The Coverage That Matters When the Sky Turns Orange

Wildfire is a California fact of life, and most of the advice about it concerns houses. Cars are the thing people evacuate in, and the thing that is often left behind. Here is the vehicle side, in the order it becomes relevant.

Which coverage responds

Fire damage to your own vehicle falls under comprehensive, not collision and not liability. That is the whole answer, and it has an uncomfortable corollary: a liability-only policy provides nothing for your own car in a fire. If you live in or near a fire-prone area and carry liability only on a car you could not easily replace, that is the single most important sentence on this page.

Smoke and ash, not just flames

Ash is abrasive and acidic when it gets wet. Paint etching, clogged cabin filters, and interior smoke contamination are real damage, and they are the kind people do not think to claim. Whether and how they are covered is a matter for your policy and the adjuster, but the mistake is assuming there is nothing to discuss because the car did not burn.

Practically: rinse rather than wipe, do not run wipers over dry ash, and photograph the vehicle before you clean it.

Evacuating

• Fuel early in the season, not on the night. Stations close and queues form in exactly the wrong hour.
• Keep the digital insurance card accessible offline. Cell networks degrade during evacuations, and California law lets you show evidence of financial responsibility on a phone — which is no help if it will not load.
• Photograph both cars before the season, inside and out, with the odometer. Five minutes now is worth a great deal to a claim later.
• Take the registration and title information if you keep them at home.

If a car is lost

Report it to your insurer as soon as you safely can, even before you can get back to the site. Keep receipts for the whole displacement — some of it may be relevant, and reconstructing it later is miserable. If there is a loan on the vehicle, tell the lender too; a loan does not pause because a car burned.

The pre-season review worth doing

Once a year, before summer, check three things on your declarations page: whether comprehensive is on every vehicle you would not want to lose, what the comprehensive deductible is, and whether the vehicle values still make sense. It takes ten minutes and it is the version of this advice that actually helps.

Ask us to price comprehensive separately on a car currently carrying liability only — it is usually the cheapest coverage on the policy, and this is what it is for.