64 MOTHER JONES |^ SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019
it nearly impossible to raise property tax
rates on longtime residents, pushing local
officials to broaden their tax bases by wooing
new development. That policy has led to a
general permissiveness in land-use regu-
lations. California has some of the tough-
est building codes in the country, but even
its codes have cracks. Rand, for example,
planted several trees close to her old home.
Whatever the rules say about new construc-
tion, they don’t force people to maintain
their houses in ways that resist fire.
The gaps in the building codes become
clear on my drive through the fire zone
with Gouvea, the local Cal Fire chief. At
one point he stops his suv next to an unre-
markable tract house overlooking an area in
which the fire burned so hot that it melted
two metal power-line poles and charred a
swath of thick forest down to bare dirt. A
Redding firefighter whom Gouvea knew
well was killed while working to rescue
people who hadn’t followed evacuation
orders, when the inferno lifted his truck
off the ground and threw it about 150 feet.
Today, a shrine consisting of a fire hydrant,
an American flag, a coiled yellow fire hose,
and a half-dozen fire department ball caps
marks the spot where he perished.
The house where we’re stopped is en-
closed by a wood fence with shrubs planted
against it. Gouvea shrugs. “It’s flammable,
but that’s the choice they make,” he says.
California and Shasta County fire codes
have nothing to say about fences. And
shrub rules often go unenforced.
Redding City Manager Barry Tippin has
shrubs against his house too—although this
year he trimmed them more than he had
before. Under his leadership, the city has
invited a group of wildfire experts to study
its fire ordinances. The group’s recommen-
dations are due this year. Whether locals do
what the outsiders suggest remains to be
seen. “We need to up our game in terms of
requirements for safety,” Tippin says.
But when I ask Tippin whether the city
is considering restrictions on where people
build—for instance, making it harder to
rebuild where houses burned down—
Tippin resists the idea. “God no,” he says.
“That’s the last thing we’d want to do.”
Far from cracking down on building,
Redding and Shasta County officials have
expedited approvals for post-fire recon-
struction, reflecting a culture of resilience
that comes down to three words: fire bedamned. “From these ashes, we are rebuild-
ing,” declares a sign in a neighborhood
where many homes burned. “My God is
greater than the Carr Fire,” says another.the problem of lax rebuilding rules is com-
pounded by a powerful economic subsidy
that encourages homebuilding despite rising
wildfire risk: state policies that help keep in-
surance rates far lower in California than
in other hazard-prone parts of the country.
The state Department of Insurance has to
approve every proposed rate change. Insur-
ers can ask to raise rates but must justify the
request by averaging insurance losses from
the prior 20 years—which makes it less likely
that the recent spike in fire-related claims
will boost rates. Despite threats of earth-
quakes, fires, and mudslides, the average
California homeowner spends only about
$1,000 annually in homeowners insurance.
That’s about half the average premium in
Florida or Texas, where natural disasters
linked to climate change are also surging.
Struggling from their wildfire losses,
insurers in Shasta County recently filed
claims against Redding, arguing that the
city contributed to private property losses
from the Carr Fire. Citing a 2010 city doc-
ument that warned of fire risk and recom-
mended a regimen of thinning, insurers
alleged that public lands had not been ad-
equately thinned. Tippin, the city manager,
rejects those allegations. He says the thick
vegetation that fueled the fire “was natural
growth,” that the city did as much thinning
as it could afford, and that “there’s a level
of personal responsibility” at play, meaning
property owners could have cut more brush
on their own land.
Insurers also are hiking premiums for
Shasta County property owners, partly by
pressuring companies that develop fire-risk
maps—on which insurance rates depend—
to update the maps. That has bumped
more homeowners into higher-risk cate-
gories—with no need for a state-approved
rate increase. Insurers are also revoking
coverage altogether for customers they
now deem too risky.
Insurance agent Matthew Iles sees the
crisis from his office in a strip mall in the
Shasta County community of Palo Cedro.
His customers include about 2,000 house-
holds and 300 businesses. He has watched
wildfire premiums inch up for more than a
decade, triggered by a series of fires in San
Diego in 2007. But “it got really bad about
three months ago,” he says. I ask how many
of his clients have experienced rate hikesthis spring. “Every single one,” he says. “It’s
not normal. But these fires aren’t normal.”
Over the past year and a half, Jon and
Cindy Shaw, who live in a thickly wooded
community called Oak Run, have seen
their annual premium triple because of
fire risk, from $1,600 to $4,800. They’ve
installed four water tanks on their land,
together holding more than 5,000 gallons,
to fight a potential blaze. If their premium
rises again, says Jon, a retired construc-
tion worker, he and his wife will opt out
of fire insurance altogether. If fire burns
their home, they’ll rely on help from fema
and other public sources. “I’m going to wait
until the government comes and bails my
ass out,” he tells me, sitting at his dining
table and sipping from a metal travel mug
filled with Jack Daniel’s and water over ice.
That’s “not the way I am,” he emphasizes,
but he sees little choice. He figures he too
might as well exploit the system.
Oak Run is one of many small Shasta
County communities nestled along ridge-
tops under trees. Another is Shingletown,
named for its onetime economic focus:
slicing trunks into shingles. It’s the site
of the stretch of Highway 44 that Cali-
fornia recently named its highest prior-
ity for tree-thinning. Gouvea, the Cal Fire
chief, had proposed that designation. The
Shingle town ridge is “just straight drop-off
cliff,” he says, so a wildfire would “throw
spots” of flame onto the road, wreaking
havoc on an evacuation. The tree-thinning
is intended to widen the evacuation route
and give Cal Fire “a place to fight from, from
the air and the ground.”
Given the scarlet letter the state report
slapped on Shingletown, Miller, the rancher
who wants to develop his Shingletown
Ridge property into a high-end subdivision,
was pleasantly surprised when county offi-
cials reaffirmed their approval for his plan
in March. “You would have thought that
there would have been some hesitation on
that,” he says. “It didn’t faze anybody. They
just approved my extension.”
Standing on his property on a recent
evening, his dog Jake at his side, Miller says
he’s not concerned by the looming threat
of wildfire. Natural disasters can strike any-
where, he says: “Pick your poison.” But he
acknowledges that no one who builds a
house on this property should under-
estimate a wildfire’s deadliness. As he talks,
the sun is setting over the ridge. A fire crew
has started thinning trees along the high-
way. And the 2019 Shasta fire season has
officially begun. QBURN. BUILD. REPEAT.
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