State regulators are banning insurers from canceling homeowners threatened by two of this year's largest wildfires.
Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara issued the one-year moratorium yesterday, protecting nearly 26,000 policyholders near the Lava and Beckwourth Complex Fires. Counties included in the moratorium include Plumas, Lassen and Sisikyou. It’s the third straight year that Lara has imposed the one-year ban on non-renewals. Last year he issued a moratorium covering 2.4 million policyholders, following the record fire season in which more than 4 million acres burned, according to The Sacramento Bee.
Lara invoked SB 824, a law he authored while a member of the Legislature in 2018. The law creates a one-year breather for homeowners living in or immediately adjacent to the burn zone of a fire that prompted a declaration of a state of emergency by the governor.