Seen at Business Insurance:
Catastrophe modeling company EQECAT on Wednesday estimated that insured losses from Southern California’s fires have now exceeded $1 billion.
The losses will continue to mount until the Santa Ana winds die down and firefighters can contain the fires, EQECAT said.
Judging by the television broadcast news folks getting a little tired of showing pictures of houses burning, and evacuated people and livestock in various fora, I expect in the next few days we’ll hear the pundits start talking more about the concept of megafires—fires aggravated by prolonged drought, and expanding development limiting resource management folks’ ability to tolerate limited burns in “off years”, leading to extra kindling being present when a fire does break out.
Oh, and if you haven’t already encountered it, KPBS is offering an impressive mashup with Google Maps showing the scope and status of the fires in/near San Diego County.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Cahwyguy // 25 Oct 2007 at 12:26 am
The LA Times has an interesting article relating to insurance and the fire rebuilds. The title is “Insurance claims could haunt houses”, and it is about an insurance industry database that could inflate the insurance on rebuilt houses for years to come. You might find it of interest (p.s., your graphics aren’t coming through on LJ right now. Hopefully, you’ll come back for periodic posts, but I do find your blog wonderful.
2 MikeTheActuary // 25 Oct 2007 at 1:39 am
Thanks for the tipoff on the icons. I missed recreating that hack.