ESCONDIDO, Calif. (KGTV) — For Douglas Dill, living in unincorporated Escondido means fire season is never out of mind.

“I mean every time we hear a siren coming from the fire department, first thing we do is we look around to see is there’s smoke,” Douglas says.

He’s lived through it before; Flames once crept dangerously close, just across the hill from his backyard.

“It’s really when there’s a Santa Ana because that just forces you to lose control of the situation because you can’t control all the embers being generated by a fire and then being blown for miles,” Douglas says.

He clears brush and keeps his land trimmed low, doing what he can to protect his home.

“I just recently mowed this area, you can see it’s really down to almost nothing, and that’s basically what the fire department wants,” Douglas says.

But what he can’t control is the cost of fire home insurance, which to him is a top priority.

He says about 10 years ago his fire insurance used to hover around $2000 a year. And now he’s paying around $8000 a year.

Now, he faces another price hike. State Farm got an emergency rate hike approved last month. The company said it faced severe financial problems after claims from the LA fires.

Douglas is grateful he hasn’t been dropped from his policy, and that he hasn’t had to switch to California’s FAIR Plan, like some of his neighbors have had to.

“The FAIR Plan is basically the policy of last resort, and it’s basically a catastrophic coverage,” Douglas says.

Still, the uncertainty weighs on him.

ABC 10News asked him if the constant worry about fire dangers and being dropped from his fire insurance policy had ever made him consider the option to sell the home and move to the city.

“Not at this point,” Douglas says. “Whatever the future holds, we would prefer to just stay right here, but I can’t predict what you know, costs, and other occurrences will change our minds.”