Wildfire Defense Services: How Chubb, PURE & Private Client Insurers Physically Protect Your Home

Wildfire defense services are carrier-funded programs that physically protect your home during an active wildfire. High-net-worth insurers like Chubb, PURE, and AIG/Private Client Select contract professional wildfire crews who monitor fires near enrolled homes, and when flames approach, deploy to apply fire-blocking gel or retardant, set up sprinklers, clear flammable material from around the structure, and seal vulnerable vents against embers. The service comes at no extra charge with an eligible policy, but it requires enrollment, it only operates in certain states, and it is not a private fire department. No mass-market policy and no FAIR Plan includes anything like it, which is why these programs have become one of the strongest reasons to place a wildfire-exposed home with a private client carrier.

This guide explains exactly how the Chubb, PURE, and AIG/Private Client Select programs work, what the crews actually do at your house, what the fine print excludes, and how mitigation and monitoring feed back into whether these carriers will write your home at all. It is part of our broader high-value home insurance coverage, alongside the state-specific picture in our California high-value home insurance guide.

Key Takeaways

• Wildfire defense services deploy real crews to your home during an active fire. Typical actions: fire-blocking gel or retardant application, temporary sprinkler setup, fuel and debris removal near the structure, and ember-vent protection.
• Chubb Wildfire Defense Services operates in 19 states through Wildfire Defense Systems, Inc. It is free for eligible homeowners policyholders but requires enrollment, per Chubb.
• PURE's Wildfire Mitigation Program covers 13 Western and Southwestern states and pairs pre-fire home assessments with emergency response through its partner Capstone, per PURE Insurance.
• AIG's Wildfire Protection Unit is complimentary in designated response areas, and since July 2023 the AIG private client book has been managed by the independent MGA Private Client Select, per AIG.
• These services are not a private fire department and carry no guarantee. Crews deploy only when conditions allow, condo and renter policies are typically ineligible, and California FAIR Plan Extension policyholders are excluded from Chubb's program.
• The FAIR Plan and mass-market carriers offer nothing comparable. A FAIR Plan policy is a bare named-peril fire contract; the defense crews attach only to the private client carrier's own policy.
• Latent Insurance Services is an independent brokerage (NPN #20972791) that compares admitted HNW, surplus-lines, and FAIR Plan lanes in one quote, so you can see which carriers still offer wildfire defense at your address and what the trade-offs cost.

What Are Carrier Wildfire Defense Services?

Carrier wildfire defense services are loss-prevention programs where the insurer pays contracted wildfire professionals to protect enrolled homes before and during a wildfire. The carrier monitors active fires against its book of enrolled addresses, and when a fire threatens an enrolled home, it dispatches certified crews to harden the property in the hours or days before the flame front or ember storm arrives. The insurer does this because preventing a $10 million total loss is far cheaper than paying one.

What the crews actually do on site varies by program and by how much time they have, but the core toolkit is consistent:

• Fire-blocking gel and retardant application. A thin gel or spray-on retardant barrier applied to the home, decks, fences, and nearby vegetation that resists ignition from embers and radiant heat. Crews return after the threat passes to remove it.
• Temporary sprinkler and pump setup. Zone sprinkler systems staged around the structure, sometimes drawing from pools or cisterns, to keep the immediate perimeter wet.
• Emergency fuel mitigation and defensible-space triage. Crews move firewood stacks, patio furniture, propane tanks, door mats, and other combustibles away from the structure and cut back vegetation in the critical zone within feet of the walls.
• Ember-vent protection. Covering or sealing attic, eave, and crawl-space vents so wind-driven embers, which ignite the majority of homes lost in wildfires, cannot enter the structure.
• Monitoring and post-fire checks. The provider watches the fire perimeter, reports status to the carrier and often to you, and inspects the home once it is safe to return.

The largest provider in this space is Wildfire Defense Systems, Inc. (WDS), a Montana-based wildfire management firm that contracts with multiple insurers and fields engine crews certified to work fire lines. Chubb's program runs through WDS, per Chubb. PURE partners with Capstone Fire and Safety Management, per PURE.

Chubb Wildfire Defense Services: How It Works and Where

Chubb Wildfire Defense Services provides hazard assessment, wildfire monitoring, and emergency on-site protection through Wildfire Defense Systems, Inc., at no additional charge to eligible Chubb homeowners policyholders who enroll. Per Chubb's program page, services trigger when a wildfire comes within roughly three miles of an enrolled home, when evacuation orders are issued, or when Chubb determines deployment is appropriate.

The Chubb program in practice:

• Enrollment is mandatory. You are not covered by the program just because you hold a Chubb Masterpiece policy. You enroll through the Chubb Mobile app, the client portal, or a signed authorization form, which gives WDS crews permission to enter and work on your property when you are not there.
• Available in 19 states. Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming, per Chubb.
• Pre-fire services included. Enrolled clients receive a personalized wildfire hazard assessment with recommendations, which also feeds Chubb's underwriting view of the home.
• During a fire. WDS crews may apply fire-blocking gel, stage sprinklers, prepare fuel breaks, and remove combustibles, then return afterward to remove gel and report on the home's condition, per Chubb's wildfire defense claims page.
• Eligibility exclusions. The service is not available to condominium, cooperative, townhouse, or renter policyholders, and not available to California FAIR Plan Extension policyholders, per Chubb.

One important caveat for California readers: Chubb has been shrinking its admitted California wildfire book since 2022, so the harder question is often not whether the program is good (it is) but whether Chubb will still write or renew your address. We cover that in detail in Chubb non-renewals in California.

PURE's Wildfire Mitigation Program

PURE offers a complimentary Wildfire Mitigation Program to members in 13 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming, per PURE Insurance. The program has two halves: prevention before fire season and emergency response during an active fire.

• Pre-fire assessment. A PURE risk manager or a specialist from Capstone Fire and Safety Management inspects the exterior of the home and property, then delivers a written risk report with specific hardening advice (vegetation, vents, roof, decks).
• Emergency response. PURE monitors wildfires nationally. If a fire is expected to threaten a member's home, Capstone crews may be dispatched to perform an emergency inspection, remove flammable material near structures, and apply fire suppressants to vulnerable areas, per PURE.
• Claims coordination. Because PURE is a member-owned reciprocal, the same team that ran the response typically hands off directly to member advocates and adjusters if the home is damaged anyway.

PURE also runs a separate surplus-lines arm, PURE Programs, which writes high wildfire-risk homes the admitted PURE reciprocal declines, including a dedicated California wildfire program, per PURE Programs. That distinction matters when you are comparing quotes: confirm which paper you are being offered and which services attach to it.

AIG and Private Client Select: Where That Program Stands Now

AIG's private client business pioneered carrier wildfire protection with its Wildfire Protection Unit, a complimentary service for policyholders in designated response areas that you must sign up for, per AIG's enrollment page. The unit provides wildfire monitoring as a fire builds, access to contracted response crews as it nears the home, and application of a fire-blocking agent (Thermo-Gel) to the house and landscaping, per the Coverage Cat review of AIG Private Client Group.

Two structural changes define the current state of this program:

• The book moved to Private Client Select. In July 2023, AIG and Stone Point Capital closed the formation of Private Client Select Insurance Services (PCS), an independent managing general agency that now serves AIG's high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, per AIG. If you hold a legacy AIG Private Client policy, PCS is who manages it today.
• AIG exited California's admitted homeowners market. AIG stopped writing admitted homeowners coverage in California and non-renewed portions of its portfolio, reportedly notifying about 9,000 private client households, with some clients offered replacement coverage through an AIG excess-and-surplus unit instead, per Woodruff Sawyer and The Insurer.

Practical takeaway: wildfire defense from the AIG/PCS lineage still exists, but availability at any given address, and the paper it rides on (admitted versus E&S), has to be confirmed at quote time rather than assumed from an old policy.

Carrier Wildfire Defense Programs Side by Side

Here is how the three major private client programs compare on the details that matter (program terms as published by each carrier; confirm current availability at your address when you quote):

Vault, Berkley One, and Cincinnati offer wildfire preparedness and response support in parts of their footprints as well. Those programs are less standardized and less publicly documented, so we verify them carrier by carrier during placement rather than promising a specific service level.

What Wildfire Defense Services Do NOT Do

These programs reduce the odds of losing your home. They do not eliminate them, and they come with real limits you should understand before you pick a carrier because of one. Treat the service as a valuable tiebreaker, not a fire insurance substitute.

• They are not a private fire department. Crews do loss prevention: gel, sprinklers, fuel removal, vent protection. They do not stay to fight the flame front, and they coordinate with (and yield to) public incident command. If firefighters close an area, carrier crews cannot enter it.
• There is no guarantee. Chubb states plainly that there is no guarantee these services will prevent damage, per Chubb. In a fast wind-driven fire like the January 2025 Los Angeles fires, many threatened homes get no visit at all because access is impossible.
• Enrollment and eligibility rules gate the whole thing. If you never enrolled, crews may have no authorization to enter your property. Condo, co-op, townhouse, and renter policies are typically ineligible, and Chubb excludes California FAIR Plan Extension policyholders outright.
• Deployment is triaged. Providers protect many homes across an active fire, and they sequence by threat level, access, and safety. You cannot summon a crew on demand.
• Geography is limited. Outside the published state lists and designated response areas, the service simply does not exist, even on an eligible policy.

The Underwriting Side: How Mitigation and Monitoring Affect Eligibility

Wildfire defense services and underwriting are two sides of the same program. The same hazard assessment that tells the response crew where your vulnerabilities are also tells the underwriter whether to keep writing your home. Private client carriers rate every wildfire-exposed address on a hazard score (Cotality, ZestyAI, or Verisk FireLine), and what you do about the assessment's recommendations directly moves your insurability.

How the loop works in practice:

• The assessment creates a record. If the risk report recommends cutting the juniper along the driveway and screening the attic vents, the carrier now knows whether you did it. Completed recommendations support renewal; ignored ones show up in non-renewal decisions.
• Documented hardening changes your score. A Class A roof, ember-resistant vents, cleared defensible space, and noncombustible zones within five feet of the structure are the inputs wildfire models reward. In Colorado, some of this is formalized as premium discounts, which we cover in Colorado wildfire mitigation discounts.
• Mitigation can be the price of admission. In high-hazard ZIPs, HNW carriers increasingly write or renew only homes that meet defensible-space and construction standards. The defense service is the reward side; the inspection requirement is the enforcement side.
• It compounds at renewal. A monitored, hardened, defended home has fewer and smaller claims, which keeps it in the admitted book. An unhardened home in the same ZIP drifts to surplus lines or the FAIR Plan.

Why FAIR Plans and Mass-Market Policies Don't Include This

No FAIR Plan and virtually no mass-market carrier fields wildfire defense crews. The California FAIR Plan is a last-resort, named-peril fire pool with residential limits capped at $3 million, a cap set when the Commissioner ordered limits doubled in 2019, per the California Department of Insurance order. It exists to provide basic fire coverage to homes the voluntary market declines, not to fund loss-prevention crews. Mass-market carriers, for their part, run books of hundreds of thousands of homes at premiums that cannot absorb a per-home response service; the economics only work when a single saved home avoids a seven or eight figure claim.

That creates a real coverage-quality gap in wildfire country. A household that slides from a Chubb Masterpiece policy to a California FAIR Plan policy plus a DIC wrap loses the defense service entirely (and Chubb's exclusion of FAIR Plan Extension policyholders makes that explicit). For homes above the FAIR Plan's $3 million residential cap, the gap is wider still, which is why we walk through the full stacking math in our California high-value home insurance guide.

Is Wildfire Defense Worth Choosing a Carrier For? Our Broker View

Yes, if your home is genuinely wildfire-exposed and two carriers are otherwise close on price and coverage, the defense service should break the tie. It is a real, physical benefit that has saved real houses, and it costs you nothing extra. But we would not pay a large premium differential for it alone, and we would never accept weaker structural coverage (lower dwelling limits, no extended replacement cost, harsher wildfire deductibles) to get it.

How we weigh it when we place wildfire-exposed homes:

• Coverage architecture first. Guaranteed or extended replacement cost, cash-settlement flexibility, and adequate limits rebuild your house. The defense service only improves the odds you never need to.
• Then eligibility reality. In Malibu and Lake Tahoe, the carriers with the best defense programs are also the most selective. The practical question is usually which of them will still quote your address, not which program reads best.
• Then the service, as a tiebreaker with teeth. Between two comparable quotes, take the one with a documented response program in your state, and actually enroll. An unenrolled homeowner gets nothing.
• Mountain and resort markets reward this most. In places like the Colorado mountain resort towns, long response distances for public fire resources make a pre-positioned private crew disproportionately valuable.
• If you cannot get any carrier with a program, that is a signal to re-shop annually, because appetite shifts. A home placed on surplus lines this year (see our E&S homeowners guide) can re-qualify for an admitted HNW carrier with a defense program after documented hardening.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do wildfire defense crews actually do at my house during a fire?

Contracted crews perform pre-suppression loss prevention in the window before a fire reaches your property. Typical actions include applying fire-blocking gel or retardant to the home and nearby vegetation, setting up temporary sprinkler systems, moving firewood, propane tanks, and patio furniture away from the structure, cutting back vegetation immediately around the walls, and covering vents so embers cannot enter the attic or crawl space. After the threat passes, crews remove any gel, inspect the home, and report its condition to the carrier. They do not fight the flame front and they operate under public incident command restrictions.

Is Chubb Wildfire Defense Services free, and do I have to sign up?

It is offered at no additional charge to eligible Chubb homeowners policyholders, but enrollment is required. You enroll through the Chubb Mobile app, the client portal, or a signed authorization form, which gives Wildfire Defense Systems crews permission to enter your property during a fire. The service operates in 19 states and is not available to condominium, cooperative, townhouse, or renter policyholders, or to California FAIR Plan Extension policyholders. If you hold a Chubb policy in wildfire country and have not enrolled, doing so takes minutes and costs nothing.

Does PURE have a wildfire defense program like Chubb's?

Yes. PURE's Wildfire Mitigation Program is complimentary for members in 13 states, including California, Colorado, and Texas. It includes a pre-fire exterior assessment of your home with a written risk report, and emergency response through PURE's partner Capstone Fire and Safety Management, whose crews may be dispatched to remove flammable material near structures and apply fire suppressants when a fire is expected to threaten a member's home. PURE monitors wildfires nationally and initiates the response, so the practical member obligation is completing the assessment and following its hardening advice.

Do State Farm, Allstate, or the FAIR Plan send crews to protect my home?

No. Mass-market carriers do not field per-home wildfire response crews, and no state FAIR Plan does either. The California FAIR Plan is a last-resort, named-peril fire policy with a $3 million residential limit; it provides basic fire insurance, not loss-prevention services. Carrier wildfire defense is effectively exclusive to the high-net-worth segment (Chubb, PURE, AIG/Private Client Select, and some peers), where premiums are large enough to fund a response that can prevent a seven or eight figure claim.

Will wildfire defense services guarantee my home survives a fire?

No. Every carrier states explicitly that there is no guarantee the services will prevent damage. Crews deploy only when they can reach your area safely and legally, deployment is triaged across all threatened enrolled homes, and in fast wind-driven fires many homes get no visit at all. Treat the program as a meaningful improvement in the odds, stacked on top of your own hardening, and make sure the policy behind it (dwelling limit, replacement-cost provisions, deductibles) can fully rebuild the home if the defense fails.

Can I get a carrier with wildfire defense if I have already been non-renewed?

Sometimes. Appetite varies sharply by carrier and ZIP code, so one HNW carrier's non-renewal does not mean the others will decline. Documented mitigation (Class A roof, defensible space, ember-resistant vents) can requalify a home that scored poorly, and carriers reassess scores over time. If no admitted HNW carrier will write the address today, a surplus-lines placement keeps the home properly insured while you complete hardening, and we re-shop the admitted HNW market at each renewal. An independent broker can run all of those lanes in parallel inside your non-renewal notice window.

If your home sits in wildfire country and you want a carrier that will physically defend it, not just pay after it burns, Latent Insurance Services places high-value homes across the admitted HNW carriers with wildfire defense programs, surplus-lines markets, and FAIR Plan + DIC structures. We are an independent brokerage (NPN #20972791): we check which defense-equipped carriers still have appetite at your exact address, compare their coverage architecture side by side, and make sure you are actually enrolled in the program you are paying for.

Get a wildfire-country home insurance review or schedule a call and we will tell you which carriers with defense services will quote your address.

Last updated: July 12, 2026. Sourced from Chubb, PURE Insurance, PURE Programs, AIG, Woodruff Sawyer, The Insurer, Coverage Cat, and the California Department of Insurance (all cited inline above).

Not sure whether your current policy includes wildfire defense, or whether you ever enrolled? Send us your declarations page and we will check. No pressure, no sales pitch.

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