The recent fires in California have damaged over 15,000 acres in the past week. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has held several press conferences about the fires being referred to as the White fire and the Angora fire and others have started since then.

The White fire

Governor Schwarzenegger estimated that the White Fire in Kern County has burned more than 12,000 acres in the Tehachapi Mountains east of Bakersfield since it started. He also said that approximately 1,600 firefighters were fighting the fire and that is was 65 percent contained as of 6/29/07.

The Angora fire

The Angora fire in El Dorado County has burned 3,100 acres and was 70 percent contained as of Friday, 6/29/07. The fire was burning in a heavy timber area south of South Lake Tahoe, has destroyed a large number of homes and mandatory evacuations remained in effect for communities in South Lake Tahoe. The governor estimated that approximately 2,000 firefighters were fighting the blaze.

Additional fires threaten California

In addition to these fires reported on by the governor, other fires have started over the weekend including a 482-acre Rancho fire in the Los Padres National Forest northwest of Santa Barbara that started Saturday, June 30th as well as others in San Diego County. The governor has not yet conducted press releases on the additional fires, however, his website, http://gov.ca.gov/ contains helpful information as well as a dedicated webpage on the fires at http://www.calfires.com/.

No end in sight

According to weather forecasters, southern California has had record low rainfall this year which many speculate could lead to a horrendous fire season. As the 4th of July holiday approaches, California’s forest service officials are warning visitors to California’s state parks that fireworks are prohibited on national forest land and that there are restrictions on campfires in effect due to the dry conditions.

Fire insurance – do you know how the system works?

For the thousands of unfortunate residents in California who have lost their homes and/or personal belongings as a result of these fires, it’s important to understand how fire insurance works. For many consumers, the concept of fire insurance is just that – a concept. Experts say that while many have it, few truly understand it.

We asked Dave Peterson, a fire insurance expert in California with over 30 years of experience in fire related matters, to explain fire insurance. According to Peterson, “Fire insurance is statutorily mandated by Insurance Code Section 2071 and by that, it means that every fire policy in the State of California has to have what that section mandates. Generally, insurance policies are broken down into four areas. One is the insuring agreement. The second are the definitions. The third would be exclusions, and the fourth would be conditions. Every fire policy – almost every fire policy – has four areas of coverage.

“The first area would be the dwelling. The second area would be other structures like a detached garage or a gazebo or some guest home or something like that. The third area is personal property, the property that the insureds would have in the home when the fire took place, and fourth would be what they call loss of use or additional living expenses and that coverage helps to pay for the insured to move out and live somewhere else for the period of time it takes to repair the structure and they can move back.”

Don’t forget about endorsements

Consumers should understand that they can also get additional coverage by way of endorsements. Peterson explained, “Endorsements might add such important coverages as jewelry or furs because the policies will limit the amount of coverage for jewelry and furs and also for code upgrades. This is a pretty important coverage that insureds should try to get because if the home is destroyed or significantly impaired, sometimes the cities require different construction than it would take to just put it back together as it was before. In that regard, the insurance industry will deny that code upgrade coverage unless there is a specific endorsement providing that coverage.”