The Wealthy Get an Extra Shield for Wildfires

OK, granted AIG has a huge exposure in Idaho, but this is just wrong. Once again the wealthy are getting perks not available to the rest of us schmoes.

I've never had the ability to pay $10,000 for all the insurance I've carried, homeowners, auto, mortgage and certainly not just for homeowners insurance.

Actually that's not true I could have paid that much. But it would have been a waste of money because I'd have been dead in a matter of days from malnutrition.

And forget that Ferrari 430 Spider.

The wind shifted, and suddenly the wildfire that has been raging just west of these exclusive high desert hills appeared closer than ever to Al LaPeter’s 7,000 square feet of the sweet life.

“Oh, God,” Mr. LaPeter said.

Then he exhaled, and relaxed. After all, he has insurance. His big house on the Big Wood River? The Ferrari 430 Spider in the garage? The immaculate Model A Ford? Covered. Literally.

Right then and there, Tom Futral, a guy from Montana with a spray gun and a truckload of the magical goop that has quickly become the envy of the second-home set in this pricey part of the parched West, was applying fire retardant to Mr. LaPeter’s shake roof and wood house, courtesy of his insurer, the AIG Private Client Group.

“They called me,” Mr. LaPeter, 62, said. “I didn’t even know that they did this.”

That may be because this is the first time in memory that a wildfire has so closely threatened the A-list redoubts of Hailey, Ketchum and Sun Valley (there are $3.7 billion in assets to protect, according to the incident commander leading the fire fight), and it is the first time AIG has deployed a crew to Idaho as part of its Wildfire Protection Unit for high-end clients who are willing to pay what the company says is an average of $10,000 annually for homeowner’s insurance.

Via New York Times.