As greater Los Angeles burns, President-elect Donald Trump has unleashed a blistering volley against Gov. Gavin Newsom and stepped up threats to withhold federal aid to California, which some experts say could be enduring its most costly disaster ever.

In 2019, the number of homeowners’ policies in California that were not renewed jumped by more than thirty per cent. In 2023, two giant insurers, State Farm and Allstate, announced that they would stop writing new policies for various forms of property insurance in California.

The Los Angeles wildfires could threaten California’s already unstable insurance market, which carriers have been fleeing as disasters multiply.

Insurance companies and rates haven’t kept up with increasingly catastrophic events like the California wildfires or hurricanes that recently hit Florida, Tennessee and North Carolina. It can put