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How New Wildland Fires Scores Affect Homeowner Premiums and Insurance Eligibility
There are over 160,000 homes in WA at high or extreme wildfire danger and over 16,000 of these homes are in Chelan county; even homes inside the city limits of Leavenworth and Wenatchee are affected. Chelan County in particular ended up being the poster bad boy on an extensive State wildfire risk report.
The report said that, on a scale of 100, with 100 being the highest risk of catastrophic wildfire, with billions in potential property losses, Chelan county got a terrible score of 98. Shortly after this report came out in 2020, Chelan county had an 11000 acre fire in July 2021 rip through the pricey Sunnyslope neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Wenatchee, burning grass from Monitor to the Columbia river in just 12 hours. Amazingly, due to skilled fire fighting including airplanes, no homes were lost, though in many cases fire came to the doorstep and there were some smoke damage claims.
By way of comparison, the next highest scoring county in the state's report was Okanogan county with a score of 68, ironically published just days before the Sept 2020 Okanogan catastrophic fire that burned over 320,000 acres, being pushed by winds of 50 mph and covering 60 miles within just a matter of hours. The speed of these fires makes it impossible for fire personnel to save much in its path as reinforcements of firefighters, copters and planes don't even have time to arrive before the property damage is already done. Amazingly, only a few people died.
The soil records show that all of Chelan county, (including all of Wenatchee, Sunnyslope, Chelan, Manson,
Leavenworth, Lake Wenatchee, Plain, Peshastin, Dryden and Cashmere etc,) have had multiple historic fires some of which that burned all the way to the Columbia River.
Upon reviewing the data, carriers don't like the odds. Many carriers are non-renewing now based on this data from satellite imagery for specific properties, even if they have hydrants and/or are inside city limits, as hydrants are not much help against a fast moving wildfire. So expect premiums to go up, and go up a lot, based on this new risk analysis, even if your policy is retained. Both my own home policies for my Leavenworth home and my home in Monitor, (just 5 miles west of Wenatchee) have more than doubled.
Washington State is following in the footsteps of California where about 32% of properties are already in surplus lines and that number is climbing very rapidly to an expected 40% or more of all properties. California is a much higher risk than WA due to many more days of high winds (typically in Sept, Oct., Nov.), but with the many ridges and canyons and slopes in eastern Washington foothills WA certainly gets their share of wind too. Washington state and California both get about 33,000 lighting “cloud to ground” strikes annually. It is not uncommon at all to have hundreds of ground lightning strikes in one summer storm in Eastern Washington and the numbers of fires started from one storm can easily be in the double digits.
Chelan county on average has 33 wildfires per year, 2/3 of which are lighting caused, and most of those are in the US Forest Service areas as 70% of the county is government owned. In 1994, 292 sq miles burned; over 10% of the entire county in one month. On average, Chelan county typically loses 5 homes a year to wildfires. That average is expected to increase as people have increasingly built in more high risk areas. Even the city of Wenatchee is a significant wildfire risk. “There are 50,000 properties in Chelan County that have some risk of being affected by wildfire over the next 30 years. This represents 100% of all properties in Chelan County. “ - riskfactor.com Like hurricanes in Florida, wildfires have always been a part of living in paradise. lol
Since 2023, properties located in fire prone areas in all of Eastern Washington, but especially in Chelan, Kittitas, Okanogan, Yakima Counties) have seen an ever increasing number of homeowner's and property policies being non-renewed. IF renewed, very significant additional premiums increases have been seen from where rates were in 2023 due to new Wildland Fire Scoring that all carriers are implementing. Due to many 10's of BILLIONS in wildfire claims in the last 15 years (not to mention the 20+ billion from January 2025 wildfires in CA) carriers were frantically looking for a better way to evaluate actual wildfire risk for each individual property; hence the Wildfire Scores.
The Wildfire Scoring is Insurance Commissioner approved for rating and takes into account newly available data from a satellite image of each property location: the distance to wildland and distance to any previously known wildfire perimeter, distance to a slope and the degree of slope, and the fuel level and type on site and in the surrounding area. This is an absolutely massive recalculation of wildfire risk; the biggest change to fire insurance rating ever! (Previously, carriers only looked at distance to a fire station and distance to a hydrant to determine a rate.)
After looking at this data, virtually all preferred carriers are nonrenewing policies for any locations with high Wildfire Scores, and those carriers that have not bailed yet will very likely be doing so soon, although some carriers are retaining small numbers of existing clients with high Wildfire Scores (with a much higher premium) while still refusing to accept new policies.
The Wildfire Score data is compiled by several different 3rd party vendors. The score is usually based on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst based on slope, fuels, distance to wildland, and distance to previous fire paths. Doing reverse data analysis, vendors determined that the top 20% most "wildfire at risk" properties accounted for 98% of wildfire losses in the US. However, most carriers are just nonrenewing the top 2% most wildfire at risk. See the methodology here: https://firststreet.org/methodology/fire?from=riskfactor.com
Expect this trend to continue as carriers try to reduce their financial exposure to catastrophic wildland fires. Example: In CA, State Farm got about 1/2 way through non-renewing over 70,000 properties, representing their top 2% riskiest properties, before the S. Cal. fires in Jan. 2025 hit with an estimated 10 BILLION in claims just for State Farm alone; probably 30 billion for the industry.
The unregulated, excess and surplus lines insurance markets have traditionally offered coverage for more at risk properties. These markets have additional fees and taxes, in most cases have more limited coverage and significantly higher premiums; typically 2 to 4 times as much or more premium than the preferred policies being nonrenewed. Now due to the shear volume of properties needing surplus lines coverage, all these markets are also doing wildfire scoring for each property and will not necessarily write every location.
However, basic coverage could still be written through the WA State Fair Plan, but as of April 2025, they will only accept primary residences and long term rentals not secondary homes or vacation rentals.
( As of April, 2025, our agency has not yet had to place any property in the FAIR Plan due to our extensive nationwide relationships in both the preferred and the surplus lines markets. Many agencies either do not have access to any surplus lines markets or don't have nationwide network of underwriting relationships we've developed over two decades of experience in surplus lines.)
At InsurePro.info (and LeavenworthInsurance.com), we are an experienced independent insurance agency, so we offer a wide selection of preferred carriers and the surplus lines carriers that will take higher risk properties. We also can do a FAIR Plan policy if necessary.
Go to "Contact" tab at the top of the page to reach out to us or call us; we're here to help statewide.
Permission to republish all or part of this article can be obtained, without cost, by contacting me.
Eric Kossian, Underwriting Specialist at Leavenworth Insurance (dba InsurePro).
– Eric@Insurepro.info
ph 877-548-5488, 206-209-2884, 509-548-5488.