Summary
President Biden announced the federal government will cover 100% of costs for initial disaster response to the Los Angeles wildfires for 180 days.
The funding includes debris removal, temporary shelters, and first responder salaries.
Biden declared a major disaster, allowing immediate aid access, and directed the Pentagon to assist with firefighting resources.
With 28,000 acres burned, five deaths, and mass evacuations, Biden urged Congress to provide additional aid.
FEMA is coordinating recovery efforts on-site.
Insurance is literally a market of risk assessments. The odds of any given event are x, y and z and the cost of each of those events are a, b, and c. Take the number of people who are applying for policies and spread the cost based on the risks and figure out how much each needs to pay to be able to cover x, y or z should/when any of them occur. There’s discussions to be had on how much a percentage of profit should be allowable on the top and how much to subsidize on known high risk coverage that is not mathematically reasonable but it all boils down to buying risk based on the chance and cost of any given event happening. Act of God/Force Majeure make complete sense when framing it this way. The insurance policy is based on known and predicted risks. You don’t have volcano insurance in NJ and you don’t have hurricane insurance in Kansas because they aren’t expected disasters so they aren’t included in the risk calculations. Act of God is a catch all term for things beyond the expected scope of the policy which is based on clearly established limits and scenarios.