DISGUSTING! BIG Insurance Companies (State Farm, AllState, Farmers) Fled Months BEFORE The L.A. Wildfires Abandoned Some Policy Holders Who Held Insurance for 75+ Years
In December two thousand twenty-four, Lynne Levin-Guzman stood in her parents' front yard with a garden hose, desperately trying to protect their Pacific Palisades home. Not from flames - those would come later. She was there because State Farm had just canceled their fire coverage after seventy-five years. They've lived in this house since nineteen fifty, she told reporters. Now we're on our own.
🚨 COUNTLESS reports of mass fire coverage cancellations by insurance companies just WEEKS before the Los Angeles firespic.twitter.com/wJbXbK7y1c
— Adventure Travel 🧳 (@Pang_Bang_) January 8, 2025
Two weeks later, that neighborhood would lie in ruins. Over five thousand three hundred structures destroyed. But here's what makes this tragedy different - before the first ember ignited, insurance giants had already fled. State Farm dropped seventy percent of their coverage. Farmers Insurance followed. Then Allstate. One by one, they escaped before the inferno.
One by one, they escaped before the inferno.
Six months before Pacific Palisades burned, State Farm made a calculated decision. They canceled 1,600 policies in a single neighborhood. 2,000 more in surrounding Los Angeles zip codes like Brentwood and Calabasas. Their timing was impeccable - just months before what would become the most destructive wildfire in Southern California history.
Between 2020 and 2022, insurance companies declined to renew 2.8 million homeowner policies across California. Over half a million in Los Angeles County alone.
As traditional insurers fled, desperate homeowners turned to California's FAIR Plan - the state's insurer of last resort. In Pacific Palisades, FAIR Plan coverage quadrupled since two thousand twenty, from 350 to 1,400 homes. One in every seven homes now relied on this last-resort coverage.
But here's the devastating truth: The FAIR Plan, meant to be California's safety net, had only $3.77 million available to cover potential losses. Their total exposure in the fire zone? $5.9 billion. "We are one event away from a significant assessment," FAIR Plan President Victoria Roach testified last year. "There's no way around it - we lack sufficient funds and have considerable exposure."
That’s a 1,465% difference in what coverage is actually needed.
Perhaps most revealing is the timing. State Farm and others cited 'catastrophic risk' when dropping coverage, yet internal documents show they specifically targeted areas they had already identified as having 'the most significant wildfire hazards.'
The pattern is strikingly familiar. Just as UnitedHealthcare reports record profits while denying medical claims, California's insurers fled fire-prone areas while posting significant earnings. State Farm, which dropped 1,600 Pacific Palisades policies in July 2024, reported $44.9 billion in earned premiums that same year.
Insurance has strayed far from its foundational purpose of pooling resources to protect against catastrophic loss. Whether it's medical care or homes, we're witnessing companies systematically abandoning their most vulnerable customers precisely when they're needed most.
Customers like Kwynn Perry, who stands in what used to be her bedroom in Altadena, pointing to a twisted metal frame.
Kwynn Perry stands in what used to be her bedroom in Altadena, pointing to a twisted metal frame. "This is where our bedroom used to be," she says. "That was our bed, my cherished antique." Now it's just ash. Like thousands of others, Perry had been forced to drop her insurance when companies refused to cover the area.
As Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna surveys the devastation, he describes neighborhoods that look like a bomb was dropped in them. Over twelve thousand structures destroyed. 25 lives lost. 200,000 people evacuated.
AccuWeather projects this will be the costliest wildfire in California's modern history, with losses estimated between one hundred thirty-five to one hundred fifty billion, stemming from fires occurring in densely populated areas with some of the highest-valued real estate in the country.
On Monday, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara declared an emergency, implementing a one-year moratorium on cancellations. But for thousands of families, it comes too late. Perhaps most troubling: This may be just the beginning. As climate change reshapes California's landscape, experts warn we're watching the emergence of what they call an uninsurable future.