Insurance
How insurers use defensible space
California regulation names a specific list of wildfire mitigation measures and requires insurers who price on wildfire risk to reflect them.
The list is not ours
10 CCR 2644.9 sets out the mitigation measures a carrier using a wildfire risk model has to account for when it rates a property, and defensible space around the structure is on that list. That is where the items in this assessment come from. We did not choose them and we cannot add to them.
You are entitled to specifics
The regulation also requires a carrier to give you the property level wildfire risk number it holds for your address, where that number sits in its range, a property specific explanation, and what each listed measure would do to your own policy. That last answer can only legitimately come from your carrier, because it depends on your rating plan. We do not estimate it and we never will.
Why documentation matters
A carrier will want evidence, not a claim. Photographs, dated records of the work, and a clear inventory of what is in place make the request straightforward to process. Your assessment produces that inventory, measure by measure, together with the evidence tier that says how much of it we have actually seen.
What the score is, and is not
The Defensible Space Score is our own reading of your answers against a published methodology. It is not a carrier score, it is not an inspection, and it decides nothing about any policy. It is a way to see where your property stands and to document it in the language a carrier already uses.