You need to worry about my sister’s homeowners’ insurance premium.

The reason is simple.

It is going to pose a costly problem for you.

And it’s being made a bigger problem with each additional home that catches on fire in the Los Angeles Basin or any high risk wildfire zone in California.

It’s all thanks to a regulation Sacramento put in place just a few weeks before LA started burning.

State Insurance Commission Richard Lara mandated that insurance companies that want to continue doing business in California must underwrite policies in high risk fire areas equal to 85 percent of homes they insurance in non-high risk areas of the state.

That means for every 20 homes elsewhere in California a company insures, they must write polices for 17 homes in high risk areas.

The bottom line is you and I will be paying premiums reflecting an insurance company’s mandated statewide exposure.

It wasn’t going to be cheap.

But now that the highest concentration of high valued homes in all of California’s high risk wildfire areas has/is burning in astronomical numbers in Los Angeles County, your future financial exposure when renewals occur in the coming years will be boosted by the Santa Ana winds.

My sister Mary lives on 5 acres in rolling terrain in the foothills northeast of Lincoln in Placer County.

The house is just under 3,000 square feet. 

It’s on a hillside with no trees or brush within 100 or so feet of the house.

There are two ponds and wooded areas.

They disk firebreaks.

She just put on a new roof.

Although the area they live in has not had a brush fire that destroyed a home in at least 30 years if not longer, they had their policy cancelled last year.

That policy cost $8,300 a year in premiums.

It had gone up in four figures annually for several years before the insurer dropped them.

Her broker scrambled to find a firm willing to insure the property.

De Los Homesite Insurance was willing to do so.

The policy is for a maximum of $646,000 in losses.

The cost is just over $9,500 a year.

That represents almost exactly 12 percent of her gross annual income.

Her neighbors have not been as lucky.

They had insurance cancelled and can’t find carriers who will underwrite their properties. 

It likely has to do with defensible space and the clustering of trees close to their homes.

And, depending how deep analyzing risk goes, prevailing winds and more micro looks at terrain could have caused insurers to say thanks but no thanks to her neighbors.

It could even be the companies decided to either stop insuring homes in wildfire high risk areas altogether or are paring down their exposure by shedding a large number of their policies written in such areas.

I just got my renewal notice from AAA for my 960 square-foot home in Manteca’s Power Tract neighborhood.

The loss of the dwelling coverage is $376,800 with a $500 deductible.

The new premium is $1,088 annually. 

Going forward, AAA — like other insurance companies — will not be able to manage their exposure in California by reducing their policies in high risk areas.

They have been allowed, finally, by Sacramento to reflect their actual losses in annual rate increase request that reflect their previous year’s losses and not via an average over five years.

Firms can also charge for future exposure to climate change.

Up until last year they couldn’t do so, which is kind of ironic given California is arguably the state with leadership that beats the drum by far the loudest when it comes to warning about the climate change “apocalypse.”

One might argue, “we’re all Californians and we’re in it together.”

But if that is the case, why is the Central Valley — specifically the San Joaquin Valley — being left high and dry when it comes to spreading the pain of high risk flood exposure that the state has officially identified as anything within a 200-year floodplain.

Take a look at the Cal Fire interactive map that shows areas of high fire risk in California.

It uses a sliding scale of three colors for risk severity with red being the worst, then orange, and yellow for the bottom end of the high risk spectrum.

You will notice two things.

The Central Valley is encircled by a ring of high risk fire areas,

San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties only have a smattering of orange and yellow west of Interstate 580 and south of that along Interstate 5 and on their eastern flanks.

One of the biggest regions for wildfire risk is nearby.

It’s a huge expanse of the Diablo Range starting in the north just south of Fremont and Livermore; to the east of San Jose, Gilroy, and Hollister; south to a point south of San Luis Reservoir; and east to Interstate 5.

Just over 15 miles from the edge of the massive red blotch is a 200-year flood zone that entails parts of Manteca, Lathrop, rural San Joaquin County, and Stockton.

Insurance companies are not required by law to offer flood insurance to homeowners in the area. The federal government does but those polices come with a $15,000 deductible and an upward cap on losses of around $300,000.

Sacramento in 2008 passed Senate Bill 8 that made it clear protection of such areas weren’t going to fall 100 percent on the backs of all California taxpayers.

Future losses were capped as local jurisdictions would not be allowed to have any new development — including small projects such as a room addition — unless they had a solution in place or a funding mechanism to make it happen by 2030

A local solution was devised costing $473 million beyond what flood protection is already in place and that is being maintained on an ongoing basis.

It included diverting property tax increases in the impacted area for the next 30 years, growth fees, and a special parcel tax assessment for 30 plus years.

That will cover almost 70 percent of the tab with federal and state grants bridging the gap.

Just over 75 percent of the impacted property owners agreed to the parcel tax that ranges from $10.52 to $83.40 annually based on a property’s level of exposure to potential flooding.

Why doesn’t the state impose a similar mandate for development in high risk wildfire areas?

Make local jurisdictions come up with an overlay protection plans beyond fire suppression infrastructure already in place in a bid to better guard against a massive wildfire.

It could involve much more aggressive vegetation management, new water lines and fire suppression systems as well as other ways to fire harden areas. 

Such areas could pick up 70 percent of the cost and then the state and federal government the rest just like high risk flood areas have been required to do so.

Enhanced and more frequent wildfire risk has been identified by the state as being the result of climate change just like with flooding.

So why isn’t Sacramento mandating local solutions using the stick of the state banning development with the endeavor primarily funded by those directly impacted living in high risk wildfire areas as they have done so with high risk areas of enhanced flooding?

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com