AIR puts northern California wildfire industry loss at up to $3bn

Catastrophe risk modelling specialist AIR Worldwide has issued an estimate of insurance and reinsurance industry losses from wildfires in the northern areas of California, saying that the bill for the sector is likely to be from $2 billion to as much as $3 billion.

It’s important to note that AIR’s estimate is only for industry losses from wildfires that occurred in the northern areas of California, above San Francisco, specifically the Tubbs, Pocket, Nuns, Atlas, Redwood, and Sulphur fires.

AIR’s estimate of the impact to insurance and reinsurance interests from these fires includes residential, mobile home, commercial, and automobile line losses, as well as direct business interruption losses.

AIR notes that over 8,700 structures have now been reported as destroyed, an increase on the 8,400 we reported at the beginning of this week.

AIR’s estimate does not include damage from other wildfires, of which there are numerous in the state of California with fires as far south as Los Angeles currently.

As we wrote yesterday, some in the industry are expecting the insurance and reinsurance loss from recent wildfire activity in California to come in between $5 billion and $8 billion, significantly higher than AIR’s estimate released late yesterday.