I have an insurance agency. We insure cars, homes, businesses, and lives. Over the past few months, I’ve heard more and more people bringing up the fact that their insurance is being raised. I’ve also met several potential client / applicants who have been denied or refused insurance due to “potential fire hazard”. We can bring down the cost of homeowners insurance in our community by setting up a FireWise USA neighborhood.
I thought of this 3 years ago but now I’m putting together a board of directors and looking for volunteers. We already have several interested board members including a city council person and a fire board member (maybe two of them). We need citizen members and volunteers. If you are interested in learning more about it or helping us, we are having a informational / exploratory zoom call this Saturday Nov 15, 2025 at 11:00 AM PST. Write to me at ja (at) alagna.com and I’ll send you an invite and the password to participate.
The interesting thing is that many of these applicants have homes that don’t seem like a fire hazard at all to me. But I’ve come to learn that part of these fire hazard decisions are based on the existing risk that some of these insurance companies already have in a particular area or region. It’s a way for them to limit risk by spreading it out. After all that’s what makes insurance work, shared risk.
Well guess what, I just got my homeowners insurance bill and it went up too. I decided to look into it a little more. What I discovered is interesting and might be of interest to people in the community. It’s called creating a Firewise USA Community. And living in one has the potential to save us a few dollars on our insurance bills (I don’t know if it’s significant but I see no reason not to do this regardless).
I’m going to start it. If you are interested in serving on the board that we’ll need to create, please contact me. My plan is to do it in Butterfield and to invite other parts of Chino Hills to do it for their communities as well. A Firewise USA Community can consist of no more than 2500 homes. I’ve counted about 1800 in ours.