Home hardening and defensible space help Serene Lakes homeowner move off California's FAIR Plan
Chase Cambron's move to Mercury Insurance highlights how community and property-level mitigation can help expand private-market insurance options.
TRUCKEE, Calif. (Sept. 22, 2026) – When Serene Lakes homeowner Chase Cambron spent years clearing defensible space and hardening his home against wildfire, he wasn't chasing a discount. He'd lived through the 2017 Tubbs Fire, which destroyed his primary home in Santa Rosa, and didn't want to risk losing another. That work has since moved him off the California FAIR Plan and onto a standard homeowners policy with Mercury Insurance, saving him roughly $7,000 a year.
Cambron also earned the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety's (IBHS) Wildfire Prepared Home designation last year, the subject of a Truckee Fire Protection District (TFPD) release in May. However, Mercury representatives say it was the underlying mitigation work, not the certificate itself, that made the difference.
Mercury Insurance’s wildfire team learned about Cambron’s IBHS designation through news coverage of the story, including on KUNR and in the Sierra Sun and reached out to TFPD Wildfire Prevention Manager Eric Horntvedt to learn more. Horntvedt connected them with Cambron.
Mercury representatives say Cambron’s extensive property-level mitigation was central to the company’s wildfire-risk evaluation. “I’d been rejected four times because of my ZIP code, even though the house in Santa Rosa is built to wildland-urban interface standards,” Cambron said. “Being able to submit photos and not be treated like a number in a ZIP code has been a completely different experience.”
At the recent Serene Lakes’ annual community meeting, Cambron said announcing his roughly $7,000 in yearly savings drew a round of applause from neighbors and a wave of interest in how to do the same.
Mercury has developed wildfire mitigation standards that recognize many of the home hardening and defensible-space measures reflected in the IBHS program while providing additional flexibility for individual properties. An IBHS designation is one way homeowners can demonstrate mitigation, but it is not the only path Mercury considers while evaluating wildfire risk.
"Getting IBHS-certified is still the gold standard, and we encourage homeowners to pursue it,” said Jen Goodlin, community resilience manager at Mercury Insurance Group. “But you don’t have to wait for the physical certificate to qualify with us. Our standards mirror a lot of what IBHS requires, so if homeowners are making meaningful improvements, we want those efforts to be part of the underwriting evaluation.”
Mercury offers three tiers of wildfire mitigation discounts, from its Essential tier up to its Elite tier, which can reduce the wildfire-peril portion of a policy by up to 45 percent based on defensible space and home hardening alone. Homes with an IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home designation may qualify for an additional discount on top of that.
“When homeowners take meaningful steps to reduce wildfire risk, those improvements should be part of the underwriting conversation,” said Trisha Chavez, portfolio underwriter at Mercury Insurance Group.” “Chase’s experience shows the value of documenting that work and looking closely at the individual property.”
Cambron’s story isn’t an isolated case. Truckee Fire has completed more than 43,000 comprehensive defensible space and home hardening inspections across the district, using the Fire Aside software inspection platform to document results and provide homeowners with an actionable report of wildfire-risk reduction activities. This parcel-level work builds on years of larger-scale forest thinning and fuel-reduction efforts around local neighborhoods, informed by Vibrant Planet modeling. TFPD says managing forest and the wildland fire exposure -paired with individual parcel-level efforts like Cambron’s—represents exactly the kind of data-backed opportunity insurers should be looking at.
The opportunity extends well beyond one home. Nevada County had the second-highest homeowners insurance nonrenewal rate in California in 2023, at 17.2 percent, according to an August 2026 analysis by MoneyGeek. The Truckee-area ZIP code 96161 carries more FAIR Plan exposure than any other ZIP code in California, at $9.1 billion, up 224 percent since 2021.
TFPD says that combination, large-scale forest management and mitigation like Cambron’s at the parcel level, has earned the district a second look from insurers.
“We have thousands of homes on the FAIR Plan in our district, representing billions of dollars in assessed value,” Horntvedt said. “That’s real premium dollars sitting here in an area where we have invested heavily in forest thinning and fuel-reduction work. I’d like to see more insurance companies re-enter this market the way Mercury has, because the work is being done and the risk is being reduced.”
Truckee Fire encourages residents interested in following Cambron’s path to:
Schedule a free, in-person defensible space evaluation with Truckee Fire at truckeefire.org/dspace. Ask about the IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home program if you’re interested.
Complete home hardening upgrades using Truckee Fire’s Home Hardening Rebate Program, which reimburses 50 percent of eligible costs, up to $2,000.
Talk to an insurance agent about wildfire mitigation discounts. Mercury’s wildfire mitigation resources are available at mercuryinsurance.com/local/california/homeowners-insurance/wildfire-mitigation.
“Our goal is to connect the dots,” Horntvedt said. “We want more insurance companies out here with us, looking at the residents who are doing the right work, so we can get more people off the FAIR Plan and properly insured.”
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