Nearly half of Fresno residents will flee due to climate risks, report predicts
Reality Check is a Fresno Bee series holding those in power to account and shining a light on their decisions. Have a tip? Email tips@fresnobee.com.
A new risk report from a private firm predicts a large exodus of residents from Fresno County as the effects of climate change exacerbate the region's issues and costs of living in the next three decades.
The risk-assessing firm, First Street, calculated 45.8% of Fresno County residents would abandon the county by 2055 because of rising insurance rates and decreasing land values.
The report also projected a nearly 15% impact on costs in the region as home values decrease and the cost to insure them rise.
Fresno topped the list of the areas effected most above Sacramento County and a couple of counties in New Jersey.
The firm's prediction showed Fresno's hot weather and poor air quality could continue to worsen, driving down the desirability of the homes and pushing up insurance rates.
Other parts of California have stronger economic outlooks that could help mitigate those issues, but Fresno's economic health typically struggles, noted Jeremy Porter, the head of climate implications for First Street.
'Fresno has had relatively stagnant economic growth with baseline population forecasts showing a stagnant growth rate into the future,' he said in an email. 'Together these indicators serve to amplify the impact of the climate risk that does exist.'
Experts in the San Joaquin Valley who spoke with The Bee expressed skepticism of the report's bold assessment of Fresno County.
While climate change would be expected to lead to displacement of residents, predicting the magnitude gets shaky because it includes so many factors, according to Naomi Bick, a Fresno State professor who studies climate change and urban politics.
'It's hard to know exactly how bad that abandonment and people leaving will be, because it depends on how other areas are as well and what they're facing,' she said. 'And then also what cities and counties and places do to prepare for climate change.'
But, Bick said, the Valley is known to have disadvantaged communities, which could have greater difficulty adapting.
Along with the rising temperature from climate change, the Valley could expect to see wider fluctuations in precipitation, according to Crystal Kolden, a professor and director of the UC Merced Fire Resilience Center.
The Valley got a taste of those fluctuations in 2023 when unusually heavy rainfall fell on the snowpacked Sierra and resurrected Tulare Lake. Years with record-breaking rainfall could be followed by severe droughts under the weather swings of climate change.
Kolden said she was skeptical of the First Street report, particularly as it pertains to wildfires, saying its assessment of Fresno does not delineate between the fire hazards of the flammable foothills and the less serious potential for fire in the Valley.
The Valley's air can be affected by the occasional wildfire as it was during the Creek Fire in 2020, but often winds send the smoke east.
'I have not yet seen the types of risk models that have any level of accuracy about wildfire smoke in the future in part because it's so dependent upon low and high pressure systems moving through,' she said.
The assessment also does not account for engineering solutions municipalities can develop to compensate for changes. First Street projected out to 2055 assuming no change to modern mitigation.
'In California, we just keep rebuilding and we figure out how to engineer our way out of it,' Kolden said. 'People are not depopulating hot areas. They're figuring out how to develop engineering solutions that allow for cooling.'
Scientists are already working on solutions for re-purposing irrigated cropland, which is expected to lead to improvements in the Valley when it comes to the effects of climate change, according to Angel S. Fernandez-Bou of the Union of Concerned Scientists based in Merced.
He said the First Street report uses 'coarse' data that can be less accurate.
'The report doesn't consider what we in the (San Joaquin Valley) are already doing to make this a better place,' he said in an email. 'I think we can transform the Valley into a climate resilient region.'
The way insurance companies approach the state of California has begun to change due to climate change. State Farm stopped issuing new policies and this year requested fee hikes by an average of 22%.
Home buyers seek out homes for their school districts or other desirable characteristics, and are rarely asking about potential hazards, according to Ken Neufeld, a broker with London Properties in Fresno for 45 years.
'Flooding is hardly on the radar,' he said.
Brokers provide home buyers with information for homes in natural disaster zones, he said, but flooding only comes into question in areas where a breach of a dam would cause flooding.
While buyers aren't asking about climate risks, they're often forced to insure against them, according to Jason Farris, president-elect of the Fresno Association of Realtors. He said he's been asked about flood zones fewer than five times in the last two decades.
'People are getting quotes for insurance premiums before getting into escrow on the property,' he said. 'People are spending a lot of money to get into a home.'
But the Valley's climate experts say it'll take political will to adopt mitigating regulations and the participation of the region's residents to lighten the potential climate issues.
Kolden said people often return to burned down foothills or flooded lowlands to rebuild and only leave the most undesirable areas behind.
'It is up to the local municipality, whether it's a county or incorporated areas, a town or a city, to actually enforce those codes,' Kolden said. 'When these communities are rebuilding after a fire, there's an enormous amount of political pressure to not hold people to those standards.'
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