California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara said new regulations will keep homeowners insured. Some of the new efforts give insurance companies more leeway in raising rates, while allowing them to use computer modeling to forecast risk and to incorporate their own “reinsurance” costs from backup providers in setting future premiums.

With the fires in Los Angeles still burning, the cost of their destruction, beyond the lives lost, remains unknown, but is certain to total in the tens of billions of dollars.

Environment / California’s Department of Insurance has worked to repair the broken insurance system, but the LA fires threaten to undo the progress the state has made. Sasha Abramsky Last week, a rare winter firestorm,