California Homeowners: Insured No More Amid Fire Danger

America's largest and, for some owners, only option for a home insurer is pulling back its operations in the state of California, leaving many with no more options to secure their property's value amid wildfire danger in the state reaching new heights. After saying in May of last year that it wasn't giving out any new California contracts, news broke in March that 72,000 State Farm policies in the state would not be renewed. Now, a filing shows which zip codes these homes are in.

In many affected places, State Farm had been the only or only major insurer still operating, according to reporting by CBS. Most companies had already deemed the locations uninsurable due to the danger of wildfires whose flames have been fanned by climate change.

Among the zip codes in question are many wealthy neighborhoods in the hillsides in or near Los Angeles, for example Pacific Palisades, Bel Air or Calabasas. Others, like Brentwood or Tarzana, also include more modest stretches. However, the policies most likely to be discontinued are for those homes in hilly areas more likely to come at a premium in or near big metros but also more likely to fall victim to a fire.

Still, State Farm's move speaks volumes to homes in wooded areas of California now being considered so likely to be destroyed that the usual calculations of insurance companies have stopped working out—at least for those high-end properties that are now having their contracts discontinued.

Home insurance policies are usually renewed every year. In the L.A. zip codes with the biggest shares of contracts that will not be rolling over, between 542 (in Tarzana) and 1,626 policies (in Pacific Palisades) are now running out. The highest absolute number, however, is in the 94563 zip code of Orinda near Oakland. Other highly affected zip codes are near San Diego as well as in Santa Marta north of the Bay Area.