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The Coconino County Board of Supervisors held its first in a series of public discussions this week to discuss a growing challenge for local homeowners: the cost of fire insurance.

Lucinda Andreani, the county’s Flood Control District administrator, told the Arizona Daily Sun ahead of the board’s meeting on Tuesday, June 3 that the number of residents reaching out to report major spikes in their fire insurance premiums -- “double to quadruple,� she noted -- has risen dramatically over the last year.

Patrice Horstman, District 1 Supervisor and current chair of the Board, agreed. “I’m getting emails every week on this,� Horstman said. “And it’s not just me. Every single supervisor, so it’s all across the county.�

For residents and officials alike, the premium increases are worrying -- and confusing.

“The way that [insurers] actually set rates is pretty complex, and a lot of factors are considered,� Andreani said.

And Horstman added, “We don’t even know what factors are considered, because they won’t tell us.�

In the face of that uncertainty and lack of transparency, county leaders are trying to figure out how to move forward. The public discussions, Horstman said, are opportunities for “input from the community, education to the community� and a lot of education to us.�

Hearing from the experts

At Tuesday’s session, two staff members from the independent, nonprofit economics research agency Headwaters Institute presented via Zoom. Kimiko Barrett, senior research and policy analyst, and Doug Green, who manages the organization’s Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire program, spoke to the board.

In her presentation, Barrett noted that Coconino County has a higher risk from wildfire than 96% of other U.S. counties. That figure comes from the (WRC) database, a collaboration between the U.S. Forest Service, fire science research firm Pyrologix, and Headwaters.

The risk rating is based on vegetation and topography data, fire behavior modeling, historical weather patterns and building footprints. Coconino County has both a greater likelihood of wildfire and a greater chance of damage to homes and structures if fire occurs than the vast majority of the country, according to the WRC analysis.

Although the WRC website provides some insight into generalized risk in the region, it doesn’t provide parcel- or neighborhood-level detail on vulnerability. Nor does it necessarily mirror insurance companies� own proprietary assessments.

“I think one of the big fallacies out there is that� information off of wildfire risk or any other jurisdictional risk map is going to influence insurance rates. And that’s not true,� Barrett said afterward. “They know that risk, well before any public tool is going to illustrate it.�

That can be frustrating for homeowners, as District 3 Supervisor Tammy Ontiveros noted in a question to Barrett later in the meeting.

“It seems from what I am observing, I see homeowners doing everything they think the insurance company is going to want, fire departments encouraging them to do it, and insurance companies still not accepting the work that’s being done,� Ontiveros said. “How do we close that gap?�

“What you have just noted is brought up in many, many communities, over and over again,� Barrett replied. And unfortunately, there seems to be no immediate or easy solution for Arizonans.

There are a handful of pilot programs in other states that allow property owners to receive a wildfire preparedness certification if they make specific changes to their home. That certificate can then be used for “ongoing retainment of coverage� -- not a guaranteed reduction in premiums, but an annual renewal of insurance so long as the owner keeps up with required work. Colorado’s is currently the nationally recognized model for such a program, Barrett told the board.

There isn’t yet such a certificate available to homeowners here. Still, Barrett and Green encouraged community adoption of risk reduction measures -- both for the sake of retaining fire insurance, and for the safety of homes and neighborhoods.

“There’s no guarantee that the insurance companies are going to jump aboard this train, but we might as well do the right thing,� Barrett said.

Horstman, too, encouraged county residents to see home-hardening and risk reduction work as part of a communal effort.

“We all have responsibilities, and we need to undertake what we can for our families, for our own safety, and for our community’s safety,� Horstman said.

Making homes safer

Part of Green’s presentation focused on the science of home ignition. He emphasized that wind-borne embers, rather than flame fronts or radiant heat, are the primary cause of home ignition during wildfires.

“By far the most common way we lose communities is through embers,� Green said. Hot embers can travel up to four miles ahead of a fire if winds are strong, igniting “anything and everything� that is flammable.

But on the bright side, he noted, “Ember mitigation is the easiest and most cost-effective. …This is something we have the ability to solve.�

Green showed of testing conducted by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) comparing the effects of embers on two halves of a duplex -- one with defensible space and fire-resistant roofing, siding and decking materials, and one without. In the footage, the updated half of the building remains unaffected by a continuous blast of hot embers, while the other half ignites rapidly.

The cost of renovating a home or property for can vary greatly, Green acknowledged, and is affected by everything from the home’s age to the underlying slope. While cleaning up excess vegetation or relocating a woodpile away from a building may cost little more than labor time, comprehensive retrofits can cost upwards of $60,000, Barrett said.

Green emphasized that prevention remains less expensive than rebuilding: “What money we spend now is pennies compared to the dollars it would cost in the future.�

The logic of spending money on prevention rather than on rebuilding has also driven the county’s extensive forest restoration and thinning work in partnership with the Forest Service, Horstman told the Arizona Daily Sun before the meeting. “We cannot continue to afford to have these catastrophic wildfires in our communities,� she said.

But the Board of Supervisors recognizes that individual homeowners may struggle to afford the costs of a home retrofit. And Andreani believes that there is a need for loans, subsidies, or other incentives to make it easier.

“Where are the [financial] instruments that are going to start helping people to make these investments?� she questioned.

That may be an area where local governments, like the county, could play a role in the future -- though not something Coconino County has any plans for yet.

Concern for the future

The county does not yet have specific data available on the number of property owners affected by the spiraling cost of premiums. Andreani said she believed only “a pretty small fraction� of the county’s population has been directly impacted so far, but worries that the problem will continue to grow.

“Are we going to hit some threshold within that insurance system that’s going to have some kind of major impact?� she asked. Fire insurance is a requirement for home mortgages, and though she’s not aware of anyone who’s had a mortgage canceled or denied for inability to pay for fire insurance, the possibility is concerning.

There could be impacts on the housing rental market in the county, too, if property owners decide to pass on the costs of escalating insurance premiums. Though Andreani hasn’t heard of any such cases, she noted, “My sense is, it will affect it.�

And at a broader level, the risk of catastrophic wildfire poses a threat to the government-issued bonds that counties and municipalities often rely on to fund major capital projects. Insurance companies are often among the biggest buyers of locally issued bonds, Barrett explained to the board -- but if they believe that a government’s financial solvency and ability to pay back bonds on time could be disrupted by a fire, they might not buy.

If that happens, the county's ability to raise funds for large expenditures might be severely impacted.

Overall, Tuesday’s discussion presented more challenges than obvious solutions. “Sounds like we have a lot of homework to do,� District 5 Supervisor Lena Fowler said after the Headwaters presentation. She emphasized the need for the county to identify as many partners as possible for the complex effort, from state, federal, and tribal governments to fire districts and commercial developers.

And she added, “I’m hoping that each homeowner takes this seriously enough to say, ‘Yes, I’m in.’�

The full replay of the board's discussion is available on the county's YouTube channel at , titled "Understanding the Wildfire/Insurance Crisis in the West." Dates for future sessions in the series have not yet been announced.