The Brief

On Tuesday, Jan. 7, at about 7 a.m., the Getty’s Emergency Planning Specialist Les Borsay arrived at the Getty Villa in Malibu.

“This was not normally a day I would have necessarily been out there,” Borsay told LAist.

He was there with several other staffers from the Getty’s Brentwood campus to test some of the Villa’s fire suppression equipment, which was taking longer than expected.

Then came the message from the Getty in Brentwood: a small brush fire up started up at the Highlands, sparked by embers of the Palisades Fire, he said.

Les Borsay, emergency planning specialist at the Getty Trust

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The Getty Trust

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For the next 28 hours, Borsay and 16 other staffers organized themselves to supplement fire department efforts and along the way contributed to helping keep the Getty Villa and its priceless art collections from going up in flames.

The Getty Villa's emergency operations center

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The Getty Trust

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Now, nearly a month later, administrators of cultural institutions around the country are coming to Borsay to learn what he and his staff did, how they did it, and what they learned so they themselves can close any disaster safety gaps in their own plans.

Putting out spot fires with boots and fire extinguishers

After the start of the brush fire, the museum was closed down and the decision was made to tell non-emergency staff to go home. Borsay and the 16 others volunteered to stay.

From a conference room at the Villa, Borsay and others watched security camera feeds of the flames as they approached the perimeter of the 64-acre property. They kept a close eye on the northeast corner, near Los Liones Drive.

“We have a security kiosk there at our back gate. We had to pull that officer and make sure that they were safe,” he said. “That's when it starts becoming a real situation — OK, this fire is here."

Teams of two people

Borsay organized teams of at least two people, who wore N95 masks and goggles.

Spot fires from the Palisades Fire break out at the Getty Villa.

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The Getty Trust

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“Some goggles were better than others,” Borsay said, but those were all the equipment they had.

In all, 16 people, along with Borsay, were going out to extinguish spot fires around the campus.

Borsay also ran the command center.

“Fire extinguishers, we had them in the vehicles. We were pulling them out of the other buildings to put in the vehicles so that they could be used to go and hit these little fires,” Borsay said.

The teams would then return to the Emergency Operations Center to stay out of the smoke and ash and to replenish their energy.

Borsay commandeered sandwiches, cookies, and chips left in the museum's catering area for the crew.

“They could come inside for a second, get a drink of water, be inside for another 20 minutes or so and then rotate back out,” Borsay said.

They used boots and fire extinguishers to put out fires and help firefighters who arrived to fight the fire that day.

The fires were less threatening at about 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Borsay said, and flames subsided at about midnight. Meanwhile, the Palisades Fire continued to burn.

The next day, Getty CEO Katherine Fleming told news reporters the Villa remained safe and intact. Borsay had stayed the night, along with most others, and by noon returned home to Eagle Rock.

“It felt like the worst part was over,” Borsay said.

Key takeaways from their DIY firefighting

The Getty had done a lot to plan for a potential fire running up the canyons around the Villa.

However, the experience of Borsay and the other staffers who stayed revealed some gaps.

• The ABC fire extinguishers are dry chemical and not very effective in the strong winds that made the fires so dangerous — water fire extinguishers would have been better
• It was a good choice to get staff out of the museum early on
• Practices like shutting off outside air and taping doors to make sure smoke and ash didn't enter rooms worked
• People went above and beyond their job descriptions
• Sharing these practices with other cultural institutions is key

“ I learned that the people I work with are not just amazing, but even more amazing than I could have imagined,” Borsay said.

Other museums want to know

The Getty hosted a large cultural property protection conference last September. Some of the attendees reached out to Borsay, he said, to learn first about how he and the museum were doing. Then, for details about how he and his staff helped protect the Villa from being engulfed in flames.

The amphitheater at the Getty Villa with the glow of the Palisades Fire in the background.

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The Getty Trust

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He said he’s been asked to make a full presentation at this year’s conference. And next week he’s talking to the Cultural Safeguard Alliance, a network formed among cultural institutions to protect cultural property.

“[I’m going to give] a basic briefing on what happened and what we did and how we protected [the Villa],” Borsay said.

But this is not the happy ending. Natural disasters are never in the city’s rearview mirror.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the L.A. fires, “The Big One.” While these fires are historic in nature, the longstanding threat of a massive earthquake also looms on L.A.’s horizon.

“It's going to be a bad day when the Big One happens. I don't think anybody's questioning that,” Borsay said.

A large magnitude earthquake will cause different damage, but the experience of going through the recent fire storm, Borsay said, has helped him and his institution prepare.

A bipartisan majority in the Republican-led House voted on Wednesday to end the war with Iran, the clearest rebuke yet of President Donald Trump's handling of the conflict and the subsequent economic fallout.

The war powers resolution passed by a vote of 215 to 208, with four Republicans joining Democrats in support.

The resolution had originally been set for a vote two weeks ago, but Republican leaders sent House members home early for a May recess when it appeared the largely Democratic-backed measure had enough Republican votes for passage. However, the extended break didn't shift GOP support to kill the measure.

Ahead of the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., defended Trump's decision to attack Iran.

"Remember … Iran declared war on us 47 years ago. They chant 'death to America.' The president is trying to keep the people safe," Johnson told reporters.

The vote is mostly symbolic. Democrats, despite multiple attempts, have been unable to pass a war powers resolution through the Republican-led Senate. Even if the measure passed in Congress, it would almost certainly be vetoed by President Trump, whose administration has questioned the constitutionality of the War Powers Act.

Still, Senate Democrats have been inching closer. Last month, they won support on a procedural measure to set up a war powers vote after a handful of Republicans broke ranks to join them. A final vote has yet to be scheduled.

The administration has furiously pushed against the effort in both the House and Senate. Wednesday's vote signals his support for the war may be slipping even among some members of his own party.

Now more than 90 days into the conflict, some Republicans have expressed frustration that the war does not appear to have a clear end in sight. Talks to end the war have yet to gain clear traction, casting doubt on a fragile ceasefire. Just hours before the vote, Iran and the U.S. traded strikes in the Persian Gulf.

The conflict began on Feb 28 with strikes by U.S. and Israeli forces on Iran. Under the 1973 War Powers Act, the president has 60 days to end hostilities if there has been no congressional authorization – though he is able to seek a 30-day extension. The same law also gives Congress the ability to end hostilities by voting on a resolution to end military action, subject to presidential veto.

The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., warned ahead of the May recess when the vote was delayed that the plan was sure to pass.

"Let's be clear: Republicans pulled this vote because they knew they were going to lose it," Meeks said. "They know this war is a political and strategic disaster."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Electric vehicles offer many opportunities to save money: on gas, on oil changes, on engine maintenance. But, it turns out, insurance isn’t one of them. In fact, the latest data shows that EVs typically cost $3,159 per year to insure — nearly $1,000 more than gas-powered cars. It’s an added burden that could make the payback period on EVs significantly longer.

On average, the insurance gap between electric and internal combustion engine, or ICE, vehicles was 42%, according to a report released by the insurance-comparison marketplace Insurify. But it varies drastically by state and model. The most expensive locale was Washington, D.C., where coverage cost $6,394 versus $4,124 for ICE cars. Maine was the cheapest at $1,476, just $184 more than a conventional car. The difference was most pronounced in Rhode Island, which has a 73% spread.

Generally speaking, luxury brands like Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi are particularly expensive to insure, with premiums on many models topping $4,000. Volvo, Chevrolet, Ford, and Hyundai offer cars at the lower end of the spectrum. Insurify wouldn’t disclose which insurers had the most expensive rates, but did say Lemonade, Root, and GEICO offered the most affordable EV coverage.

“Insurers were charging those higher premiums to balance their risks,” said Julia Taliesin, an economic analyst and insurance agent at Insurify, who wrote the report. It is based on more than 235 million quotes in Insurify’s proprietary database. Seven states — Alaska, Hawai‘i, North Dakota, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming — are excluded due to lower quoting volume. But high insurance expenses means it can take more driving before an EV pays for itself through lower fuel and operating costs. Even if electricity were free and gas stays at $4 per gallon it translates to at least 5,800 more miles a year compared to a car that gets 25 mpg.

A primary reason for the disparity is that EVs cost more to fix.

“We do see that there is a delta in the cost of repair for electric vehicles compared to ICE,” said Ryan Mandell, a vice president of strategy and market intelligence at Mitchell, a company which provides data and software related to car repairs. He pegs the difference at about 15%, noting that batteries are relatively expensive to fix and for mechanics to work around and that EVs have complicated electronics. But there are more fundamental factors as well, like the lack of an engine.

Mandell gave the Ford F-150 as an example. From 2022 to 2025 an electric version of the pickup truck, called the Lightning, was available alongside gas-only and hybrid versions. When Mitchell subjected the gasoline and EV models to a front-end crash test the engine in the traditional model actually absorbed quite a bit of the impact. Because it doesn’t have that additional structure, Ford designed the Lightning with additional reinforcement that cost around 30% more to fix.

“The Lightning had more crash parts on the front of the vehicle,” said Mandell. He also noted that Ford requires removing the battery before doing any work, which increases labor costs. “It adds up.”

Repair costs, however, are not the only factor insurers consider. Insurify’s data showed insurance rates for the two trucks are roughly the same, which Taliesin said suggests driver demographics and behavior play a role, too. “One of the most significant is personal driving history and credit history,” she said. Given the Lightning’s much higher cost, the credit scores of owners could potentially be higher. And Insurify’s data shows that the ticket and accident rates for Lightning drivers are about half that of traditional F-150s.

“Factors like climate risk, vehicle theft rates, population density, insurance regulation, repair infrastructure, and EV adoption levels contribute to regional cost differences,” the Insurify report stated. In several states it cited climate-driven extreme weather, such as hurricanes and flooding, as drivers of high costs.

This EV insurance story isn’t unique to the United States. In 2024, BloombergNEF found about the same spread in the United Kingdom and Germany. France saw double the disparity. Overall, though, American EV owners still paid 87% more for insurance than Europeans.

“Several model-specific factors have driven the wider cost gaps in the large and SUV segments,” said Aleksandra O’Donovan, head of electrified transport at BloombergNEF, pointing to the Tesla Model Y as a particularly extreme example. “[The U.S. price] is nearly triple the insurance rate for the same vehicle in Germany.”

From 2023 to 2025, the EV insurance gap in the U.S. grew from 29% to 49%. But this year, it came down slightly, which Taliesin said is among a few good signs for EV drivers. Another is that the disparity among cars made in the last two years was only 18 percent — compared 42% across all years.

That drop is partly because auto insurance prices fell across the board in the last year. But Taliesin also said that ICE cars are catching up to EVs in terms of how complicated and expensive they are to fix. The cost of EV batteries is also trending downward, too. As EV sales have grown, there is more data for companies to base their prices on and more incentive for them to court EV owners.

”We’ve been seeing a ton of insurance-shopping behavior as insurers have been dropping their rates to compete for business,” said Taliesin, who is bullish for consumers. “That’s definitely a welcome reprieve.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/transportation/the-hidden-cost-of-owning-an-ev-expensive-insurance/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org