As Fires Burn, Private Firms and Personal Effort Step In Where California Officials Fail

Californians are turning to private firefighting and security, but officialdom gets in the way.

California's incompetent governance has been on full display as wildfires rage around Los Angeles—and also long before, if we're being honest. Bizarre priorities, policy failures, unforgivable neglect, and officials who are out to lunch (or at overseas shindigs) have all played a role in throwing Californians on their own efforts to substitute for government institutions that just aren't up to the job. Faced with no other choice, people ingeniously devised means of keeping themselves and their property safe. They'd be better off if they hadn't first been fed false promises and charged, heavily, for substandard services.

Private Firefighting

This week, The Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating piece by Kelly Crow on the J. Paul Getty Museum's efforts to protect its two campuses from fire.

"Fire extinguishers in hand, the museum said, the Getty's staff scours the sparse ground beneath their boots as well as the canopies of oak trees overhead," Crow wrote. "They look for embers."

Anticipating problems in a region prone to blazes, for years the museum prepared its grounds and constructed its buildings to be fire-resistant. It planted trees and shrubs that concentrate water, the irrigation system was designed as much to suppress fire as to maintain the grass, and on-site water tanks keep sprinklers from running dry. Flames made it within within six feet of the Pacific Palisades site but didn't damage the museum's buildings or collection.

Of course, such preparations come relatively easy for an institution with the foresight to plan for riding out both fires and earthquakes and a $9.1 billion endowment to fund its efforts. What are regular people with less gobsmacking bank balances to do?

"Wildfire Defense Systems, founded in 2008, works with three dozen insurance carriers to help prevent the costly wildfire damage to homes and businesses that insurance companies will ultimately be responsible for paying," The Guardian's Lois Beckett reports of one private firefighting company. "[The] company was not the only one providing boots on the ground in Los Angeles for major insurance companies."

As Reason's Jack Nicastro noted this week, private firefighting efforts have a long history in the United States. To this day, many of the older buildings in Annapolis, Maryland bear the plaques of the fire companies with which the property owners contracted in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Private firefighting companies battling Los Angeles blazes have been attacked by the sort of creatures whose idea of fairness is letting everything burn equally to the ground. But most of them serve regular people through deals with insurance companies or contracts with government agencies that need to quickly hire extra capacity.

"Private efforts to combat wildfires are not just for the mansions of the superrich," comments The Guardian's Beckett. "In fact, many private companies that respond to wildfires now work for insurers, who seek to minimize the policies they would have to pay out."

Hiring private firefighting companies is cheaper than paying to rebuild neighborhoods. It's also more cost-effective than many public departments. One private firefighter told Variety that "while his company might charge between $4,000-$5,000 per day for a small fleet for a client, a municipality will run closer to $20,000 for workers, trucks, overtime and backfill workers." According to The New York Times, private firefighters also usually truck in their own water or tap pools and ponds.

Private Security

But after a fire devastates a neighborhood, there's the problem of securing valuables left behind by fleeing residents. Looting is a concern, and police and National Guardsmen are stretched to the limit by the demands of protecting such large areas. Not everybody trusts them to protect their property.

"Like the firefighters he was surrounded by the night before, he's guarding homes—not against the flames, but against looters," Rebecca Ellis of the Los Angeles Times wrote of one private security guard defending structures in the Pacific Palisades.

But a lot of people don't have the money to hire private security. Instead, they do the work themselves.

"In the still-smoldering neighborhoods of Altadena, where fires destroyed more than 2,700 structures, about 80 people have defied orders to evacuate, staying behind to protect what is left of their properties from looters and more fires after losing faith in authorities," report Sean McLain, Dan Frosch, and Joe Flint of The Wall Street Journal.

Some of the residents are armed. Generators and stored water make their task a little easier. The Journal authors reported, regarding one Pacific Palisades resident: "He had long been skeptical of the system, he said, but the fires further showed him that communities need to be prepared to fend for themselves."

California Officials Still Get in the Way

But few of these residents asked to shoulder the responsibility and expense of patrolling their neighborhoods and fighting fires. California has the fifth highest state and local tax burden in the country, as defined by the Tax Foundation. When the government services those taxes fund failed, people had to add the cost of private alternatives to what they already paid.

And still the state gets in the way. Perimeters established around neighborhoods by police prevent security guards and residents from protecting property. Those already inside the barriers rely on cops looking away while friends deliver supplies across the boundary.

Citing an owner of a private firefighting company, The New York Times wrote that a 2018 law requiring firms like his to coordinate with public agencies made it "too difficult to work directly with homeowners" and so his company pulled out of that market.

And while private firefighters more commonly contract with insurance companies than directly with property owners, the state's onerous regulations and premium caps are steadily driving out the insurers who hire firefighting firms in times of crisis. That leaves the state government's financially rickety FAIR Plan insurance coverage and fewer options for protecting homes and businesses.

California officials demonstrated they're incapable of delivering the services they promised and for which they charge high prices. Faced with the necessity of providing for themselves, people have been hard-working and creative in filling the gap. If only officialdom would get out of the way.