Hard Numbers on the LA wildfires: From evacuations and deaths to estimated losses and insurance woes. Plus: Inmate firefighters
180,000: At least 180,000 people have been ordered to evacuate and an additional 200,000 face evacuation warnings. At least 10 people have been killed, but the death toll is expected to rise, and 20 people have been arrested on suspicion of looting.
9,000: A whopping 9,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed, including the homes of many notable celebrities, such as Paris Hilton, Billy Crystal, Adam Brody, and Eugene Levy.
10 billion: Preliminary insurance estimates suggest losses to the tune of $10 billion. The average home price in the Palisades area is $3.5 million and $1.25 million in the region affected by the Eaton fire. The economic loss estimate could be as high as $57 billion for the region.
30,000: In March 2024, State Farm informed 30,000 policyholders across California that it would not renew their insurance because they lived in areas that “present the most substantial wildfire or fire following earthquake hazards.” This included many homes in the Westside region of Los Angeles, as well as 1,600 policyholders in Pacific Palisades. Both State Farm and Allstate had already stopped issuing home insurance policies to new customers in the statein 2023. Smaller insurers may fill some gaps, however, with independent home insurer Mercury Insurance announcing Tuesday that it would write new home insurance policies in the town of Paradise, which was destroyed by the Camp Fire in 2018.
0.16: Thirty percent of firefighters in California are prison inmates who earn between $0.16 to $0.74 an hour or a maximum day rate of $5.80 to $10.24, plus a $4 daily food budget. They are tasked with cutting underbrush and vegetation to starve fires of fuel. While the inmates are volunteers, their ultra-low-wage labor is permitted under the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”