Three fires in one September,
the San Andreas at Cajon Pass, and
a mountain where three homes in four are on the FAIR Plan.

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Start with the honest part: we are two counties west, not in Riverside or San Bernardino

Bollinsure is an independent brokerage operating from Westlake Village, on the Ventura–Los Angeles county line. We do not have an office in Riverside, Ontario or Palm Springs, and a broker who fudges something that easy to check is telling you what the rest of the relationship will be like. We serve the Inland Empire the way we serve Los Angeles, Orange County, Ventura and San Diego: you send a declarations page, a licensed broker reads it, and the conversation happens by phone or on a call, which is how most of this work has been done for years anyway.

Independent means we are not one carrier's agent. We place with admitted carriers, with non-admitted surplus lines markets through a licensed surplus line broker, and with the California FAIR Plan where the standard market has stopped writing. In this region that range is the whole job, because the Inland Empire is at least four markets that happen to share a freeway system.

The mountain communities — Crestline, Lake Arrowhead, Running Springs, Big Bear Lake, Wrightwood, Forest Falls, Idyllwild — are FAIR Plan country by the state's own numbers, and a Difference in Conditions policy is the second document we ask for. The foothill cities under the San Bernardino and San Gabriel fronts — Highland, Redlands, Yucaipa, Rancho Cucamonga, Upland — sit where the 2024 fires started and where the San Andreas runs, so they are a fire question and a fault question at once. The valley tracts and freight corridors — Riverside, Moreno Valley, Fontana, Ontario, Eastvale, Menifee, Corona — are recent housing beside a seven-hundred-million-square-foot industrial market, which makes them a homeowners question and a commercial question in the same household. And the deserts — the Coachella Valley from Palm Springs to Indio, the Victor Valley and the Morongo Basin — are heat, wind and the ground that moved in 1992.

Each of those is a different product to a carrier. A cabin in Crestline and a new tract home in Eastvale are not variations on one policy; they are placed in different markets, priced off different maps and excluded in different ways. That is why the address on our letterhead matters less than the range of markets behind it.

Three fires in one September, and the 2003 pair the records only half remember

Carriers do not underwrite a region's history; they underwrite the model that history produced. In the Inland Empire the model was rebuilt in 2003 and rebuilt again in a single month of 2024, and the records themselves are worth being exact about because they do not all agree.

The Old Fire started on the morning of 25 October 2003 in Waterman Canyon above San Bernardino — 9:16 by the San Bernardino County Fire Chiefs' lessons-learned report, 9:17 by the state's after-action report — and burned until 4 November. The chiefs' report gives 91,281 acres, 940 homes destroyed, 35 damaged, 30 commercial buildings destroyed and six deaths, with the cause under investigation; the state's siege totals give 58,448 acres for the Grand Prix Fire burning beside it under Santa Ana winds the same report puts in excess of 45 to 50 miles an hour. CAL FIRE's own 2003 incident pages did not load when we checked, so those are the records we cite, and we would rather say that than invent a live one.

Then September 2024. The Line Fire started at 6:33 on the evening of 5 September north of Highland; CAL FIRE's live page gives 43,978 acres, a cause of arson, two structures destroyed and five damaged, while its own 28 September update gave 39,299 acres and one destroyed. The Bridge Fire started on 8 September east of Camp Williams on the Los Angeles–San Bernardino line and reached 56,030 acres with 81 structures destroyed and 17 damaged, cause undetermined. The Airport Fire started at 1:21 on the afternoon of 9 September in Trabuco Canyon, spread into Riverside County, and was contained on 5 October at 23,526 acres, 160 structures destroyed, 34 damaged, cause equipment — the same record our Orange County page quotes from the other side of the ridge. Three fires, one month, two counties: that is the September a carrier reading a Highland or Lake Elsinore application is reading before it reads anything about your house.

The record in between is not empty. The Fairview Fire started near Hemet on 5 September 2022; the live page gives 28,098 acres and no damage assessment, while CAL FIRE's 12 September 2022 update gave 28,307 acres, 35 structures destroyed and two civilian deaths. The Apple Fire of 31 July 2020, north of Cherry Valley, burned 33,424 acres with 13 structures destroyed, cause human. The El Dorado Fire started on 5 September 2020 west of Oak Glen and was contained on 16 November at 22,744 acres; CAL FIRE's live page records the cause as human and carries no damage figures, and the U.S. Forest Service's incident record gives five residences and fifteen other structures destroyed and one firefighter killed. The Rosa Fire in Mountain Center burned 1,671 acres in August 2025 and destroyed two structures. The MacKay Fire above Lake Arrowhead on 5 September 2026 was contained the next morning with none lost. None of these is a 2003. All of them are why the mountain and foothill non-renewal letters keep coming.

Every city got a new fire hazard map in 2025, and the two counties handled it differently

On 24 March 2025 the Office of the State Fire Marshal issued its recommended Fire Hazard Severity Zone maps for the Local Responsibility Area covering Riverside and San Bernardino counties, in the fourth and final phase of the statewide release. State law then required every local agency to adopt its map by ordinance within 120 days. Riverside County Fire said plainly that it was not proposing any additions or increases to the state's map, and named the cities that run their own fire departments and adopt their own — Blythe, Calimesa, Canyon Lake, Cathedral City, Corona, Hemet, Murrieta, Palm Springs and Riverside. San Bernardino County closed public comment on 30 April and took the map to its Board of Supervisors for adoption on 10 June 2025. We did not open the individual city ordinances for Riverside, San Bernardino, Rancho Cucamonga, Redlands, Yucaipa or Big Bear Lake, so we do not quote ordinance numbers for them; if your city is one of those, your fire department's page has it.

What the map changes is not your premium directly. Carriers were already using their own wildfire scores, and in this region they had been using them since 2003. What the map changes is the rebuild: a home inside a Very High zone that burns is rebuilt under Chapter 7A of the building code — ignition-resistant materials, ember-resistant vents, tempered glazing, defensible space that a plan checker will actually inspect — and every one of those costs more than the house it replaces cost to build. The line on your declarations page that pays for that difference is called Ordinance and Law, and on most policies it sits at a percentage of the dwelling limit that was chosen before anyone had seen the 2025 map. In Yucaipa, Highland, Redlands' north side, the Rancho Cucamonga foothills, or anywhere the new zone boundary moved, that percentage is the first thing we read.

The map also changes disclosure. A seller in a zone has to say so, and a buyer's lender has to see insurance bound before close. If you are buying in the foothills or the mountains this year, get the insurance question answered before the appraisal, not after.

The moratorium after the September fires has expired, and what still applies

California Insurance Code section 675.1 lets the Insurance Commissioner freeze non-renewals for one year in ZIP codes inside or next to a fire the Governor has declared an emergency for. After September 2024 he did, in Bulletin 2024-9: for the Line Fire in San Bernardino County, one year from the Governor's declaration of 7 September 2024; for the Bridge Fire in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties and the Airport Fire in Orange and Riverside counties, one year from 11 September 2024. The bulletin was revised in October to add ZIP codes after the Line Fire's late-September flare-up. Those clocks ran out on 7 September 2025 and 11 September 2025. There is no current section 675.1 freeze covering either county that we could find in the Department of Insurance's bulletin index for 2024 through 2026, and the Rosa Fire of 2025 has no bulletin at all.

What that means in practice: a carrier that wanted to leave the foothills and could not for a year is free to send the letter now, and many have. If yours arrives, the date on it is the deadline, not the day to start thinking. A non-renewal is not a cancellation — you are covered to the date printed — but replacement coverage in a mapped zone takes longer to place than it did five years ago, and a home that goes to the FAIR Plan needs a second policy beside it, which is the next section. Our non-renewal guide walks the letter itself.

A mountain where three homes in four are on the FAIR Plan, by the state's own count

The California FAIR Plan's county-by-county table puts San Bernardino County at 65,132 policies in force across its residential, commercial and business-owner lines as of 30 September 2025, up 28 percent in a year from 50,761 — and before that 41,124, 36,131 and 31,211 — and Riverside County at 57,026, up 70 percent from 33,472 in 2024, itself nearly double the 17,207 of 2023. Statewide the plan reported 642,010 policies on that date and 696,562 by June 2026, carrying $768 billion of exposure. The Department of Insurance's 2022 table of residential dwellings by ZIP shows where those policies live — the share of dwellings the FAIR Plan insured that year:

• Crestline (92325) — 75.4 percent
• Lake Arrowhead (92352) — 70.5 percent
• Running Springs (92382) — 65.9 percent
• Idyllwild (92549) — 63.9 percent
• Forest Falls (92339) — 62.1 percent
• Big Bear Lake (92315) — 53.6 percent
• Wrightwood (92397) — 39.6 percent
• Riverside (92503) — 1.1 percent
• Ontario (91761) — 0.6 percent

Those figures are from 2022, before the 2024 fires and before the growth in the county table, so the mountain shares today are not lower. In Crestline the state's number means the FAIR Plan was already the market, not the fallback.

What the FAIR Plan is, and is not, decides how you buy it. It is a fire policy: fire, lightning, internal explosion, with optional extensions, written to a residential ceiling that our FAIR Plan page states as $3 million at one location under Division I. It is not a homeowners policy. There is no liability, no theft, no water damage, no loss of use in the plan itself; those come from a separate Difference in Conditions policy that wraps around it, and a cabin “on the FAIR Plan” without a DIC companion is a cabin insured against exactly one thing — and the winter pipe burst, the tree on the roof and the guest who slips on the ice are not it. When we review a mountain declarations page, the DIC is the second document we ask for, and its absence is the most common finding.

The San Andreas crosses the region at Cajon Pass, and the ground has already moved once

Los Angeles talks about the San Andreas as something to the north. In the Inland Empire it is the ridge above the freeway. The U.S. Geological Survey describes the San Andreas as a fault zone 1,100 kilometres long; its San Bernardino Mountains section runs behind Highland, Yucaipa and Redlands, and the survey quotes a Holocene slip rate of 24 ± 4 millimetres a year at the section's northern end, with a 2021 study putting 24.5 ± 3.5 millimetres a year at the pass itself and the rate falling to the southeast, to 14.5 at Pitman Canyon and 12.8 at Badger Canyon. Where the rate falls, the difference is taken up by the San Jacinto fault zone, which branches off near Cajon Pass and runs 240 kilometres south through the Peninsular Ranges in seven sections, slipping around 12 millimetres a year in its northern half and around 4 in its southern half. Between them, two of the state's fastest faults pass within a few miles of the region's two county seats.

The desert has already had the earthquake. On 28 June 1992 the Landers earthquake, magnitude 7.3 in the USGS record, broke 70 kilometres of ground across the Morongo Basin with up to 5.5 metres of horizontal displacement, killed one person at Yucca Valley, caused two heart-attack deaths and injured more than 400. Three hours later the Big Bear earthquake struck under the mountains; the USGS titles its event page magnitude 6.3, its Landers narrative calls the same shock 6.5, and its sequence paper gives 6.2 — we quote all three rather than pick one — and records that it claimed no lives despite intensity VIII shaking. A magnitude-7 event on the San Bernardino Mountains section would not be a desert event. It would be Highland, Redlands and San Bernardino.

A homeowners policy excludes earth movement, whichever fault produces it. Earthquake coverage in California is a separate policy or endorsement, most often through the California Earthquake Authority via your existing carrier, with a deductible expressed as a percentage of the dwelling limit that you choose. A slab-on-grade tract home in Eastvale, a 1920s house in Redlands, a cabin on a hillside in Crestline and a mobile home in Yucca Valley are four different earthquake questions, and for a renter in San Bernardino it is a contents-and-loss-of-use question with a small premium. We read which one you are before we say whether the premium is worth it, because sometimes it is not.

Heat, wind and the difference between a covered loss and an excluded one

On 17 June 2021 the National Weather Service reported that Palm Springs had reached 123 degrees, tying the all-time record the city had set on 1 August 1993 and matched twice in July 1995. We do not quote the higher figures that circulate for later summers because we did not find them on a Weather Service page. The number that matters for a policy is not the record anyway; it is what a month of days above 110 does to a roof membrane, an air-conditioning compressor, a pool pump and a water heater, and the answer in most homeowners forms is that wear, deterioration and mechanical breakdown are excluded. A compressor that fails in July is a repair bill unless the policy carries an equipment-breakdown endorsement, which costs little and which almost no desert declarations page we read includes.

Wind is the other constant. The state's after-action report on the 2003 fires records Santa Ana conditions with winds in excess of 45 to 50 miles an hour driving the Grand Prix Fire down out of the mountains, and the same winds arrive most autumns whether or not a fire follows. Wind damage itself — the fence, the patio cover, the shingles — is covered on a standard form, but some carriers in the passes now write a separate wind deductible, and a wind-driven fire is, for a homeowners policy, a fire. The place to look is the declarations page's deductible schedule: if it shows more than one number, we want to know what each applies to before the season, not after.

The warehouse next door and the tract that was built last year

CBRE's fourth-quarter 2025 figures put the Inland Empire's industrial inventory at 700,327,154 square feet with 7.3 percent vacant; Cushman & Wakefield's count for the same quarter is 655,758,139 square feet at 8.1 percent, and we quote both rather than average two firms' definitions. Ontario International Airport moved 835,129 tons of cargo in 2025, up from 793,371 the year before. That economy sits beside the housing, and it changes what a coverage review has to cover: the owner of a Fontana home is often also a contractor, a broker of freight, a warehouse tenant or a fleet operator, and those are commercial placements — property, liability, inland marine for goods in transit or on someone else's floor, workers' compensation, commercial auto — with their own carriers and forms. We handle them through the same review, but we do not pretend a homeowners conversation covers a truck.

The housing itself is recent, and recent housing has a specific insurance problem. The Census Bureau's 2020–2024 American Community Survey puts Riverside County's owner-occupied rate at 69.1 percent with a median owner-occupied value of $557,300, and San Bernardino County's median at $505,000 in the same five-year estimate; the 2024 one-year figures are higher, $601,600 and $545,900. The metropolitan area the Census calls Riverside–San Bernardino–Ontario held 4,744,214 people in that one-year estimate. Much of what those people live in is tract housing, and a tract home is priced by its builder at a volume cost that no single-lot rebuild will match: after a loss, the rebuild is a one-off, under today's code, at today's labour rates, on a lot where the neighbours' homes are still standing. That gap between the purchase price and the single-lot rebuild is the dwelling limit conversation, and extended replacement cost — the percentage above the limit a policy will pay when the estimate was wrong — is the line that decides it. Most tract-home declarations pages we read carry a limit set from a builder's price and never revisited.

Renters and landlords are the other half of this market. A homeowners policy on a house the owner no longer occupies — the Moreno Valley home held after a move, the Palm Desert condo bought for the winter and rented in summer — is a claim waiting to be denied for misrepresentation of occupancy; it needs a landlord's DP-3 form the day the tenant moves in. And a renter's HO-4 policy, for a premium that is usually less than a month of parking at the airport, is the most under-bought coverage in two counties where a great many households rent.

What a coverage review actually is

You send a declarations page — and if you live in the mountains on the FAIR Plan, the Difference in Conditions declarations too; if you rent a property out, the lease; if you run a business, its policies. A licensed broker reads them and tells you what they do: the dwelling limit against a current single-lot rebuild estimate, what your Ordinance and Law and extended replacement cost mean under a 2025 hazard map, whether a FAIR Plan policy has the companion it needs, whether the earth-movement exclusion leaves you exposed where you actually live, what your deductible schedule applies to, whether the policy on your rental still describes how the property is used, and whether you are in the market you should be in. There is no fee and no obligation, and the commission we would earn is printed on any quote we send. If your current policy is doing the job, the honest answer is that it is doing the job — that is a common outcome, and we would rather say it than manufacture a reason to move you.

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