When the insurance company sends a fire crew

When several pickups arrived carrying yellow-shirted men who quickly began setting up sprinklers around Peter Jesberg’s property near Yampa, he realized just how fast the Crosho fire was encroaching on his home. 

The men were not firefighters in the traditional sense — they were contractors hired by Jesberg’s property insurance carrier to protect their liability. 

Jesberg, a local business owner, also appreciated the practicality of the strategy. 

“It’s cheaper than paying a claim,” he said after the threat of the fire had passed without a single structure lost in the early August blaze that burned 2,037 acres in rural corners of Routt and Rio Blanco counties. 

In advance of an approaching wildfire, many insurance companies will now pay to send on- the-ground teams trained to do everything they can to protect policy-covered homes.

The teams perform tasks such as cleaning gutters; covering vents; removing vegetation and other combustibles; setting up sprinklers; taking down fences; applying firefighting gel or foam to the house; and monitoring and extinguishing hot spots.

“By integrating immediate mitigation actions with long-term wildfire risk reduction strategies, this approach helps protect carrier portfolios and reduce overall claim exposure,” according to the website for Chloeta, the firm contracted by Jesberg’s insurance company — Safeco — to carry out the “wildfire response benefit” component included in his policy. 

“There’s a definite value for insurance companies because they reduce their losses, and let property owners come back to houses that are still standing,” said Scott Eskwitt, lead of government affairs and corporate communications for Wildfire Defense Systems (WDS), a company that contracts exclusively with insurance companies to protect policyholders’ homes.

WDS boasts a “99%+ rate of structure survival where field personnel can reach a property to perform loss intervention services,” according to its website.

Although such a perk historically was included only in policies covering high-end homes, the benefit has expanded to more insurance companies and a wider range of policies, said Tim Morgan, founder of Roaring Fork Insurance. “It’s pretty widely available.”

The service typically comes at no additional cost and is automatically included in policies, requiring an opt-out if the homeowner does not want the benefit.

Since WDS started operations in 2008, Eskwitt said his company has seen consistent growth, having recently expanded into Canada. The company has contracts with more than 30 U.S. insurance carriers in 22 states, Eskwitt said.

So far this year, WDS monitored approximately 600 fires in Colorado and dispatched their “qualified insurance resources” to fewer than 20 fires, serving about 100 individual properties, he said.

In 2024, WDS sent its teams to about 10 fires in Colorado, serving more than 70 properties.

Based in Bozeman, Montana, WDS employees operate out of six U.S. centers, including one in Colorado Springs.

The close monitoring of fires by private contractors — who are always aware of every covered house under threat of wildfire across the country — is a significant part of the business model. 

Chloeta, a company that also contracts with the federal government for various security-related functions, “maintains a map of policies-in-force within the benefit footprint and monitors the area to determine wildfire proximity and threat level,” according to its website. “The vendor makes operational decisions on which eligible properties are serviced and the types of services provided during a wildland fire response.”

WDS teams are also dispatched directly without having to go through the insurance companies for approval, Eskwitt said, emphasizing that field deployment is “based on threat — not property value.”

A business model based on the value of homes would be both “unsustainable and unacceptable,” Eskwitt said, noting that WDS takes great pride in that impartiality.

Industry adapting to wildfire

Sending teams to policyholders’ houses before they are consumed by fire is just one way that insurance companies are responding to increased wildfire exposure and a changing climate.

They are also raising premiums, issuing nonrenewals and requiring homeowners to take more fire-prevention steps in and around their houses, such as changing the material of their roof or removing vegetation.

Some insurance companies are pulling out of high-risk markets entirely — moves that have opened doors for smaller and/or new insurers to fill the void.

“We’ve seen traditional carriers pull back and take a harder look at wildfire risk,” said Morgan, who sits on the board of the Colorado Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan, an “insurer of last resort” for property owners in the state.

There has also been an increase in wildfire exclusions — people who are essentially self-insuring against wildfires — and separate deductibles for wildfire-related damage.

Morgan, who is part of a new task force that addresses challenges in wildfire insurance-coverage, said he has seen an acceleration in wildfire-risk awareness across the industry over the past five years in particular, corresponding with increases in insurer exposure and losses.

Morgan said he hasn’t seen big carriers pulling out in the Roaring Fork Valley, but “homeowners are certainly being affected by rate increases.”

Insurance brokers and community organizations are working feverishly to communicate actual risk to insurance companies in an effort to help owners keep coverage and keep coverage affordable.

The task force, which held its first meeting Sept. 24, is building an Aspen-based pilot program to create a scorecard and standardized database of information that communities can use to communicate and showcase steps that homeowners and the town are taking to mitigate fire risk.

“Aspen certainly is a unique place in the country given a density of value that doesn’t exist anywhere else,” said Clark Woodward, founder of RedZone, another company that works with insurers to monitor wildfires across the country and send out mitigation teams. 

A former volunteer firefighter, Woodward spent the past four years living in the Roaring Fork Valley before recently relocating. 

Founded in 2002 in Boulder, RedZone also provides software and mapping services to fire departments and works on other types of natural disasters, including floods, earthquakes and hurricanes.

“We are recognized as the leaders in wildfire modeling because of our unique combination of emergency management expertise combined with an enterprise-class analytical mapping platform,” according to the RedZone website.

Given Aspen’s wildfire risk, there has also been a lot of resources and efforts put toward protecting all that value, Woodward said. Those include prescribed burns, artificial intelligence fire-detection cameras and the current pursuit of new technology utilizing drones to extinguish fires before they grow.

In November, Aspen voters will decide on whether to approve a new 0.5% sales tax levied by the Aspen Fire Protection District to support increased wildland fire mitigation efforts, maintain emergency response times and improve first-responder wellness programs.

Properties within the Aspen Fire Protection District total just over $56 billion in actual value, according to the most recent preliminary numbers from the Pitkin County Assessor’s Office. That probably equates to more than $150 billion in insured value, according to the Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative, another new communitywide effort dedicated to risk reduction.

The collaborative, launched as a nonprofit in 2024, supports mitigation efforts and educational outreach, and provides risk assessments for individual homeowners as well as grant funding for home-hardening costs. So far, the collaborative has “brought $5.4 million in wildfire resiliency funding to the valley, yielding an $30-to-$1 return on investment,” according to its website. 

The collaborative includes about 25 agencies, municipalities and other organizations.

Former Aspen Fire Department Chief Rick Balentine helped found the collaborative and sits on the new task force with Morgan and Woodward. Balentine is president of the Aspen Wildfire Foundation. 

Started in 2021 as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, the foundation has raised $2 million aimed at proactively reducing wildfire risk across the Aspen Fire Protection District, according to its website. 

“We want insurance companies to be able to go to one place for trusted information when they are deciding whether or not they want to underwrite the risk,” Balentine said.

How field teams fit into fire response

Balentine said insurance-hired fire-protection teams have operated in the valley for a long time, albeit largely under the radar.

In his 36 years fighting fires with the Aspen Fire Department, Balentine said the mitigation steps that insurance-hired teams take around homes “are a really positive thing to do — there’s not enough firefighters to do all that work.”

He said he has never encountered complaints about or negative issues related to the field teams.

Woodward said the field team benefit is increasingly common across policies covering a wide range of properties, including homeowners associations, condominium complexes, middle-market homes to high-value homes, and industrial sites.

“I don’t think of it as a fire-defense problem,” Woodward said. “I think of it as a resilience problem — with the ultimate goal being homes surviving fire.”

He echoed Morgan’s observation on the proliferation of carriers offering the benefit over the past five years. “It makes sense that many different companies are protecting the assets that they are insuring,” he said.

Woodward also made the important distinction in mission: “The fire department’s job is to put the fire out. We come in with a different mandate — to protect the home or commercial building. We apply our skills appropriately, adding to what the fire department is doing.”

Eskwitt emphasized the distinction between “private firefighters” and WDS or other teams exclusively working for insurance companies. Private firefighters can be hired directly by homeowners or private companies at a daily cost of anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000 or more, while there are also private firefighting companies that contract with the federal government when supplemental protection and suppression services are needed.

Eskwitt also emphasized that WDS “qualified field personnel,” while not technically suppressing fires nor acting as first responders, are fully trained as wildland firefighters and are members of the union International Association of Firefighters (IAFF). WDS also takes pride in close communication with incident command teams and adherence to the highest standards, he said.

Woodward said RedZone often works side by side with government-funded firefighters, and, like WDS, his teams are highly qualified and his company “helps insurance companies work objectively with policyholders — and these resources become a contribution to the firefighting effort. We work hard to build a relationship with incident command teams.”

Self-sufficiency is another source of pride for WDS, Eskwitt said. “When it comes to resources, we are not a drain on an incident. We are not a drain on resources.” He added that not all companies and private firefighters follow the same protocol.

WDS sends out its own tenders, he said, and communicates closely with the incident command team about availability of other water sources.

Woodward expressed a similar sentiment: “We do not connect to hydrants without explicit permission,” and his company also brings its own tenders.

Balentine and Woodward also noted there can be ethical concerns and safety issues raised when private firefighters don’t have the same training and certifications — or don’t check in with, and take direction from, the incident command team.

Regarding the Crosho fire, Aaron Voos, public affairs specialist for the U.S. Forest Service, said the incident command team worked in close communication with the crew contracted by Safeco. 

He stressed the importance of coordination and incorporating the additional resources into the operational infrastructure.  

“In this instance, the private engine contacted the operations section chief and relayed information regarding the residences that they were tasked with protecting,” Voos wrote in an email. 

“The resources were invited to attend morning briefings where they were connected with the division supervisor or branch chief for the division they were working in,” Voos said. “This helps align them with the incident command structure in place for exchange of information and maintaining accountability of all personnel.”

Jesberg, the homeowner, said he felt nothing but appreciation and admiration for everyone involved in the response effort, which also included significant aerial resources.

Although companies such as RedZone and WDS claim high rates of success, Eskwitt urges policyholders who carry the benefit not to treat it as a substitute for hardening their homes. 

If homeowners have already taken steps, “It increases the chance of survivability,” he said.

Woodward stressed the importance of homeowner engagement. “Any mitigation you can get done today pays off tenfold to the response effort,” he said.

And mitigation is “cumulative,” said Woodward. “You can’t pick and choose. You can clear all the vegetation around your house but then leave the garage door open, where embers can come in and ignite.”

The majority of work that the field teams do relates to preventing ignition from traveling embers, Morgan said.

Morgan noted that he has seen an increase in awareness among homeowners about what they can do on their own to save their home and keep it insured.

He has also seen more awareness about the insurance policies that offer the field team benefit, and he advises interested homeowners to talk to their agent or explore insurance company websites.

From the perspective of homeowners and the publicly funded wildfire response — regardless of ultimate motive — the more qualified and accountable resources dedicated to saving structures, the better. 

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