The Hidden Drivers Behind Zone 0

How the Insurance Industry Quietly Rewrote California’s Fire Policy

When California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara appeared on KGO-TV’s ABC 7 News, he promised to “stabilize the insurance market” and “get this done within one year.” His new “Sustainable Insurance Strategy,” he said, would bring insurers back to wildfire-prone areas and lower premiums for homeowners.

But as reporter Stephanie Sierra pressed him on-air, Lara’s plan revealed something else entirely: a massive concession to the insurance industry — one that mirrors the same regulatory philosophy behind Zone 0. Instead of reining in insurers, the state is rewriting its fire policy to fit their risk models.

The Industry Behind the Rule

For years, the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) — funded entirely by the insurance industry — has conducted laboratory “ember tests” that support a simplified mantra: vegetation equals risk. Those experiments, often conducted with kiln-dried mulch and static wind conditions, became the “science” behind the non-combustible 0-to-5-foot perimeter now central to California’s defensible-space rules.

The California Department of Insurance then folded that concept into its 2022 “Safer from Wildfires” framework, which lists “maintain a non-combustible zone within five feet of the structure” as one of ten qualifying measures for insurance discounts.

Meanwhile, Verisk Analytics, the global data-mining company that sells wildfire-risk models to nearly every major carrier, encoded the same logic into its software. In the models, vegetation within five feet of a structure is treated as a binary threat: present = risk, absent = safe.

When the Board of Forestry adopted that framework to justify its own Zone 0 rule, it effectively turned private actuarial logic into public law.

What KGO Revealed

The KGO-TV investigation showed how far this alignment has gone. Lara’s much-touted rule requiring insurers to write “85 percent of their business in wildfire-distressed areas” turned out to be a mirage — the fine print allows companies to cover as little as five percent, with no mandate of compliance.

Consumer Watchdog founder Harvey Rosenfield, author of Proposition 103, told KGO the Commissioner “has the power to hold insurers accountable” but simply isn’t using it. Instead, Lara admitted, “We cannot mandate underwriting.”

That exchange lays bare the new hierarchy of power:

  • Insurers dictate the risk metrics.

  • Regulators codify them.

  • Homeowners bear the cost.

Zone 0 fits squarely within that framework — a regulation designed not to protect the environment or community safety, but to appease insurers who have made vegetation clearance a prerequisite for coverage.

Regulatory Capture in Plain Sight

Public-meeting transcripts show Board of Forestry members citing “Safer from Wildfires” as justification for banning vegetation near homes. One member even admitted, “We want a rule the insurance industry will like.”

Lara’s televised statements now make clear that this alignment is intentional. The Department of Insurance defines “resilience” through insurer-approved criteria; IBHS supplies the laboratory visuals; Verisk turns the data into scoring algorithms; and the Board of Forestry enforces those definitions statewide.

It’s a textbook case of regulatory capture — where public agencies advance private financial interests under the banner of public safety.

The Economics of Fear

In the KGO segment, 86-year-old Janet Mountjoy described being dropped by her insurer despite living next to a fire station. Her story, echoed across California, underscores how the state’s response to industry withdrawal has been to shift the burden and responsibility onto homeowners.

Who benefits

  • Insurers, who can claim they’re “returning” to fire zones while retaining broad discretion not to.

  • Verisk, which licenses its wildfire models to those same carriers.

  • IBHS, which remains the self-appointed arbiter of “fire-safe” design.

Who pays

  • Homeowners, who must comply with extreme non-combustible-zone mandates or risk losing coverage.

  • Local governments, which must enforce an unfunded state mandate.

  • Yards, stripped of the shade of living green trees and other plants that once moderated fire behavior.

The KGO investigation concluded that Lara’s regulation “gives insurance companies too much leverage.” The same could be said of Zone 0: it transfers liability, cost, and landscape decisions from state agencies to private citizens — without requiring insurers to lower premiums or restore coverage.

Modeling Risk — and Reality

The real science tells a different story. Research by the U.S. Forest Service and NIST shows most home losses occur when embers infiltrate structures — through vents, eaves, or roof debris — not from radiant heat through moist vegetation.

But because actuarial software can’t easily measure maintenance quality, plant moisture, or ecological function, the models reward absence. Zone 0 is the physical manifestation of that bias: safety defined by what’s missing.

From Ratings to Rules

What began as an optional insurance discount program has become an enforceable vegetation mandate. The Board of Forestry now justifies its rule by claiming it will “improve insurability,” effectively merging public regulation with private underwriting standards.

As the KGO report showed, even those promises of “expanded coverage” are tenuous — insurers can opt out at will. The same pattern applies to fire policy: illusory commitments, real consequences.

The Human and Ecological Costs

Across hillside neighborhoods, homeowners are already reacting to fear. Brush-clearance contractors invoke Zone 0 to justify over-removal. Some insurers demand photographic proof of bare soil. Every shrub cut to satisfy an algorithm increases heat, erosion, and wildlife loss. Each yard becomes a data-compliant void.

Zone 0 doesn’t make communities safer; it makes them simpler to insure.

Reclaiming Policy from the Model

The KGO investigation captured it perfectly: while Lara insists he’s “flying and building the plane at the same time,” critics warn he’s “going to crash that plane — and all the rest of us with it.” California must choose a different flight path.

That means demanding:

  1. Transparency — public release of Verisk’s wildfire-risk methodology and IBHS’s funding sources.

  2. Accountability — legislative oversight separating insurance incentives from environmental regulation.

  3. Integrity — policies grounded in field-tested fire science, not corporate analytics.

Only then can California replace compliance by subtraction with resilience by design.

A Closing Thought

Zone 0 is sold as protection, but it functions as a perimeter of profit — a spatial buffer drawn not by ecologists but by actuaries.
In KGO’s words, homeowners are left “waiting to see if insurers keep their promises.” The rest of us are waiting to see whether the state will keep its soul.

The Zone 0 Report will continue following this intersection of policy, money, and ecology — exposing how California’s wildfire strategy became a business model, and how citizens can reclaim it for the living world.