Private firefighters are helping out in LA wildfires. It raises ethical questions

Many people had never heard of private firefighters until recent days, when a post on X from a Los Angeles resident went viral.

“Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades? Need to act fast here,” he wrote on X, outlets including the Los Angeles Times reported. “Will pay any amount.”

The post was deleted, but not before drawing attention to a little-known industry: Fire protection crews who are not paid by taxpayer dollars, but by companies and individuals.

But as it turns out, it’s really home insurers, in particular, who have been making use of their services.

Here’s a look at what these companies do — as well as some thorny ethical issues they raise.

So how does it all work?

Not surprisingly, there was a lot of blowback to the notion that some wealthy people were hiring their own firefighters to protect their property: It struck a lot of folks as unfair and just crummy.

Turns out people can contract private firefighters, but it’s not cheap, as recent media reports have made clear. And it’s no guarantee that their properties will be spared.

But these fire protection services are mainly hired by insurers, as a standard part of homeowner policies in fire-prone states — and in California, they operate under state regulations.

Take Wildfire Defense Companies. When there’s a wildfire endangering homes insured by comp, crews from the company show up loaded with their own water supplies.

But David Torgerson, the executive chairman of Wildfire Defense, says most of what they provide is labor to try to prevent fires from engulfing a home in the first place — largely tasks that don’t require water.

“We clean, we sweep, we clear gutters, we take away the places where the embers can ignite on the property or take away the access that the embers have to get in the buildings,” he says.

For example, burning embers can get into the dryer vent. So Wildfire Defense crews will tape the vent shut.

They’ll also return after the fire passes to make sure there isn’t a bush or fence that’s burning that could ignite the house.

What’s in it for insurance companies?

By providing these services, insurance companies are able to limit their losses due to wildfires. Offering this protection as part of an insurance policy can be a selling point, too, when people are shopping for coverage.

For example, the insurer USAA includes this kind of service as a standard part of their homeowners’ policies in 15 states.

Rebekah Nelson, Catastrophe Communications Director for USAA, said the company offers it because it’s the right thing to do for their members.

“When you lose everything, this struggle of having to find a new home and find a place to live and get new belongings, it’s terrible. And if we can save one home by offering this service, it’s a win,” she says.

She acknowledged that it benefits insurance companies, too — and said she wished everybody had this service on their insurance policy.

Flames from the wind-driven Eaton Fire engulf a house in Altadena, Calif., on Jan. 8, 2025.
Flames from the wind-driven Eaton Fire engulf a house in Altadena, Calif., on Jan. 8, 2025. (ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images | AFP)

Not everyone has these policies. Do private crews only help homes covered by some insurers?

It’s hard to know what happens out in the field.

But Nelson at USAA says the providers they use don’t help only their customers. If the services they work with come across an active scene, Nelson, says, “they’re not going to bypass it.”

She adds that a lot of these services are staffed with retired fire chiefs, “so it is embedded in them to help the community.”

But still — these wildfire protection companies are hired on behalf of private insurers, and therefore could have different priorities than firefighters who work for the public.

And not everyone has this kind of coverage, or can afford this coverage –- especially at a time when insurance rates have skyrocketed.

And a lot of the insurers that do offer these services specify that they’re not available for condos, townhomes, or mobile homes.

But aren’t there big ethical questions here?

At the end of the day, those who can afford to hire private firefighters or who have the service as part of their insurance policies would be better protected than those without access to these companies.

“There are tons of ethical questions because wildfires themselves are a very complicated issue,” says Brian Green at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.

Among the questions: Which firefighters get access to limited water supplies? Will people who have private firefighters still support taxpayer funding for public firefighters?

And do the rich have a separate lane that allows them to avoid facing the huge problems regular people must grapple with?

People embrace as they inspect a family member's property that was destroyed by the fires in Altadena, Calif., on Jan. 9, 2025.
People embrace as they inspect a family member’s property that was destroyed by the fires in Altadena, Calif., on Jan. 9, 2025. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | Getty Images North America)

Green says that’s always the case.

“If you have resources and you’re better able to insulate yourselves from all sorts of bad things that are happening around you,” he says. “And once again, that just raises the injustice issue back to the forefront.”

Yet at the heart of the issue, Green adds, is a fundamental problem with government preparedness, “and whether the government is willing to pay enough to make sure that we don’t actually need private firefighters.”

Torgerson, at Wildfire Systems, describes services like his as an adaptation to the fact that wildfires are more frequent and more damaging.

And in a crisis, isn’t it better to have all the help you can get?

“It’s better to have more resources. It’s better to have it not come at a cost to the taxpayer or the policyholder. It’s better to have more structures survive,” he says.

And Torgerson adds that companies like his can help keep insurers in the marketplace. Several insurers have pulled out of California in recent years — and in these Los Angeles wildfires, the insured losses area on track to reach $30 billion or more.

Nonetheless, private firefighters will likely continue to raise thorny ethical questions — with no easy answers.

Transcript:

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Amid the devastation in Los Angeles, a little-known industry has come into the spotlight – private firefighters. Here to tell us more about this is NPR’s Laurel Wamsley. Hi, Laurel.

LAUREL WAMSLEY, BYLINE: Hey, Leila.

FADEL: So, Laurel, the only time I’d ever heard about private firefighters – if you remember a wildfire a few years ago in the Los Angeles area where Kim Kardashian and her husband at the time, Kanye West, hired private firefighters to save their homes, and it sounded like something only for the most wealthy.

WAMSLEY: Right. So these are back in the news here in Los Angeles. And a lot of the attention is stemming from this single tweet that’s now been deleted. Last week, a resident of the wealthy Pacific Palisades area posted on X, asking if anyone had access to private firefighters who could protect his home as his neighbors homes were burning. He said he would, quote, “pay any amount.” And, of course, there was a lot of blowback to that idea. It struck a lot of folks as unfair and just crummy. And so there have been media reports of billionaires hiring private firefighters to protect their homes and businesses. But, of course, many wealthy people did lose their homes in these fires. I found that a much bigger part of this story is actually not the individuals hiring extra fire protection, but that insurers are hiring them as part of people’s homeowners’ policies.

FADEL: Oh, OK. That’s something I didn’t know – insurance companies were doing this. What exactly do these services do?

WAMSLEY: Yeah, so I spoke with David Torgerson. He’s executive chairman of Wildfire Defense Companies (ph). And they work on behalf of nearly three dozen insurers, and they’re regulated under California law. So when there’s a wildfire endangering homes insured by these companies, his crews arrive loaded with water, but most of what they provide is labor.

DAVID TORGERSON: We clean. We sweep. We clear gutters. We take away the places where the embers can ignite on the property or take away the access that the embers have to get in the buildings.

WAMSLEY: Embers can get into a house through the dryer vent, so his crews will tape those shut. They’ll also come back after the fire passes to make sure there isn’t a bush or a fence that’s burning that could still ignite the house.

FADEL: So for the insurance companies, they are paying for these firefighters, but is this about limiting their losses by the much larger expense of properties burning down in the first place?

WAMSLEY: It’s about prevention rather than having to pay for replacing all of those lost homes. So more and more, insurers are including this as a standard part of their homeowner’s policies in wildfire-prone states.

FADEL: How does this work? Does a truck full of trained firefighters and water just show up to protect homes that have these specific insurers and then just ignore everybody who doesn’t have those insurers?

WAMSLEY: Well, it’s obviously sort of hard to know exactly what happens in the field. When I asked a spokesperson at the insurer USAA that question, she said the providers that they work with don’t just drive on by a house that’s on fire, that they’re staffed with a lot of retired fire chiefs, and it’s just embedded in them to help the community. But still, private companies obviously might have different priorities than firefighters who work for the public.

FADEL: OK, so stepping back, does this just mean that rich people or people with the right coverage get a separate lane from the rest of people?

WAMSLEY: Yeah. I mean, I asked an ethics expert about this, and he said there are a whole host of ethical questions here – for instance, which firefighters get access to limited water supplies. It can be really divisive in society when it feels like even in a crisis, the rich and powerful get insulated from what’s happening. And I asked Torgerson about this, who runs that company that works for the insurers. And he said, well, in a crisis, we need all the help we can get, and it’s better to have more structures survive. They’re helping to keep insurance in the marketplace, he says, which has been a huge problem in California in recent years. So these are big questions and there are no easy answers.

FADEL: NPR’s Laurel Wamsley. Thank you, Laurel.

WAMSLEY: You’re welcome.

 

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