Over 30,000 people in the Greater Los Angeles area are under evacuation orders following the outbreak of wildfires on Tuesday. As of Wednesday, January 8, four life-threatening wildfires are raging around Los Angeles, in which at least two people have died. At the time of this writing, the fires are 0% contained. Among the tens of thousands forced to evacuate include seniors scrambling out of nursing homes in gowns and wheelchairs. Over 1,000 structures have been destroyed by the fire, including the Palisades Branch Library. Nearly 250,000 people are without power throughout the state of California, concentrated in the Los Angeles area, as a result of the fires.
NOW: Palisades Branch Library is a total loss. #PalisadesFire @foxla pic.twitter.com/QWwogGbikt
— Gigi Graciette (@GigiGraciette) January 8, 2025
In a live interview conducted by KABC-TV outside the Eaton fire, a woman claimed that the company that was providing insurance for the home her parents had been staying in for over 75 years had just cancelled her parents’ fire insurance. “We’re going through this and it just happened and they don’t have fire insurance,” she told interviewers.
This woman’s case draws attention to the larger issue: from healthcare to natural disasters, insurance companies seem committed to abandoning their customers in their most dire moments of need. In August of last year, 17,000 Liberty Mutual customers in California lost their “dwelling fire insurance”. This echoes the plight of the victims of last year’s hurricanes, many of whom were left without home insurance after having their houses razed by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, highlighting gaps in home insurance coverage.
The wildfires also have drawn attention to the state of California’s reliance on forced prisoner labor to combat fires. These firefighting crews of inmates have shrunk following COVID-19 and some prison reform efforts, leaving the state without the numbers needed to fight wildfires.
