Private firefighters are helping fight wildfires in California. Is this fair? : NPR

Many people had never heard of private firefighters until recent days, when a post on X from a Los Angeles resident went viral.

“Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades? We need to act quickly here,” he wrote on Los Angeles Times reported. “I will pay any amount.”

The post was deleted, not without drawing attention to a little-known sector: fire protection teams who are not paid by taxpayers’ money, but by companies and individuals.

But it turns out that it is mainly home insurers who use their services.

Here’s a look at what these companies do, as well as the thorny ethical questions they raise.

So how does it work?

Unsurprisingly, the idea that some wealthy people were hiring their own firefighters to protect their property sparked a lot of backlash: it seemed to many people unfair and just plain shabby.

It turns out that people can hire private firefighters, but it’s not cheap, because recent media reports were clear. And there is no guarantee that their properties will be spared.

But these fire protection services are primarily hired by insurers, as part of homeowners’ insurance policies in fire-prone states – and in California, they operate according to state regulations.

Take wildfire defense companies. When a wildfire endangers Comp-insured homes, the company’s crews show up carrying their own water supplies.

But David Torgerson, executive president of Wildfire Defense, says most of what they provide is labor to try to prevent fires from engulfing a home in the first place — largely tasks that do not require water.

“We clean, we sweep, we clear the gutters, we remove the places where the embers can ignite on the property or we remove the access that the embers must have to enter the buildings,” he specifies.

For example, hot embers may enter the dryer vent. Wildfire Defense teams will therefore close the vent with adhesive tape.

They will also return after the fire has passed to make sure there are no burning bushes or fences that could ignite the house.

What does this mean for insurance companies?

By providing these services, insurance companies are able to limit their losses from wildfires. Offering this protection as part of an insurance policy can also be a selling point when people are looking for coverage.

For example, insurer USAA includes this type of service in its home insurance policies in 15 states.

Rebekah Nelson, director of disaster communications for USAA, said the company offers it because it’s the right thing to do for its members.

“When you lose everything, this struggle to find a new house, a place to live and acquire new possessions, it’s terrible. And if we can save a house by offering this service, it’s a victory,” says- She.

She acknowledged that it also benefits insurance companies – and said she wishes everyone had this service on their insurance policy.

Not everyone has these policies. Go private teams only help homes covered by certain insurers?

It is difficult to know what is happening on the ground.

But USAA’s Nelson says the providers they use don’t just help their clients. If the departments they work with encounter an active scene, Nelson says, “they won’t go around it.”

She adds that many of these departments are staffed by retired fire chiefs, “so it’s critical that they help the community.”

But still, these wildfire protection companies are hired on behalf of private insurers and therefore might have different priorities than firefighters who work for the public.

And not everyone has this type of coverage, or can afford it – especially in an era when insurance rates have skyrocketed.

And many insurers that offer these services specify that they are not available for condos, townhouses or mobile homes.

But aren’t there big ethical questions here?

Ultimately, those who can afford to hire private firefighters or who benefit from this service as part of their insurance policy would be better protected than those who do not have access to these companies.

“There are tons of ethical questions because wildfires themselves are a very complex problem,” says Brian Green of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.

Among the questions: Which firefighters have access to a limited water supply? Will people who have private firefighters continue to support taxpayer funding of public firefighters?

And do the rich have a separate path that allows them to avoid facing the enormous problems that ordinary people face?

Green says that’s still the case.

“If you have resources and you’re better able to protect yourself from all kinds of bad things happening around you,” he says. “And once again, it just brings the issue of injustice to the forefront.”

Yet at the heart of the problem, Green adds, is a fundamental problem of government preparedness, “and whether the government is willing to pay enough to ensure that we don’t actually need private firefighters.”

Torgerson, of Wildfire Systems, describes services like his as an adaptation to the fact that wildfires are more frequent and more damaging.

And in a crisis, isn’t it better to have all the help you can get?

“It’s better to have more resources. It’s better that it doesn’t represent a cost to the taxpayer or the policyholder. It’s better that more structures survive,” he says.

And Torgerson adds that companies like his can help keep insurers in the market. Several insurers have pulled out of California in recent years – and in these Los Angeles wildfires, insured losses are on track to reach $30 billion or more.

Still, private firefighters will likely continue to raise thorny ethical questions — with no easy answers.