So this morning I call The Hartford to find out whether jacking up the deductible on my homeowner’s insurance will save enough to help keep my in the house after retirement. The punch-a-button maze robot answers the phone with “If you are calling regarding property damage from a hurricane, please press 1…”
Is there any question why our homeowner’s insurance is surpassing unaffordable? If I maxed out the deductible at $4,000, it would save me all of $21.50 a month…not worth the risk of having to cut four grand out of retirement funds in the event of a fire or a falling tree. Raising my deductible from $250 to $2,000, as I decided to do, will save $114 a year: a grand $9.50 a month. Who pays for all the repairs insurance companies shell out to people who stubbornly insist in living in the way of hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, landslides, and earthquakes? That’s right: you and me, in the form of ever-soaring insurance premiums.
As we scribble, an army of rescuers is searching for more than 2,000 morons who flat refused to obey mandatory evacuation orders. These clever folks—those who can be found—are being ferried out by boat and helicopter. These are the same hardy denizens who graced Internet news videos as they were sitting around a bar getting drunk a couple of days ago. Now they’re whining because they have no air conditioning, water, or toilets.
“The storm was easy,” the New York Times quotes one Brenda Shinette, who at 51 is old enough to have known better. “I feel like I want to pass out, but I can’t tell if it is from too much heat or too little food.”
Is it possible to pass out from a deficiency of I.Q. points?
“Next time they should warn people about this, not the storm itself,” said another bright soul surprised by such details as floods, power outages, water outages, toilet outages, snakes, mosquitoes,roving packs of dogs,and rotting food.
What is it about get the hell out now get out get out get out you will die if you do not get out that you don’t understand?
“I thought we were going to need Noah’s ark,” said one Elizabeth Madson, who at 45 not only is old enough to know better but who has lived on this hugely at-risk island for seven years. “It was horrific. I would not wish that on anybody. . . . Anymore, if they say a hurricane is on its way, I’m leaving two days before.”
Some mules can learn if you whap them upside the head with a two-by-four.
It’s easy to make fun of individual morons. But then we have the corporate morons. How much do you suppose our insurance premiums will rise to cover the losses to the owners of the now-nonexistent Balinese Room, a nightclub built 600 feet into the gulf, and the Flagship, a hotel on a pier extending 1,000 into the gulf?
And how much will our taxes rise to cover the services of hundreds of search-and-rescue workers, to repair and rebuild utility infrastructures, to clean up the flood-deposited muck, to rebuild levees intended to turn back the sea so these fools can move right back in?
The normal elevation of Galveston Island is8.7 feet above sea level. Much of the developed part has been artificially elevated, andit’s sinking.
Whether or not you believe global warming and its consequent flooding, violent storms, and drought are all a figment of the liberal imagination, you have to agree that we as a people should not have to pay for the folly of individuals and corporations that insist on parking themselves in harm’s way. Living at sea level directly in the historic path of huge, massively violent storms comes under the heading of parking yourself in harm’s way. So does living in a trailer in tornado alley; building your house in the middle of a beetle-infested, drought-stricken forest; living in hills covered with chaparral evolved to actually benefit from wildfires; dwelling atop an earthquake fault; and taking up residence on the side of a dormant volcano. The rest of us should not pay for the predictable results.
It’s past time We the People brought a stop to this nonsense.
The federal government should tell insurers not only that they do not have to insure property in high-risk regions, but that they cannot insure it. It should be against the law to insure homes and businesses in places like Galveston Island—or in any other area at high risk of natural disaster.
Whatever tax incentives exist to encourage building in these areas should be eliminated. In fact, federal, local, and state governments should charge exponentially higher taxes to anyone who insists on living in fire, flood, and earthquake zones. And people who require the need of search-and-rescue teams after ignoring officials’ warnings to evacuate should be made to pay the entire cost of the rescue operation that gets them out of trouble. Let the folks who can’t understand why they need to get out of the way of a hurricane the size of the entire state of Texas pay for the cost of rescuing them!
The increasing cost of insurance and property taxes, when combined with the rising cost of food, utilities, and gasoline, very likely will force me out of my paid-off home when I retire. Who’s going to rescue me? Who’s going to rescue any of us who can no longer afford the cost of underwriting other people’s folly?
Photo: Aftermath of 1900 Galveston hurricane
byKeystone View Company
If insurance worked properly, people and corporations living in high-risk areas would be paying adequate premiums already. Property insurance would be just like car insurance, where people who drive more or fall into a higher-risk group pay more, so the fact that a 16-yr-old boy in a sporty car got in a crash doesn’t really affect your rates.
Most of the US is in danger of some natural disaster. Many of these areas are also ones where there are great natural and other resources- aren’t there oil rigs near Galveston? From the view of a person choosing to live in such an area, the risk of huge natural disasters can be outweighed by the prospect of large rewards.
Also, the risk of some of these disaster events can be mitigated. Worldwide, earthquakes are quite common, so we know a lot about how to build structures that are relatively earthquake-proof. My work building survived the Loma Prieta quake with no loss of life and no major property damage, and we are still currently making seismic upgrades. We know how to mitigate the risk of fire around buildings in fire-prone areas and lessen tornado damage in tornado-prone areas. There is no need to abandon these areas as long as people are required to take adequate precautions.
The problem, as you said, comes from the government has to bail people and companies out who did dumb things. If the government required people who were rescued to pay for the cost of the rescue, they would think twice before refusing to evacuate. I don’t recall if the government has bailed out insurance companies, but if so that’s simply dumb- insurance companies need to know that they need to charge sufficient premiums. The government also fails when it refuses to require people to take minimal precautions to reduce the damage from natural disasters and reward people who do more than the minimum.
I don’t recall any bailouts of insurance companies, but I could be wrong. In the late 1950s, the bottom dropped out of insurance securities and people who were invested in them lost their shirts. My father was one of them; I was too young to understand what was happening, other than that he lost a lifetime of savings and it looked like I wouldn’t be going to college. But he recovered, eventually.
My sense is that unless you can prove you have to live in a coastal area so that you can work on an oil rig, you shouldn’t be underwritten by insurance companies and the taxpayers to do so.
I also have lived right on top of the San Andreas Fault. One earthquake opened a crack in a major road we could see from our front windows. However: our building was constructed so it was shored up against earthquakes, and so it sustained no damage — not even a broken window, anywhere in its entire 13 stories. Interestingly, it was owned by an insurance company.
😀
Seriously: why should everyone’s insurance premiums underwrite those who live in structures that are not built to withstand earthquakes or hurricanes? Why shouldn’t people who live in the middle of flammable forests bear the full freight for rebuilding when their houses burn down? Why should they be insurable at all? And absolutely: if you refuse to evacuate when you’re told you’re at risk, you should have to pay the full cost of the rescue operation, including the fuel to run the helicopter that hauled you out.
All I could think about, watching those people who did not leave, is that if my son/ husband/ father/ sister/ mother/daughter died trying to save someone who wouldn’t evacuate, forgiveness would be a long time coming.