About California Fire Ready
We are an independent local directory that helps Butte County homeowners find the contractors who do wildfire home hardening work — and understand how that work relates to their insurance.
Why this site exists
The advice about protecting a house from wildfire is not hard to find. What is hard to find is someone nearby who will actually come out and do it. The businesses doing this work in the foothills tend to be small, often without much of a website, and the search results fill up with national pages that explain the rules without telling you who to call.
Meanwhile, insurance has become the pressing reason to act. California's Safer from Wildfires regulation ties discounts to specific, documentable work, the FAIR Plan offers hardening discounts of its own, and a failed defensible space inspection can put a policy at risk. So the same list of jobs that protects a house now also affects what it costs to insure it.
How the directory works
- Basic listings are free. Businesses can add themselves.
- We check that a license number is valid before publishing a listing that claims one.
- Badges describe what a business told us about itself. We do not inspect their work.
- A listing is not an endorsement or a recommendation, and we do not rank businesses by quality.
How we plan to make money
Right now, we do not. Later, we expect to charge businesses for featured placement and for leads on large jobs, and to take sponsorships from insurance brokers. When that happens, paid placement will be labeled as such. Free listings will stay free, and paying will not buy a better review — there are no reviews here to buy.
What we are not
- We are not a contractor, and we do not do any of this work ourselves.
- We are not an insurance agency and cannot quote or bind a policy.
- We are not a government agency and have no role in inspections or enforcement.
- We cannot tell you what discount your insurer will give you. Only your insurer can.
About the guides
Wildfire rules and insurance programs in California are changing quickly, and some are in dispute even as we write. Every guide carries the date it was last checked and tells you to confirm with your insurer and local fire agency. If you find something here that has gone out of date, please tell us — that is genuinely useful.
Coverage area
We launched across Butte County: Chico, Paradise, Magalia, Oroville, Durham, Gridley, Biggs, Palermo, Forest Ranch, Berry Creek and Concow. We plan to expand south into Yuba, Sutter, Nevada and Placer counties.