NU Online News Service

As insurers began to cope with claims from burned outhomeowners, fires continued to rage in Southern Californiaconsuming houses, businesses and acreage in one of the worstwildfires to hit the state in years.

The Insurance Information Institute said its very preliminaryestimate of insured damages is that they will exceed $500million--a figure including not only damaged and destroyed homes,but payments for additional living expenses and losses tobusinesses.

"The Southern California wildfires continue to spread rapidlyunder the influence of the powerful Santa Ana winds," said NeenaSaith, catastrophe response analyst at Risk Management Solutions, acatastrophe modeling firm.

She said weather forecasts for the next 24 hours "remainconducive to explosive fire spread, so the damage could be verysevere unless the fires are quickly contained."

However, containment remains difficult. A report from stateofficials on the Southern Wildfires released early this morningsaid close to 300,000 acres were aflame and most fires were farfrom being contained. Only two fires, Roca in Riverside County andSedgewick in Santa Barbara, Calif., were 100 percent contained.

The worst, the Witch fire in San Diego, covered 145,000 acresand threatened 6,800 homes, businesses and other structures. Morethan 500 homes have been destroyed, along with 100 commercialstructures and 50 other buildings. RMS put the figure at more than700 homes and businesses.

Early today 15 fires throughout the Southern portion of thestate threatened more than 71,500 homes, businesses and otherstructures and had destroyed at least 751 homes and 102 commercialbuildings, and an additional 81 other structures.

According to news reports, more than 346,000 homes in San Diegowere ordered evacuated. The fires stretch from Los Angeles south toSan Diego.

Insurers have yet to get a firm handle on the number of claims,though they are handling calls.

A spokesman for AIR Worldwide, the catastrophe modelersubsidiary for Jersey City, N.J.-based Insurance Services Office,said the firm is still collecting data and no loss data isavailable at this time.

At Novato, Calif.-based Fireman's Fund Erron Al-Amin, head ofmarketing for personal insurance, said the fire is moving sorapidly "that it's hard to talk about assessing it."

She said the company has people in the field looking at damageand providing services that customers need such as counseling,referrals for legal help and financial planning--the kind ofsupport the company learned clients needed after HurricaneKatrina.

The company has set up a hotline for customers and agents(800-456-3108) to help with finding transport and temporaryhousing, she said.

The national director of the risk management program forFireman's Fund personal insurance, Gary Raphael, said some insurerswith offices in the San Diego area have suffered businessdisruptions due to evacuations.

The fire has been compared to the wildfires in October 2003where 15 wildfires struck the region. The worst, the Cedar Fire inSan Diego burnt over 270,000 acres and damaged more than 4,900properties causing around $1.1 billion in insured losses, Ms. Saithnoted.

However, Mr. Raphael said, "with the scope and scale of thisfire, it is difficult to get your hands around it and put it in ahistorical context."