The wildfires that plagued Washington for nearly half the summer put new Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer and her office to a test.
Kuderer has been in office for over a year-and-a-half. However, she’s relatively new considering her predecessor, Washington Commissioner of Insurance Mike Kreidler, was the nation’s longest serving commissioner, having held the office since 2001.
The magnitude of what she and the Office of The Insurance Commissioner are dealing with is best stated in numbers: the blazes resulted in the most expensive fire damage in Washington history, and Spokane County Assessor Tom Konis puts rebuilding costs from three recent wildfires at more than $1 billion.
The industry is projecting $600 million in insured losses to date from wildfires in the state, with the bulk of that coming from residential losses at roughly $535 million, according to figures out from the OIC on Tuesday.
While those figures encompass all wildfires in the state, most of the expected losses are from the Spokane Complex Fire, which was comprised by the Old Trails, Fairview and Autumn Lane fires that burned nearly 10,000 acres and destroyed some 900 structures. A recent analysis from property data provider Cotality identified 5,256 properties that sustained at least some damage, of which 96% were single-family residences. The damaged single-family homes carry a combined reconstruction cost value of $1.9 billion.
Related: Washington Arson Suspect Timed Fire for High Wind Day
Kuderer recently returned from surveying the damage and speaking with stakeholders and residents impacted by the fires, including Spokane City officials, to find ways to speed up the recovery process, which she believes means speeding up claims processing with the aid of her office’s rapid response team members who have been deployed.
What she and her office have heard about the claims paying process to this point has been largely positive. However, she said she would like to see more carriers helping claimants streamline the process by foregoing the requirement of providing full inventories on losses.
“I only know what I’m hearing on the ground and there have been more compliments than not,” Kuderer said. “But there have been some complaints, especially when it comes to personal property and some companies requiring the full inventory.”
According to her, some insurers have been more forgiving with inventory requirements, with one carrier voluntarily paying out 65% of their limit without the need of an inventory.
“And I appreciate that,” she said. “I think the other companies should follow suit, and I’m thinking about maybe sending a letter to them asking them to do just that.”
Kuderer believes she and her staff were prepared for the fires because of her experiences from her time in state Legislature, where each year lawmakers kept hearing that “we’ve had the worst fire season, we’ve had the worst fire season.”
She took the lesson that fires in the state were becoming an increasingly worse risk into office with her.
“And so, when I got into office it was clear to me that we needed to be prepared, and so we created the consumer outreach and disaster response team program, the CODR program for short,” she said.
The Community Outreach and Disaster Response Program was started by her office last year. It works to reduce the number of underinsured residents before emergencies occur, and it places experts at disaster recovery centers to support communities and to assist residents with navigating the claims process and understanding coverages. Her office also rolled out a Community Connect Program, which holds public forums and town halls with Kuderer to discuss local insurance rates, coverage and wildfire risks.
Another lesson she’s learned is to pushback on efforts to eliminate or exempt parts of building codes to build back faster after wildfires.
Related: Wildfires Mean Portland Edges Out Kinshasa for World’s Worst Air
“I think that’s a mistake we saw that when I toured Lahaina and Palisades,” she said.
After both devastating fires, some stakeholders pushed to streamline the construction process, including efforts to alter building codes to speed things up. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order allowing homeowners rebuilding from the January 2025 L.A. wildfires to use less stringent building standards, drawing some criticism.
Efforts to build back faster and clear the path to development in a state hammered by lack of housing and affordability issues have continued.
A California agency in late-August approved long-delayed regulations designed to protect homes from wildfire, but they fall short of defenses recommended by scientists and firefighters.
Kuderer believes that if buildings and homes are not built back to existing codes and high standards, that there will be trouble insuring them, a concern she has been hearing from insurers. It almost happened in Malden with the Wells Road fire this year. The area was hit hard in 2020. Fortunately, only one home was damaged along with a few structures this year, but the fire was close to creating a repeat disaster in a still-recovering community.
“I totally understand the desire to want to build quickly, but I think we have to build back smartly and for me that means building back to the IIBHS (Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety standards,” she said. “I know that in California, it’s a little bit of a fight about that right now. I don’t want to have that fight here, and I’m hoping that we can be smarter about it because as we saw from the fire in Malden in Washington, here you’re never exempt from having it happen again. Tragedy can strike twice and it did there, so I’d rather us reduce the potential for this to happen again and we have an opportunity here to do that with Spokane.”
Teams sift through the destruction from one of the three blazes that made up the Spokane Complex Fire. Photo by Lauren Burnes, OIC.
Topics Profit Loss Washington