Insurance companies suing utilities for billions over human-caused climate disasters

Xcel Energy is just one utility being bankrupted by insurance companies looking for culprits in human-caused disasters now that it's been determined all-day hurricane force winds drove the 2021 Marshall Fire in Boulder County, Colorado. Wind gusts of 128 miles per hour sent two converging wildfires into housing developments killing two people, taking out nearly 1100 homes and numerous businesses including a Target store in Superior.

In its complaint, Target also blames the wildfire on the two telecommunications companies, saying they had equipment lashed to the same pole as Xcel. CenturyLink’s wires may have come loose, striking Teleport’s wires and causing them to unravel. The Teleport lashing may have hit Xcel’s conductors, the lawsuit states. [Xcel Energy faces nearly 300 lawsuits alleging utility company started Marshall fire]

Pacific Gas and Electric, Xcel, Black Hills Energy, Hawaiian Electric Company and Public Service of New Mexico or PNM are all responsible for massive blazes causing millions or even billions in damages.

Dave Jones, who served as California’s insurance commissioner from 2011 to 2019, has some ideas that could help the situation. As commissioner, he was responsible for regulating the nation’s largest state insurance market. As we have failed to combat climate change, temperatures are rising in the West, throughout the United States and across the globe. The increase in temperatures is resulting in more severe and frequent weather-related catastrophes. That’s killing people and injuring people and destroying communities. It’s also making it challenging for insurance companies to keep writing insurance in some parts of the United States and make money. Until we stop using fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with other sectors of the economy, we’re going to continue to march steadily toward an uninsurable future. [Homeowner’s insurance is going up in smoke]

Learn more at the Colorado Sun.

This interested party uploaded three photos of the 2002 Grizzly Gulch Fire to the Historic Deadwood Faceberg page where readers are recalling their memories of that blaze. Images taken ten years after that Black Hills Energy-caused wildfire are linked here.