hazard. And so
00:39:51.380 | that'll diminish their willingness and ability to stay and fight the fire. If the house has
00:39:55.980 | fuel tanks or hazardous materials around or power lines or limited water sources, those
00:40:01.420 | are all things that will discourage a firefighter from staying on and protecting the house simply
00:40:10.980 | because they know that the job is probably just too hard and they're not going to be
00:40:15.220 | able to do it. But if those things are squared away, if your fire escaping and your fireproofing
00:40:20.100 | has been done in advance and that's squared away, then even just the firefighters themselves
00:40:25.100 | will be able to justify spending more resources on your property. That may help your property
00:40:31.580 | to be one that is not burned. I want to wrap up this show, the third part of this show
00:40:37.700 | here with some information and advice from a couple of sources. Most of this is coming
00:40:43.540 | from firewise.org, an organization, Firewise USA, Residents Reducing Wildfire Risks by
00:40:50.260 | the NFPA, which I bet stands for the National Fire Prevention Association, although I did
00:40:57.180 | not confirm that. But these are things that are simple. Go on firewise.org and you'll
00:41:01.140 | find all kinds of information and advice directly from those who know and want to keep your
00:41:08.640 | house from burning. But for example, for their homeowner checklist, this is important, reading
00:41:14.540 | from their homeowner checklist, "Wildfires don't have to destroy everything in their
00:41:18.060 | path. Science and research have proven that using Firewise principles in your landscaping
00:41:22.980 | can minimize damage and prevent losses. The work you do today can make a difference. Follow
00:41:28.300 | these simple action steps now and throughout the year to prepare and help reduce the risk
00:41:32.500 | of your home and property becoming fuel for a wildfire. Clear needles, leaves, and other
00:41:36.940 | debris from the roof, gutters, eaves, porches, and decks. This reduces the chance of embers
00:41:42.180 | igniting your home. To reduce ember penetration, replace or repair loose or missing roof shingles
00:41:47.640 | or tiles and caulk any gaps or openings on roof edges. Cover exterior attic vents and
00:41:53.380 | close under eave and soffit vents with metal wire mesh no larger than 1/8 inch to prevent
00:41:58.340 | embers from entering the home. Remove items stored under decks or porches. Replace vegetation
00:42:03.780 | in these areas with rock or gravel. Replace mulch with hardscaping, including rock, gravel,
00:42:10.300 | or stone. If it can catch fire, don't let it touch your house, deck, or porch. Remove
00:42:16.620 | flammable items within 30 feet of all structures, including firewood piles, portable propane
00:42:21.780 | tanks, and dry and dead vegetation. Dry grass and shrubs are fuel for wildfire, so keep
00:42:28.100 | your lawn hydrated and maintained. If it is brown, trim it to reduce fire intensity, and
00:42:33.980 | don't let debris and lawn cuttings linger. Dispose of these items quickly to reduce fuel
00:42:38.160 | for fire. Fire can spread to treetops. If you have tall trees on your property, prune
00:42:43.860 | low-hanging branches 6 to 10 feet from the ground, and for smaller trees, prune low-hanging
00:42:48.300 | branches to no more than a third of the tree's height. Remove tall grasses, vines, and shrubs
00:42:53.100 | from under trees.
00:42:55.300 | Here are a few other suggestions for when there's actually a fire threatening from
00:42:59.020 | FireWise and then give you information of actually what to do during a fire. So what
00:43:04.660 | to do during watches or warnings of high fire danger from FireWise. Make sure there's at
00:43:09.180 | least a 72-hour supply of important medications in your go-bag. Know which personal items,
00:43:13.820 | pictures, documents, etc. have been prioritized to take if time permits when evacuation is
00:43:18.060 | necessary. Remove deck or patio furniture, cushions, and doormats to prevent ember ignitions.
00:43:24.820 | Remove portable propane tanks from the deck or patio. Know how to turn off the gas to
00:43:28.820 | the home. Place a ladder against the house for fire department use. Have your garden
00:43:33.740 | hoses connected for fire department use. Make sure windows, doors, and garage doors are
00:43:39.140 | closed. Make sure windows are closed on vehicles that will remain at the residence while you're
00:43:43.660 | evacuated.
00:43:44.660 | And then I want to close by reading a couple of pages from a book called "Firescaping,
00:43:51.020 | Creating Fire-Resistant Landscapes, Gardens, and Properties in California's Diverse Environments."
00:43:56.860 | This is by an author named Douglas Kent. Eight bucks on Amazon. Ten left in stock order soon.
00:44:02.540 | Again, it's called "Firescaping." But here is a few pages from his information on what
00:44:09.580 | to actually do during a fire.
00:44:11.980 | It is common to see individuals standing with a hose, watering their garden or roof during
00:44:17.020 | a wildfire. There are, however, many other chores that precede watering with a hose.
00:44:22.420 | In some cases, watering a roof is a poor use of time. Below are prioritized tasks for anyone
00:44:28.020 | defending their home against a wildfire. In most situations, firefighters will ask everyone
00:44:33.240 | to leave the fire area. If they ask, do not hesitate to go.
00:44:38.140 | Protect yourself and others. Safely get all members and pets out of the house and away
00:44:42.680 | from the fire area. Get dressed for the fire. Put on wool or cotton pants, a long-sleeved
00:44:48.660 | shirt and a jacket. Also, grab a pair of gloves, a handkerchief and goggles for added protection.
00:44:55.280 | Move and park cars off driveways and roadways so emergency vehicles can get by. Pack all
00:45:01.100 | irreplaceable items, such as photos, art, address books, bonds, stocks, birth certificates,
00:45:06.460 | and the stuff you'll need for a couple days away from the home, such as medications, toiletries,
00:45:10.540 | and a change of clothes. Place all of this in the car. Make sure to roll all the windows
00:45:15.020 | up. Leave the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition. Even if the roads become
00:45:19.980 | unusable, a car is a safe place for irreplaceable items.
00:45:24.300 | Fill as many containers as possible with drinking water. You'll need several bottles of water
00:45:28.480 | to quench your thirst and to keep the handkerchief around your face moist. Pack valuables, such
00:45:33.380 | as jewelry and clothes, in weighted plastic bags and toss them into a pool or pond.
00:45:40.820 | Protect the inside of a home. Turn off the gas at the line leading to the house. Shut
00:45:45.560 | all doors and windows inside a house. Remove flammable drapes from windows. Close Venetian
00:45:51.000 | blinds and other non-flammable window coverings. Close storm shutters. Close all attic, basement,
00:45:57.780 | and eave vents. Fill sinks and bathtubs with water. Place towels or rugs next to these
00:46:03.520 | indoor water reserves. The water reserves and towels can be used to extinguish flames
00:46:08.560 | within a structure. Turn on all the lights in a house. A smoke-filled house is difficult
00:46:13.820 | to see and navigate in. Turn off fans and cooling systems. Leave all doors unlocked.
00:46:21.180 | In the fires of 2003, one fireman was seriously injured and another died trying to get into
00:46:25.620 | a house that was locked.
00:46:28.060 | Protect your pets. There are three options for pets during a wildfire. Flee with the
00:46:32.380 | owner, stay in a safe place while the owner fights the fire, or be stranded with no help.
00:46:37.740 | Steps can be taken to increase the chances of survival in all three circumstances. Naturally,
00:46:42.580 | it is always safer for the owner and pet to flee a fire. Make sure the animal has an identification
00:46:47.660 | tag. Many emergency shelters refuse to take pets. It is important to know where you can
00:46:52.980 | safely drop yours off. A network of family, friends, and some hotels should be prearranged.
00:46:59.260 | If you decide to fight the fire, place the pet in a familiar, safe, and secure spot,
00:47:03.620 | such as a car. Carry a photo of your pet for possible identification reasons. Grab a week's
00:47:09.460 | worth of food and medicine. If for any reason you have to flee without taking your pet,
00:47:13.980 | then uncage or unleash it.
00:47:17.260 | Protect the outside of a home. Remove all combustible items from under and around the
00:47:21.740 | house. Examples include stored newspapers, firewood, furniture, and plants that have
00:47:27.180 | grown up and under a house. Place a ladder against the side of the house, creating easy
00:47:31.980 | access to the roof. Sweep and clean the roof of all ignitable material. Clean obstacles
00:47:37.740 | such as patio furniture from around the house and put them inside the house or out in the
00:47:41.300 | yard. Hook up hoses to every water faucet around the house. Attach an adjustable nozzle
00:47:46.580 | at the end of each hose. Place shovels, rakes, and hose in a visible place. Place large,
00:47:53.820 | watertight cans and buckets around the house, then fill them with water. Place towels and
00:47:58.580 | rugs next to the water buckets. If for some reason water becomes unavailable, these wet
00:48:03.340 | towels will help beat out small sparks and flames.
00:48:07.100 | Water combustible roofs now. To make the most of water's limited supply, stand below the
00:48:12.340 | roof and shoot water up into it. Unlike watering the roof from above, watering from below gets
00:48:19.420 | the water into the small cracks and crevices where sparks are likely to get caught without
00:48:24.940 | the excess water runoff.
00:48:28.200 | With regard to any other suggestions, including property design suggestions, that is beyond
00:48:32.060 | my expertise. All I can do is point you in the right direction. If you are interested
00:48:37.500 | in the subject to protect your property, then there are resources available from people
00:48:42.460 | who are competent in that area to advise you. From my limited reading, I am convinced that
00:48:47.820 | it is very possible to design a property to be protected from fire and that it's something
00:48:53.540 | that really we should do. I get very annoyed when we just do stupid stuff again and again
00:48:58.720 | and again and again, and we don't think about designing things intelligently. And then disasters
00:49:04.620 | come and they have massive price tags, and we just say, "Oh, let's just do the same thing
00:49:08.860 | again and not apply a little bit of intelligent design to our circumstances." So let's not
00:49:15.940 | be those who perpetuate that cycle. Let's be those who work to properly protect our
00:49:25.700 | things, our own stuff, with good intelligent design.
00:49:28.820 | Finally, with regard to financial resources, just be thankful and hopefully – just hope
00:49:34.580 | that your house is not an overly large portion of your investment portfolio. It's important
00:49:41.460 | that your home not be the only financial asset that you have. It can be very risky to have
00:49:48.060 | a house account for a very large percentage of your net worth. If a fire comes through
00:49:52.060 | and destroys your house, it destroys it. It's far more risky than owning stock in hundreds
00:49:57.140 | and hundreds of companies that are dispersed in many industries all around the world. The
00:50:01.260 | stock is far less risky than having all of your money tied up in your personal house.
00:50:06.540 | So that's important. It's also important that you make sure that you don't put yourself
00:50:10.580 | in a situation where your valuable physical property would all be destroyed if your home
00:50:17.020 | were destroyed. That's bad diversification strategy. That's bad planning. Don't keep
00:50:22.140 | all of your valuable physical personal property in your home. Diversify it. Keep some of your
00:50:27.860 | valuable physical property in a safety deposit box or in a secondary backup location of some
00:50:33.300 | kind. Don't keep it all at home. My final comment is on the topic of insurance.
00:50:43.420 | California property insurance is out of my area of expertise. So I don't want to make
00:50:48.420 | any mistakes to comment on it much. Just to know that I know that California does have
00:50:54.100 | unique risks and so those risks are reflected in California property insurance policies.
00:51:00.620 | If any of you listening are a California property insurance expert and would like to come on
00:51:09.380 | and talk about good insurance strategies for wildfire planning, I'd be happy to do that.
00:51:14.140 | That would be great. But I will read to you a column from the Los Angeles Times titled
00:51:22.300 | As California Burns, Here's What You Need to Know About Fire Insurance. And I will encourage
00:51:26.740 | you to do a review with your property insurance agent when it's time and to carefully review
00:51:32.780 | these things in advance. It's too late for the California homeowners to do anything with
00:51:35.860 | their insurance – home insurance. But it's not too late for you. So let me read you this
00:51:40.380 | column from the Los Angeles Times that gives some useful suggestions and that will close
00:51:44.740 | us out today.
00:51:46.180 | Most – author here is David Lazarus. Most homeowners insurance policies cover fire damage.
00:51:54.060 | But heads up, that's not the whole story. If you live in a high-risk area such as near
00:51:57.740 | a canyon, you may need to pay more for additional coverage. And if a fire has devastated whole
00:52:03.060 | communities, such as what we're seeing now in Northern California, your home replacement
00:52:06.780 | dollars could be stretched thin as costs soar for everything from materials to labor.
00:52:12.580 | All those commercials about insurance companies offering peace of mind when things like this
00:52:16.060 | happen, those are just ads, said Amy Bacht, executive director of United Policyholders,
00:52:20.860 | a San Francisco-based advocacy group. In reality, insurance policies are written by teams of
00:52:25.780 | lawyers and it can be rough for homeowners, she said.
00:52:28.900 | Most homeowners insurance covers both your home and all property within. More than 90
00:52:33.380 | percent of homeowners buy coverage, according to recent estimates, and as many as 40 percent
00:52:37.500 | of renters purchase insurance for their belongings.
00:52:40.740 | After the recent drought turned California into a huge pile of kindling, insurers racked
00:52:45.500 | up billions of dollars in fire-related claims. Some, such as Allstate, stopped writing new
00:52:51.220 | policies. Others, such as Farmers and State Farm, became choosier about homes they'd
00:52:56.220 | cover. The insurance industry says it's ready to handle claims from the fires now
00:52:59.880 | raging statewide. "Insurers will 100 percent be there for homeowners," said Nicole
00:53:05.260 | Ganley, a spokeswoman for the Western Region of the Property Casualty Insurers Association
00:53:09.220 | of America, a trade group. "Insurers are moving very quickly to help policyholders."
00:53:14.500 | Be that as it may, coverage may not always be easy to obtain. Homeowners in high-risk
00:53:18.940 | areas who can't find coverage in the open market may have to turn to a state-sponsored
00:53:23.060 | program called the California FAIR plan. FAIR covers up to $1.5 million for a structure
00:53:28.980 | and its contents, which in some cases won't be enough for full replacement of a lost home
00:53:33.500 | and property.
00:53:34.500 | If there's one takeaway from the blazes now causing widespread damage in the Golden
00:53:38.380 | State, it's for homeowners and renters to make sure their coverage is up to date, and
00:53:43.100 | that nothing sneaky has made its way into your policy. Narbe Shervanian, a Glendale
00:53:47.900 | lawyer who handles fire-related claims, said it's not unheard of for an insurer to change
00:53:52.660 | the terms of a policy during the renewal process. "It might be disclosed," he said, "but
00:53:57.380 | let's be honest, nobody really reads all this stuff."
00:54:00.900 | As a result, you may find that you're shouldering more of the risk than you originally thought.
00:54:05.740 | Shervanian also warned of seemingly arbitrary responses to fire claims. If his structure
00:54:10.900 | burns down, then all legitimate insurance claims will be honored.
00:54:14.700 | But what if there's a wildfire nearby and your home is impacted by smoke and ash? Will
00:54:18.980 | your homeowners' coverage pay for the cleanup? "We're seeing issues with smoke and ash
00:54:22.980 | damaging homes and insurance companies playing games," Shervanian said. "One year they
00:54:27.420 | do one thing, one year they do something else."
00:54:30.380 | It's very important as the economy recovers from the Great Recession to be mindful of
00:54:34.100 | rising property values. Yes, that's great from a "maybe I'll sell" perspective.
00:54:39.260 | From a fire perspective, it can be a whole other thing. Replacement costs you locked
00:54:43.460 | in for your insurance policy may no longer reflect current conditions, meaning you may
00:54:48.080 | have to reach into your own pocket to make yourself whole. Also, widespread fire damage
00:54:53.180 | will be felt in the market in the form of rising costs for materials such as wood and
00:54:57.900 | concrete and almost certainly higher labor costs as contractors take advantage of supply
00:55:02.820 | and demand situations. A smart idea is to pay a little extra for what's known as an
00:55:07.620 | extended replacement cost endorsement. This is basically additional coverage intended
00:55:12.380 | to accommodate at least a portion of any unexpected cost increases. You can also purchase a
00:55:17.980 | additional coverage for code upgrades. For example, the rules might have changed for
00:55:22.100 | electrical systems or insulation since your house was built. Code upgrade insurance will
00:55:27.140 | protect you from so-called "betterments" that your basic policy might not address.
00:55:32.300 | Insurance companies have had enough experience with fires in California to do a good job
00:55:35.740 | of resolving claims, said Bok at United Policyholders. But that's still not always the case. I strongly
00:55:42.300 | advise homeowners and renters to take their smartphones and walk around their homes shooting
00:55:46.220 | a video of their belongings. This can provide helpful evidence if an insurer disputes, say,
00:55:51.300 | that you owned a state-of-the-art home theater setup. If you have to evacuate, save all receipts.
00:55:57.020 | Many homeowner policies include so-called "ale coverage" as in additional living expenses
00:56:02.820 | (ALE) which will include costs such as hotel rooms, food, and rentals. So there are some
00:56:09.080 | useful suggestions from a Los Angeles Time column from a couple of days ago.
00:56:12.860 | I've thrown a lot of information at you. I did my best to make it useful to you, but
00:56:19.380 | I definitely threw a lot of information at you with a little bit of repetition. I guess
00:56:23.380 | my closing thoughts that I'd like to leave you with are these. Thinking about any...
00:56:30.380 | Each type of event has some kind of commonality. And it's important to consider what those
00:56:37.700 | commonalities are. For example, when it comes to... And I think all of us should think through
00:56:42.820 | what are our own most likely personal disasters that we might face. For me, what I consider
00:56:47.820 | to be one of the most likely personal disasters would be a home fire. Just simply a simple
00:56:54.160 | home fire catches my house on fire and I gotta get out. And so in one way, that's exactly
00:56:59.100 | the... That's the thing that I need to think through and plan for. But a hurricane has
00:57:03.320 | a very similar risk profile in terms of I have more warning, but I still need to do
00:57:07.660 | similar types of things. I still need to be able to get out. And another likely disaster
00:57:13.020 | would be something like a burglary. Somebody breaks in and steals things from my house
00:57:17.340 | that are important to me. Well, some things I do are common among all of these things.
00:57:21.900 | If I have my important insurance and financial paperwork backed up on secure drives that
00:57:27.620 | are outside of the house that are in secure locations, then no matter whether that's a
00:57:32.700 | home fire, a hurricane, or a burglary, I'm helped by all of those things. Or another
00:57:40.900 | likely disaster that I think is worth planning for is as the parent of small children, I
00:57:47.660 | am concerned about the abduction of my children. Well, how do you plan for that? One thing
00:57:51.060 | you do is you take a photograph of your children and make sure that you have a photograph in
00:57:54.700 | case your child is abducted or just simply goes missing. We don't have to put the criminal
00:57:58.820 | element on it. They just go missing and they wander off. Then to make sure that I have
00:58:02.420 | a photograph and that photograph is readily available to be passed along to emergency
00:58:06.600 | crews who are helping me to search for my child. I need the same exact thing for a fire.
00:58:11.420 | So when you start thinking through these scenarios, think them through and what you find is there
00:58:16.580 | are common steps that are common in all of them. And as you start to do it, you'll start
00:58:21.360 | to realize that the things you do to prepare for one scenario are very similar to the things
00:58:26.480 | you do to prepare for another scenario. With hurricane planning, you don't put big trees
00:58:32.580 | next to your house, just like with fire planning. With hurricane planning, you build a strong
00:58:37.400 | metal roof, just like fire planning. I'm out of music. I'm going to be done here. But it's
00:58:43.720 | a hope that you see – that's why I wanted to address this. I hope that you see that
00:58:47.040 | as you start to think through these things, it's not insurance that solves the problem.
00:58:52.000 | Insurance has a place. But insurance is only one hammer in your toolbox. And it's not the
00:58:57.080 | best hammer because when you're trying to escape from the wildfire, it doesn't give
00:59:01.640 | you a whole lot of comfort to know that your home insurance is paid up. You're trying to
00:59:05.160 | protect life. The home insurance policy comes in after the fact. We're out of music. I'll
00:59:11.200 | just close with this. If this has been useful for you, if this information has been helpful
00:59:14.680 | and you'd like to support the work that I'm doing, please come by RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron.
00:59:19.040 | Sign up as a supporting patron, RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron. And don't forget to go to Bombfell.com/rpf.
00:59:26.040 | Again, B-O-M-B-F-E-L-L.com/rpf.
00:59:32.160 | This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources. Find out
00:59:37.960 | more at RadicalLifeMedia.com.
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00:59:46.480 | day presented by Pear Deck. Family fun, giveaways and exciting Kings hockey awaits. Get your
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