SACRAMENTO, California — The rising cost of fire insurance was a problem in California’s rural fire-prone areas. Then it was a problem for suburban and urban fire-prone areas. Now it’s a problem for everyone.
Nearly all Californians could see a surcharge on their property insurance bills to cover part of the industry’s losses from the Los Angeles fires after the state’s insurer of last resort said Tuesday it would run out of money to pay its claims.
It’s the first time ever such a surcharge, which Floridians already know as a “hurricane tax,” will hit Californians, and represents a new frontier for the state: The cost of natural disasters — supercharged at least in part by climate change — is now directly hitting everyone’s pocketbooks…