Coconino County hears IBHS plan to reduce home ignitions amid wildfire insurance crisis

Coconino County supervisors on Wednesday received a presentation from Michael Newman, general counsel for the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), on steps homeowners and communities can take to reduce the risk that wildfires ignite houses and trigger large-scale conflagrations. The briefing, the third in a county series on the wildfire-insurance problem, focused on parcel-level measures (notably a 5-foot defensible-space zone) and a voluntary IBHS “Wildfire Prepared” designation that IBHS says can be verified by inspectors and renewed every three years.

Why it matters: county officials and residents have reported sudden premium increases and policy nonrenewals. Supervisors emphasized that rate-setting and carrier underwriting are controlled by insurers and state regulators, not the county, but they said local actions — building-code changes, education, verified mitigation and coordinated data collection — could make homes more survivable and, potentially, more attractive to insurers.

IBHS’s presentation: Michael Newman described IBHS as a nonprofit research institute funded by the property insurance industry that conducts full-scale tests of homes under extreme wind and ember conditions. Newman said embers are often the first ignition mechanism when wildfires reach communities, and that the five feet closest to a home is the most critical defensible-space zone because embers collect there and can ignite combustible materials. “When mitigation actions are made to the structure and the surrounding defensible space, we can meaningfully reduce the risk of home…