Natural Disaster Mitigation

[REatc]

For those of you that live in consistently prone natural disaster areas, do think/stress/plan for them? I know that it was insurance is for, however I live in an area that gets earthquakes often and earthquake insurance is ridiculously expensive and not worth it financially. We recently had a 7.something that destroyed a few homes of people I work with, and it got me to start thinking. Better to have a mortgage with cash reserves just in case or have no mortgage and no cash reserves and hope it doesn’t happen? I only plan on living where I am currently for 3-5 more years then moving.

[Sibley]

Well, I think it depends on the disaster. To me, there's a pretty strong argument to make that humans are pretty dumb when it comes to building in locations where we really shouldn't (below sea level, flood plains, edge of cliffs...). Example: New Orleans, whichever Hawaii island it is that periodically gets leveled by lava, etc.

I personally think that permanent structures should not be constructed in known flood plains. Or if you do, then you shouldn't be able to get insurance against flood or flood related damage. If you want to live right on the coast, there's a cost to that. I in the Midwest shouldn't have to pay for the people who live on the beach in Flordia. In those cases, you're self-insuring.

In the case of earthquakes, I'd say it's a matter of frequency and severity. Every 50 years is very different than every 5 years. I do find it amusing that the only earthquake I've felt was in Michigan, and I lived in CA for a while.

[calimom]

My children and I evacuated our house last year during a wildfire. Somewhere during that time I checked on my homeowners' policy and was aware of a contents and structure cost of replacement which was adequate. We did return to an intact house which I was grateful for, and premiums have gone up some since then. As we head into another fire season, I'm keeping an eye on coverage for my house as well as my small business which has 'business interruption coverage, but it's not clear to me how much of that it would actually compensate for- it's nebulous. We do have a 'go bag' prepared as well as a place to evacuate to/rebuild if needed.