(Bloomberg) — The wildfires ravaging Northern California may be the costliest for the insurance industry in more than two decades by the time the blazes are controlled.
"Although it is too early to provide any current loss estimates, the Valley fire could become the largest wildfire loss event in Northern California since the Oakland firestorm in 1991," Mark Bove, senior research meteorologist at Munich Re, said in an e-mail Wednesday. That firestorm cost more than $2.6 billion in 2014 dollars, according to Property Claim Services data compiled by the Insurance Information Institute.
The Valley fire destroyed almost 600 homes and hundreds of other structures and was only 30 percent contained, according to a state report Wednesday. Dry weather increased the risk in the state and beyond, with more than 46,000 fires this year, spanning 8.8 million acres (3.6 million hectares) across the U.S., more than twice the area as in the same period in 2014, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
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