Insurance woes plague efforts to cut growing wildfire risks

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For centuries if not millenia, people have used controlled fire as a vital tool to curb wildfire risks by preemptively burning dry timber and other fire fodder that could fuel out-of-control blazes.

Around the world, such proactive fire-setting is seen as one of the cheapest and most effective ways to limit catastrophic fire risk, which is swiftly rising as climate change brings hotter temperatures and harsher droughts.

But in the United States, spiking insurance costs and wary providers now present an existential threat to such efforts, according to officials and groups trying to promote "good fire."

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Analysts say the approaching end of affordable "prescribed burn" insurance coverage is just one example of how, as climate change drives growing losses from disasters such as wildfires, floods and storms, access to insurance protection from them also is weakening.

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