The release — which includes all of Southern California and marks the end of the agency’s two-month, statewide rollout — sets off a roughly five-month clock for L.A. city and county to receive public input, make adjustments, and begin enforcing heightened fire-safety regulations within the new zones.

The new Cal Fire maps are only for areas where local fire departments, like the Los Angeles Fire Department and Los Angeles County Fire Department, are responsible for responding to blazes. Previously, Cal Fire only mapped the highest severity rating, “very high,” for these local responsibility areas. The new maps include Cal Fire’s “moderate” and “high” zones as well.

New fire hazard zones for Los Angeles and Southern California

Local responsibility areas (proposed)

Cal Fire most recently updated all three zones for the areas where the state responds to fires in September 2023. However, the last time the agency updated its maps for areas where local fire departments are responsible was in 2011.

The city of L.A. saw its acreage in the “very high” zone increase by 7%. The addition of the new “moderate” and “high” zones led to the total acreage in the fire severity hazard zones increasing by 24%.

The unincorporated areas in L.A. County that rely on LACFD, however, saw their acreage in the “very high” zone more than triple. Much of the unincorporated areas — which make up over 65% of the county and include Altadena, the outskirts of Santa Clarita and Palmdale areas and Puente Hills near Whittier — are wildlands or exist at the wildland-urban interface, which are more prone to fire.

“Today’s release of updated hazard assessment maps from Cal Fire … underlines the ongoing wildfire crisis that California is experiencing,” Rep. George Whitesides (D-Agua Dulce) said in a statement. “We must act fast and at scale to protect our communities and make sure insurance markets work for everyone.”

With the rollout complete, California as a whole now has more “very high” hazard zone acres than ever before. Cal Fire mapped a grand total of 6.8 million acres into the local responsibility area hazard zones: “very high” zones grew 35%, from 860,000 acres to nearly 1.2 million; meanwhile, 1.2 million and 4.5 million acres were placed into the new “high” and “moderate” zones, respectively.

The hazard severity zone maps are referenced in more than 50 sections of California law. They require homeowners in “high” and “very high” hazard zones to follow fire-safe building codes for new construction — including installing multi-pane windows that are less likely to break in extreme heat and covering vents and other openings to prevent embers from entering the house. Homeowners in the “very high” zones must maintain defensible space around their properties and disclose the “very high” status when they put their houses up for sale

The legislature has also required local governments in heightened severity zones to routinely review evacuation routes and account for the potential peak stress on water supplies during a disaster. Local governments must also locate essential public facilities like hospitals and emergency command centers outside of heightened fire hazard zones “when feasible,” according to the law.

Cal Fire originally planned to release the maps in mid-January; however the L.A. firestorms that month forced the agency to delay as it moved significant scientific resources to supporting the firefight and relief efforts.

In the new maps, the Pacific Palisades and Malibu remain blanketed under a red “very high” zone, just as they did in Cal Fire’s old maps from 2011. Altadena, on the other hand, remains largely unzoned, indicating a hazard lower than “moderate,” just as it did in the old maps.

An analysis by The Times found that only 21% of the properties within the Eaton fire’s perimeter were designated as having “very high” fire hazard. Yet, an independent assessment by the public-benefit company First Street had identified 94% as having “severe” or “extreme” wildfire risk, meaning they had at least a 1 in 7 chance of experiencing wildfire in a 30-year window.

Cal Fire research manager David Sapsis, who oversees the agency’s mapping efforts, acknowledged that the models Cal Fire uses to create its maps cannot fully predict the dynamic spread of wildfire into urban areas. Cal Fire’s model instead accounts for the vegetation type, topology, climate and weather for wildland areas to calculate the probability of an area burning and the likely intensity of the blaze. From this, it calculates how far a blaze would likely spill over into urban areas.

The team also intentionally chose to leave out what it calls “outlier” events like the 2017 Tubbs fire, because, they said, it would have led to overly conservative zoning. Another outlier event: the Eaton fire, which, like the Tubbs fire, was driven by relentless, powerful winds that drove the blaze deep into a populated area.

First Street approaches it somewhat differently. The company creates a virtual representation of California that includes both vegetation and human infrastructure of the state’s urban areas, and simulates how fires would likely spread, including into areas like Altadena. If Cal Fire’s model is a snapshot of how fire acts, First Street’s is a motion picture.

Sapsis acknowledged he’d like to use newer approaches like First Street’s in the future. For its 2025 maps, Cal Fire made only slight modifications to its model, including the use of more up-to-date climate and extreme weather data. It also used a new model for estimating how far embers can bring fire into developed areas.

Other changes in the real world — such as new housing developments that changed an area’s classification from wildland to urban — also resulted in modifications to the Cal Fire maps.

In the latest release — comprising all of Southern California, including San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties — the cities of Hesperia and Jurupa Valley saw the most significant percentage increase in acres zoned, with the cities’ total averages in hazard zones increasing more than 35- and 45-fold, respectively. Jurupa Valley saw its “very high” zone expand from 226 acres to 6,195. Hesperia’s grew from 715 to 15,359.

The cities of Chino Hills, Lancaster and Santa Clarita saw significant increases in their “very high” zones; in all three cities, the zones grew by more than 13,000 acres.

The number of acres zoned as “very high” in San Diego decreased by nearly 30%; however, its total acreage in hazard zones still slightly increased thanks to the new “moderate” and “high” zones.

Only a handful of cities across the state saw decreases in the total acreage zoned, including Rancho Palos Verdes in L.A. County and Oakland in the Bay Area.

“I’ll be quite honest with you, before these maps were produced, I thought the very high fire severity zones were really going to reach deep deep down into Altadena, and they haven’t,” said LACFD Deputy Fire Chief Albert Yanagisawa. “I asked Cal Fire, seeing as what happened, is there a reason the maps were not changed, and what they said was, specifically, their model is for wildland fire modeling. It’s not utilized and it shouldn’t be utilized for [urban] conflagration modeling.”

Cal Fire has so far declined to comment on what drove changes in specific counties and cities.

Now, local jurisdictions have 120 days to accept public input on the maps and work with Cal Fire to issue an official ordinance implementing them. Typically, ordinances take effect about 30 days after they’re issued. At that point, the heightened fire safety regulations would apply to the new zones.

Local jurisdictions like L.A. city and county are allowed to increase the severity of a zone and add additional acres to a zone; however, they cannot decrease the severity of zones or remove acres from them.

These maps are a “critical tool for identifying high fire hazard areas and strengthening fire safety policies across our communities,” said County Supervisor Kathryn Barger. “For those working to rebuild after the Eaton fire, I want to emphasize that these maps provide essential information to guide your rebuilding efforts. They reflect the latest fire hazard assessments and will help ensure our homes and infrastructure are rebuilt with safety and resilience in mind.”

Fire safety advocates have attributed the continuing upward trend of acre zones to a litany of factors from development in fire-prone areas, ecosystem changes and climate change.

“Yes, climate change has obviously and absolutely impacted the severity of our wildfires and where they are happening, but way before there were climate impacts, there were land-use decisions,” said Howard Penn, executive director of the Planning and Conservation League, a California-based nonprofit. “We have been sprawling into the wildlands for the last 75-plus years with very little consideration of the impacts.”

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Aiming to both quell soaring prices and bring back firms that have left the Golden State, regulators are proposing sweeping reforms that they believe could revive a competitive insurance market.

While experts agree that the status quo may no longer be sustainable, opinions remain divided on the merits of the proposed changes — which some fear could drive up prices further.

“The situation is hurting consumers badly,” Amy Bach, executive director of the consumer advocacy group United Policyholders, told The Hill.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s going to resolve on its own,” Bach added.

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara last week called for public input on the final phase of his wildfire modeling regulation, which is many months in the making and has sparked significant debate.

Lara’s strategy would update Proposition 103, a 1988 ballot measure that served “to protect consumers from arbitrary insurance rates and practices” and encouraged a competitive and fair marketplace, according to the Insurance Commission. 

Proposition 103 determined that rate changes could only occur with the authorization of the commissioner, while also establishing a public participation process in which so-called “intervenors” could provide technical input and recover associated costs.

Lara’s office said in a press statement that his update aims to close a loophole in Proposition 103: Insurance firms today can request rates at any level to help compensate for an increased risk of losses but are not required to cover all Californians.

The new regulation, in contrast, would require companies to insure properties in distressed regions at a rate equivalent to 85 percent of the firm’s statewide market share. 

In addition, the proposal would incorporate the state’s first use of “catastrophe modeling,” localized simulations of potential risk based on historical analyses and probabilistic calculations that such events will occur in the future.

Whether relying upon such simulations, also known as “cat models,” would end up lowering or raising consumer rates, however, is a matter of contention.

Those in favor of employing these tools argue that other states have long done so and that proactive efforts to adapt California homes to a changing climate could mitigate risk.

“Over the past several years, the state has put billions toward wildfire mitigation efforts and homeowners have made significant investments in home hardening,” Lara said in a statement.

“This is not accounted for by our existing retrospective, past-focused models for ratemaking,” the commissioner continued. “We want consumers to reap the full benefits of these efforts through modern, forward-looking models on how rates are calculated.”

But others are far less certain that the models would account for such improvements — especially because the technology is often proprietary.

Bach cited catastrophe models as a reason for her muted enthusiasm about Lara’s proposal. Yet she expressed willingness “to let the commissioner’s sustainable insurance strategy go into place.”

“If it doesn’t work, then I guess we go back to the drawing board,” Bach said, expressing approval for the mandatory coverage component of the regulation.

Bach stressed that thus far, she has seen no indication that catastrophe models, when applied to wildfire-prone areas, are accounting for active mitigation efforts in price determinations. She also expressed concern that wildfire models are much newer than those for, say, hurricanes.

“We are nervous,” she continued. “The reality is that prices are so high already, and affordability is so low right now.”

Nonetheless, Bach acknowledged that California’s lack of catastrophe models was contributing to the exodus of insurance companies from the state. Beginning in 2022 and 2023, many big firms stopped offering services to new customers, often citing wildfire risk. 

“The writing was on the wall that cat models are going to come to California, just for practical reasons,” she acknowledged.

“We’re glad at least there’s a quid pro quo — that as a condition of insurers getting to use cat models, they also have to pledge to insure more homes in the areas that have been abandoned,” Bach added.

Harvey Rosenfield, founder of Consumer Watchdog and the author of Proposition 103, decried catastrophe models as “completely unjust, untested and unreliable.”

“Models are cloaked in the guise of technological infallibility, but they are drafted, they’re written, they’re controlled by humans,” Rosenfield told The Hill.

He also argued that their use would violate provisions of the voter-approved Proposition 103, because this would deny consumers their legal right to examine the details of these models.

“Nobody has the power to rewrite Proposition 103 to eliminate its protections,” Rosenfield added.

The applicability of catastrophe models to wildfire risk assessments was one focal point in a June 2024 working paper about the adaptation of insurance markets to a changing climate. Although these models have improved the ability of insurers to gauge wildfire risk, the resultant projections remain “inherently uncertain,” according to the paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“The modern catastrophe models bring a lot of value to insurance pricing and rate setting,” co-author Judson Boomhower, assistant professor of economics at the University of California San Diego School of Social Sciences, told The Hill.

“They give you a much more nuanced view of risk for a given property or a given area,” added Boomhower, who is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

That more detailed vantage point, he explained, is more sophisticated than the “backward-looking historical rate-setting methods that insurers have been required to use in California.”

Nonetheless, Boomhower also recognized that catastrophe models “are sort of a black box” due to their proprietary nature and resultant questions of transparency.

“Those are legitimate challenges for regulators to think about, but at a high level, this is the best scientific method for assessing catastrophe risk,” he said.

Boomhower described Florida as “a little bit ahead” of California from this perspective, as the state requires companies to give regulators some insight into how their individual models work.

In the working paper, Boomhower and his colleagues reconstructed pricing formulas used in California by six major insurers — combining data from company-provided premiums with proprietary information from about 100,000 households.

The authors found that following the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons, both premiums and the rate of policy cancellations in high-risk areas surged. They also observed increasing reliance on the state’s “quasi-private insurer of last resort” —  called California FAIR —  the basic but expensive property insurance provided when traditional coverage is unavailable.

Among the paper’s key findings was the fact that insurers exhibited “striking variation” in how firms priced wildfire risk, with some only divided the market roughly, at the zip-code-level, and pricing risk at a more granular level — using catastrophe models.

“There’s tons of heterogeneity in wildfire loss risk, even within zip codes or even within neighborhoods,” Boomhower said.

Insurers with less sophisticated models seemed to end up with a slew of higher-risk customers and greater-than-expected costs, which the authors dubbed the “winners’ curse.”

Meanwhile, they found that companies using the more granular models tended to attract lower-risk customers. With that in mind, Boomhower projected that there would be “a lot of competition among insurance companies to find the low-risk homes in these designated high-risk areas.”

“There are parts of the state where wildfire risk has increased really rapidly,” he continued. “Those are places where insurance rates probably do need to go up relative to where they’ve been historically, just to reflect the increasing risk.”

To the extent that Proposition 103 has held rates down, Boomhower acknowledged that the proposed updates could end up raising prices.

“On the other hand, that may be what you need to ensure availability in some of those places,” he said.

While the status quo may not be ideal for anyone, Rosenfield stressed his belief that insurance firms might come back to California without a change in regulation — simply because it will be in their financial interest to do so.

“California is the biggest single insurance market in the planet, and they’re just going to come back in and take advantage of that,” he said.

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