Insured losses of $1 bln seen from Calif. fires

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Insured losses from Southern California wildfires have exceeded $1 billion and will continue to rise until winds fanning the blazes die down and firefighters can contain them, a firm that estimates catastrophic losses said on Wednesday.

"This year's fires are extreme but not unusually so," EQECAT, the disaster modeling firm, said in a statement.

The EQECAT computer-generated model produces an expected $1 billion fire loss about every eight years, while a $2 billion insurance loss will occur about every 15 years.

"The trend of the last several decades (has been) populating the 'wildland-urban' area, exposing more people and insured values to the ever present fire risk in California," the firm said.

California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, formerly the state's insurance commissioner, said in a telephone interview from Southern California it is too soon to estimate losses from the wildfires, adding that he expects insurers are well prepared to cope with their costs.

"This is the kind of hit that they anticipate and plan for," Garamendi said, while driving from Orange County to San Diego County, where more than 1,000 homes are believed to have been consumed by flames.

(Reporting by Jim Christie, additional reporting by Ed Leefeldt in New York)