Fighting Fire with Fire-Hardened Homes: The Role of Electric Utilities in Residential Wildfire Mitigation

Abstract

The costs of the wildfire crisis in California have become uninsurable. This Note argues that the California Legislature must equitably invest in collective resiliency and mitigation efforts to minimize statewide losses before they occur, rather than focus on ex post liability schemes. It proposes a statutory amendment that would require private electric utilities to retrofit their lowest-income ratepayers' homes to fire-hardened standards in areas of high wildfire risk.