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American, living in area prone to natural disasters: "Is the WHOLE WORLD becoming uninsurable?" The answer is obviously "no" since there are other parts of the

American, living in area prone to natural disasters: "Is the WHOLE WORLD becoming uninsurable?" The answer is obviously "no" since there are other parts of the world that don't live on a hurricane highway nor build houses made from firewood in an area prone to wildfires.

etchalon 2y ago
We're bad at so very many things while thinking we're the best at everything.
- anonymou2 2y ago
  don't worry, pretty soon you're gonna be great...
nejsjsjsbsb 2y ago
Climate change enters the chat...
- adrianN 2y ago
  Even pessimistic scenarios don't predict threats to buildings (other than war, which to my knowledge never was insurable) in most areas of the world.
  - agsnu 2y ago
    A significant portion of human structures are located close to the coast (seaborne trade having been a huge enabler of economic development for a few hundred years) and are exposed to flooding from rising sea levels, or built in valleys that are increasingly at risk from flooding due to far-above-long-term-historic-norms precipitation runoff (higher atmospheric temps lead to more energy in weather systems; see eg massive floods in Europe in the past few years).
    - adrianN 2y ago
      Compared to the other challenges climate change poses those are fairly simple engineering problems. The Netherlands manage fine with large parts of the country below sea level.
      - graemep 2y ago
        and sea level rises are slow enough that countries with more high ground than The Netherlands can just not rebuild/maintain old houses in vulnerable positions and build higher (often just a bit further in) instead. Some buildings buy the coast (especially in port cities) and have steep rises anyway. There is a huge threat of cultural loss - e.g. Venice.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        A few critical ingredients being: no denialism about their vulnerability, strong social and economic commitment to reducing vulnerability, lack of reflexively blaming floods on illegal immigrants or trans people
        mrguyorama 2y ago
        Also they don't blame the climate or weather on democrats there.
        llamaimperative 2y ago
        I forgot that one! The Dems controlling the weather. Big one!
      - jyounker 2y ago
        The Netherlands has been planning for the impacts of sea-level rise for decades now. At least twenty years ago the government broached the idea (with TV commercials) that they were going to have to abandon some are areas to the sea.
      - avianlyric 2y ago
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    Seems like having the ocean at your door would be bad for the structure? Or burning down in a hot dry period…
    - adrianN 2y ago
      Why would a city like London or Paris burn down in a hot dry period?
      - snacksmcgee 2y ago
        You're refuting a lot of established facts about the risks of climate change, in a way that seems indicative of a certain ideology. Can you explain more what your position is?
        adrianN 2y ago
        My position is that climate change is an existential threat to civilization, but buildings are not at a risk that would make them uninsurable. We build cities both in very wet and very hot and dry climates without much trouble. Those are engineering problems we can solve without much trouble.
        llamaimperative 2y ago
        But with lots more money, which is what insurance deals with Of course they’re insurable at some premium. The question is whether there is any premium someone is willing to pay that can also cover the risk.
        notabee 2y ago
        It's also a social coordination problem. For example a neighborhood where all the homes have to be fire resistant is going to fare a lot better, and probably be cheaper for the individual home owners to build and insure, than the one fire-resistant home in a neighborhood of tinder boxes. I don't think the prognosis is good for the U.S. in that regard. We have very little social cohesion and a lot of parties interested in making the situation worse for their own benefit.
  - swiftcoder 2y ago
    I don't know about that. The Iberian peninsula is not historically at much risk for natural disasters, and we now suffer alternating forest fires and floods pretty much every year...
    - lores 2y ago
      I remember forest fires yearly in northern Spain in the 80s. Are they more violent now?
      - nejsjsjsbsb 2y ago
        Climate change deals frequency, rather than novelty. Oh and as crypto bros like to say: we're early.
      - swiftcoder 2y ago
        Mostly they seem to have planted a lot more Eucalyptus, which makes the fires worse. The severe floods on the other hand seem to be catching everyone by surprise.
  - nejsjsjsbsb 2y ago
    Except for Fire?
  - helboi4 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    > Even pessimistic scenarios don't predict threats to buildings Floods, storms, droughts, fire? They appear to be getting worse. More restrictive codes designed for better fireproofing buildings, for instance, can solve a number of problems in California in fire prone areas. Another thing that has a political solution is forest management. Lack of water can be solved by desalination, which becomes an energy problem rather than a water one. Very dry areas can benefit from solar panels because they reduce water loss from evaporation, thus reducing the pressure on water supplies. It is expensive, but that's another problem.
  - notabee 2y ago
    That's not really true. The introduction of so much extra energy into the atmosphere is going to make weather extremes worse all over the world, and harder to predict as historical models become less relevant. Large scale pattern changes like the AMOC shutting down are going to completely change many local weather patterns so that e.g. places that have little history of tornados will start having them, or places that used to be too wet for wildfires will suddenly experience them in extreme drought conditions. Despite scientists' best efforts, we're running a global experiment with no control group and predictions will only become more difficult the harder we push the system into a new state.
- jeffhuys 2y ago
  Pole drift.
  - defrost 2y ago
    Magnetic, rotational, geodetic .. ? What are you trying to say?
    - falcor84 2y ago
      Can there even be geodetic drift of the poles? I sort of assumed that our lat/lon system is based on the poles being fixed points as a matter of definition.
      - defrost 2y ago
        Each ellipsoid is rigidly defined (well, some historic ones are sloppy), so WGS84 won't drift .. (that's a bold statement, is it true down to the micron and if so what are the absolute* datums to reference against?). That said, there are literally hundreds of historic pre WGS84 ellipsoid|datum pairings, each with a somewhat different "survey map pole". Historically geodectic poles have shifted as a function of datums. The main point here, such as it is, was to poke at the infomation free aspect of "polar drift" as a comment .. which pole and what does that have to do with climate change? etc.
        avianlyric 2y ago
        We still use many of those old ellipsis and datum’s today. When you’re doing human things, like surveying land, and defining property boundaries. It’s nice to work with a coordinate system which remains fixed relative to the area you’re surveying, and doesn’t drift due to annoying things like tectonic movement, or your entire country slowly tipping into the ocean.
        defrost 2y ago
        FWiW I'm old enough to have navigated via LORAN and travelled through over two thirds of the 190+ countries on the planet tying in multitudes of old datums to the "new" WGS84 standard as part of a career in geophysical surveying (Gravimetrics, tides, magnetics, radiometrics, EM, etc.) I'm not old enough to have seen Great Britain and relate isles pressed down by the weight of kilometres of ice though .. that'd be a great great great grand something that saw that.
- ekianjo 2y ago
  Still waiting for the water to flood New York...
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Hurricane Ida in 2019 brought torrential rains which flooded the city, especially the subway.
    - ekianjo 2y ago
      Torrential rain has nothing to do with sea rising which is the topic discussed at hand. You can have torrential rains anywhere in the world not just on the coastline.
  - jyounker 2y ago
    That happened six years ago: https://www.businessinsider.com/severe-rainfall-hits-new-york-city-leaving-thousands-without-power-2019-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/severe-rainfall-hits-new-yor...
    - Macha 2y ago
      And last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxqswOkZMSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxqswOkZMSI
  - randerson 2y ago
    Hurricane Sandy flooded big parts of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. I have friends who couldn't go back to their apartments or offices for months afterwards.
- topspin 2y ago
  How did climate change cause vast neighborhoods of single-family wooden mcmansions to be constructed with ~3 meters of separation?
HacklesRaised 2y ago
To be fair we are talking about an area of the country that is prone to seismic activity, it does limit the building materials. Perhaps what should be more commonly accepted is that the US is a land of great natural beauty! And large tracts of it should be left to nature. What's the average monthly leccy bill in Phoenix during the summer? $400? Where does LA get most of its water? Local sources? I don't think that's the case. New Orleans is a future Atlantis. San Francisco is a city built by Monty Python. Don't build it there it'll fall down, but I built it anyway, and it fell down, so I built it again...
- simianparrot 2y ago
  > To be fair we are talking about an area of the country that is prone to seismic activity, it does limit the building materials. Japan comes to mind as a country that's solved this. > Where does LA get most of its water? Local sources? I don't think that's the case. Relevant: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-10/as-flames-raged-in-palisades-a-key-reservoir-nearby-was-offline https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-10/as-flame...
  - niemandhier 2y ago
    Sure Japan did it, so did Mexico. The latter is probably much more important as an example for the US. https://www.preventionweb.net/news/not-drill-how-1985-disaster-taught-mexico-prepare-earthquakes https://www.preventionweb.net/news/not-drill-how-1985-disast...
    - galangalalgol 2y ago
      Many of the gouses burning weren't built to current codes, but the cost to retrofit houses to code was insurmountable by any of the owners and apparently by the state or even the nation. So they will just wait for them all to burn and then rebuild them I guess?
    - forgotmysn 2y ago
      Mexico is in the middle of a crippling drought
ReptileMan 2y ago
[flagged]
- 9dev 2y ago
  was that understanding formed by Fox News, perhaps?
  - throwup238 2y ago
    Rush Limbaugh zombie in a polkadot dress.
  - ReptileMan 2y ago
    Didn't know that fox news was in charge of forestry in LA.
    - 9dev 2y ago
      Nope. Last time I checked, they were in the business of spewing hate and misinformation (sorry: Alternative facts), undermining any sensible discussion. Accusing thousands of people of being incompetent is more telling of you than them.
      - ReptileMan 2y ago
        >Accusing thousands of people of being incompetent is more telling of you than them. Not me. Facts on the ground do it. Honest question - if I wish upon you every medical professional from now on that treats you and your family to be as competent as the part of the administrative state that is responsible for wild fire management and prevention in LA - will you take that as a blessing or a curse?
Over2Chars 2y ago
I would assume that earthquake insurance in japan is a reasonable model for "world insurance". It looks like it's a reinsurance program: https://www.mof.go.jp/english/policy/financial_system/earthquake_insurance/outline_of_earthquake_insurance.html https://www.mof.go.jp/english/policy/financial_system/earthq... So, I think the answer is "no".
- tzs 2y ago
  Japan is probably not a good comparison for home insurance because houses in Japan typically only have a 20 to 30 year lifespan. After that they are usually torn down and a new house is built.
  - Over2Chars 2y ago
    Its a country built on seismically active volcanoes. If there's earthquake insurance in japan, it should be do-able. "In and around Japan, one-tenth of earthquakes in the world occur. " https://geoscienceletters.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40562-017-0069-4 https://geoscienceletters.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/...
    - klodolph 2y ago
      Home values in Japan are somewhat anomalous. There are some good policies that contribute to this, but also other factors that make me reluctant to generalize from Japan. It’s a country with declining natural population, where houses are assets that rapidly decline in value to the point where they’re nearly worthless not that long after you buy them. Average home age in Japan is 30 years. I think, maybe once or twice, I’ve lived in a building less than 30 years old in the US. I’ve spent most of my life in buildings built pre-war. There aren’t so many pre-war buildings in Japan, but the US takes the blame for that one :-(
      - Over2Chars 2y ago
        The topic was "is the world becoming uninsurable?" with some climate-panic being implied, oh gosh. If a country with 1/10th of the worlds seismic activity can have (earthquake) insurance, then well dammit, I think it can be done. Insurance, afaict, is just gambling, and well darnit you can gamble on anything. The odds might be terrible, but there's ways of hedging your bets I've heard. I am not a gambler.
epolanski 2y ago
I'm always baffled at the fact that Americans don't build houses out of bricks. I read those arguments of the advantages this method has, especially financial ones, but to me it's nonsense considering that it would prevent an endless number of problems that cause the total loss. I still remember when New Orleans was hit with by Katrina, large parts of the suburbs where houses where made by wood and plastic where destroyed, yet downtown where buildings where made of bricks required maintenance, sometimes little of it, but none faced a total loss.
- throwup238 2y ago
  The entire west coast sits on top of a fault line. That’s why people don’t build with brick here. There’s plenty of brick buildings on the east coast (and on the west coast like in Oregon, but they have to be seismically retrofitted which is expensive).
  - j16sdiz 2y ago
    It works for Taiwan and Japan
    - bane 2y ago
      Japanese houses aren't built with brick.
    - grvdrm 2y ago
      Is that brick or is it reinforced masonry?
      - CharlieDigital 2y ago
        Both. Older single story tends to be brick. Newer multistory is typically cast in place with rebar reinforcement from what I can tell. In the countryside, you might find more masonry block construction, but not in dense urban areas like Taipei and Taichung where the norm is to build up. Most "single family homes" are what we would consider very large condos in the US.
infecto 2y ago
Honest question. Why when people describe wood framed homes do they always phrase it like houses made from "firewood", "sticks", "twigs" etc? It at least for me always detracts from the argument at hand. You could just as easily build a wood framed home with an exterior shell that is fire resistant using modern materials or brick.
- ajsnigrutin 2y ago
  Some of us live in reinforced concrete socialist-built apartment buildings, and our homes don't burn like american houses do. Same for single family houses made from brics and cement (most houses here) Same for eg. gas explosions, this is one one looks like in us: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230812191220-02-pennsylvania-deadly-house-fire-explosion-081223.jpg?q=w_1110,c_fill/f_webp https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/23081219122... And this is one over here: https://www.prlekija-on.net/uploaded/2018_11/eksplozija-plina-v-mariboru_7708089630.jpg https://www.prlekija-on.net/uploaded/2018_11/eksplozija-plin... Same for eg floods, pump the basements and ground levels, repaint, move stuff back in. Someone from US I work with on a project had a pipe burst while on vacation, and insurance wrote off their whole house, because of a few days of water. I mean, sure, you could that, but looking at the photos from fire-affected areas, nobody did that, it's all burnt to the ground.
  - infecto 2y ago
    I think you missed the point. Its the same as me asking about the drab prisons you live in. Not to mention your cherry picked examples don't really hold up. A 2500sqft home filled with natural gas has a different explosive potential than a small apartment. I am also not sure it makes sense to build homes expecting for a natural gas explosion, not even a measurable risk. You can absolutely build a home that is fire resistant which most modern homes in fire risk areas are.
    - tossandthrow 2y ago
      A lot of people do, in fact, talk like that about eastern european homes (them selves included).
netdevphoenix 2y ago
I hope you don't get downvoted for stating the obvious. This tendency of equating the US to the world happens so frequently and it is 99% a non-US person pointing it out.
api 2y ago
There were houses that survived recent wildfires because they were built to be in a fire zone and survive fires. I’m sure there was damage but nowhere near total loss. I’m sure when homes are rebuilt the majority will not be fire resistant. It’s possible to build for hurricanes and floods too but few do it. They build houses that get blown away and then tap insurance. Insurance rates for properties not built to withstand the stresses of their environment will go up.
- briffle 2y ago
  we had a huge wildfire in my area in 2021 that burned through a few small towns. In one town, the only houses that survived where the ones that followed the guides out there for creating defensible space. They were also newer homes, which is obviously easier then retro-fitting an existing home, but the town got rebuilt essentially the same as it was, which is kind of sad to see. https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_marshall-fire-mat-homeowners-guide-defensible-space.pdf https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_mars...
  - api 2y ago
    We don't do this in e.g. aviation, where after every crash we study it and make changes if possible. Not sure why we don't seem to care in housing.
- lern_too_spel 2y ago
  > I’m sure when homes are rebuilt the majority will not be fire resistant They are required to be: https://heatmap.news/climate/california-wildfire-building-code https://heatmap.news/climate/california-wildfire-building-co... The problem is that in many desirable places to live in California, many houses are very old and are not compliant with the latest building codes.
chillfox 2y ago
It’s possible that solve the hurricane problems with proper building regulations and lower the risk of huge wildfires with controlled burning. But the US as always prefers to pretend that there’s nothing to be done when other parts of the world has figured it out. We have cyclones here similar to the hurricanes in the US and usually it just blows over some trees maybe causes a power outage. The absolute worst I have experienced was 3 days without power. I have never seen a house destroyed by a cyclone here. As for wildfires, they do unfortunately claim a few houses most years.
- skywhopper 2y ago
  Where is “here”? Are you sure you aren’t confusing hurricanes and tornados? Hurricanes rarely destroy houses in the US, either.
  - chillfox 2y ago
    Good to know. The news always seems to find footage of destroyed suburbs whenever the US is hit by a big one.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    How are you making this claim? Every time a hurricane hits Florida, there are photos of entire neighborhoods devastated by wind and storm surge. How many people were permanently displaced by Katrine? Etc. Maybe many of the homes weren't technically "destroyed", but each storm brings millions or billions in damage.
    - tetromino_ 2y ago
      Hurricanes usually don't affect the structure of a house. They might damage the roof, parts of exterior cladding, perhaps windows, and the flooding which accompanies hurricanes destroys personal possessions, interior furnishing, electrical wiring, and appliances. In the US, manual labor is very expensive, home construction or repair is highly regulated and requires permits and multiple inspections from the local government, and the amount of flood-destroyable stuff - material possessions, furnishings, appliances - in a typical home is massive. As a result, a cyclone which a poorer country would survive with a shrug in the US becomes an extremely expensive disaster.
rsynnott 2y ago
America isn't the only place having an uptick in extreme weather events, though.
- tedivm 2y ago
  Spain just had the worst flooding ever, Australia has massive wildfire issues, coastal areas all over the world are flooding, inland areas are dealing with drought. It's definitely not just the US.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    Climate change is gonna be really expensive. Some people have tried to point this out.
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      The problem is liability, to an extent; if you imagine a perfect market system, then maybe it would fix climate change; the parties responsible would be on the hook to pay for their externalities, so would be incentivised to stop producing them. In the real world, ah, not so much, though I do wonder if we'll see insurers/reinsurers attempting to sue big CO2 emitters in the near future.
- mossTechnician 2y ago
  "Pakistan floods: One third of country is under water - minister" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62712301 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62712301
  - atlintots 2y ago
    Pakistan mentioned! Let's go!!
gibsonf1 2y ago
A key issue in the LA fires was bad management at all levels of government that could have prevented an order of magnitude of the damage (If procedures from the past were followed).
- vantassell 2y ago
  You’re a fire management expert? What did LA do wrong?
  - gibsonf1 2y ago
    1. Santa Ynez Reservoir right above Palisades was empty for the past year, depriving fire hydrants of water. (State incompetence) 2. La City defunded fire department removing 100 fire trucks from service due to maintenance. (City Incompetence) 3 Severe fire warnings reported days in advance of the fire. Rather than take precautions and position fire trucks and equipment etc as was done in the past, the Mayor flew off to Ghana. (City Incompetence, Fire Department incompetence (but partly because of cut budget) 4. Forest maintenance has been stopped. (State incompetence) Competent management is needed or even worse can be expected in future.
    - electrondood 2y ago
      re: point #1, the fire command team captain himself refuted this disinformation in an interview with Musk. I don't know about the other three offhand, but it's absurd to claim that state and local governments in California are somehow not taking fire risk seriously. Do you seriously think that the state that has annual wildfire season just happens to be "incompetent" when it comes to preparing for wildfires?
      - gibsonf1 2y ago
        How does the statement of "not taking fire risk seriously" explain the fact that the Santa Ynez Reservoir was and still is empty, and is a primary uphill source of water for those fire hydrants, or that the mayor defunded the fire department and left for Ghana after getting extreme fire danger warnings?[1] Because Santa Ynez was empty (for the past year), water was supplied from downhill water sources and the pressure needed dropped off to the point there was no longer any water out of the hydrants. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pacific+Palisades,+Los+Angeles,+CA/@34.0722353,-118.5697901,441m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x80c2a37a08897a89:0x4f7c6b3e45e83223!8m2!3d34.0467365!4d-118.546434!16zL20vMDI3bDRx?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDExNC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pacific+Palisades,+Los+Ang...
mtalantikite 2y ago
One thing I haven't seen mentioned in here is the ornamental planting of non-native plants all over LA, like eucalyptus which is highly flammable, as opposed to the native coastal oak, which is not. All those iconic, non-native palm trees are fire hazards.
- doug_durham 2y ago
  That's because that wasn't a material effect in this situation. It was hurricane force winds blowing over native shrubs and scrub land. It wasn't forests of eucalyptus that caused this. California has a decades long effort to restore native plants in areas. Eucalyptus groves are being torn out. The problem is that the native shrubs and grass are pretty flammable. They evolved to burn and regrow. They aren't resistant.
  - mtalantikite 2y ago
    For sure, they're not fireproof of course, but they do survive and seem to be more resistant than non-native species [1]. And, like all things, of course there are many interdependent pieces in play, like those hurricane force winds, but oak trees don't burn the same as a palm [2]. I just keep seeing that viral video of a firefighter trying to put out a palm while a guy escaped his house on a bike -- it was shedding embers like crazy. [3] [1] pdf warning: https://www.fs.usda.gov/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr217/psw_gtr217_551.pdf https://www.fs.usda.gov/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr21... [2] https://abcnews.go.com/US/elderly-couple-battles-flames-la-fires-saves-home/story?id=117703132 https://abcnews.go.com/US/elderly-couple-battles-flames-la-f... [3] https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california-wildfires/palisades-fire-evacuations-bicycle/3597584/ https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california-wildfires/pali...
jollyllama 2y ago
Meh, couple this with articles about drone inspection of roofs and properties, and the trend of insurance getting harder to come by emerges.
snakeyjake 2y ago
>don't live on a hurricane highway nor build houses made from firewood in an area prone to wildfires Fireproof concrete bunkers would be worse for insurance because when the firestorm blows through and shatters the 7-centimeter windows slits your fireproof design calls for and ignites the interior you have to demolish steel reinforced concrete with machinery instead of knocking down wood with a sledgehammer and muscles. A Caterpillar D9 is more expensive per day than a migrant laborer. There are so many images of concrete buildings being burned out that if I search "california fires" the 9th image is of a steel-reinforced concrete building has ~10 meter fire jets blowing out one of its windows.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
trgn 2y ago
pretty much any area can get flooded though by freak rainfall
hintymad 2y ago
Do we know why the insurance companies can't simply raise the insurance price to match the risks in those areas that are prone to natural disasters? I mean in general, not as in California where the government imposes strange policies. Speaking of the policy, why wouldn't California allow the insurance company raise the premium by region? Doesn't such policy benefit the rich at the cost of the poor as the rich love to live by the hills, lakes, or beaches, which is very much against the ideology of California?
- KerrAvon 2y ago
  It's more complicated than that, as always. Here's some (incomplete) background on Florida: https://www.civilbeat.org/2024/03/how-floridas-home-insurance-market-became-so-dysfunctional-so-fast/ https://www.civilbeat.org/2024/03/how-floridas-home-insuranc... Re: California, I don't understand the context for your question, or why you would think the California government is more strange than any other US state government. There's no universally-accepted "ideology of California." It's a big state with a huge, diverse population. tl;dr, though: California does allow insurers to do that, but is using currently an antiquated set of rules that don't allow for modern risk management approaches. It's been rewriting those rules recently to fix this; I think the new rules are supposed to be in effect starting this year.
  - happyopossum 2y ago
    > There's no universally-accepted "ideology of California." It's a big state with a huge, diverse population. Population is diverse and large, yes, but the state government (including the insurance commissioner) is radically biased left/progressive and has been for decades.
  - dlcarrier 2y ago
    California's insurance policies are more strange, due to proposition 103, passed in 1988. It creates a condition where the state can prohibit insurers from selling to residents, if it doesn't like their prices, which has recently lead to a lot of insurers no longer selling in the state, as construction prices in the state have risen significantly faster than inflation, leading to insurance premiums that the state doesn't like. Residents who no longer have any insurers available can buy insurance from the state, but its far more expensive than the plans it rejected from private insurers.
hedora 2y ago
You also have to exclude areas that are now in flood planes (most cities), subject to freezing when the infrastructure can’t handle it (all of Texas), tornado prone (everywhere in the US(?)), and consider that the wildfire risk area for the US has expanded dramatically in the last few years. For example, there was a red flag warning that ran from Colorado to Texas at the beginning of this month.
- Matticus_Rex 2y ago
  Parts of many cities have always been in floodplains, but after just looking it up, it does not seem that "most cities" are meaningfully in floodplains. This also does not automatically make even the parts within a floodplain uninsurable, depending on the circumstances. Likewise, the level of infrastructure, tornado, and wildfire risk for the vast majority of the country is not sufficient for them to be uninsurable. "Occasionally a tornado comes through and gets 1 out of 10k houses" is not even a huge pressure on insurance prices. An
HumblyTossed 2y ago
As for the hurricanes, stop allowing builders to build SFH in areas that are at or below sea level. They're going to flood. Period. That's not sustainable from an insurance perspective.
deaddodo 2y ago
> nor build houses made from firewood in an area prone to wildfires. The alternative is to build quadruple-the-price houses out of brick in an area prone to earthquakes. It's much easier to repair/replace the former. And theoretically would be easier to avoid, if the fed would clean up the brush wood in their land (or give it back to the state, so they can manage it).
lezojeda 2y ago
[dead]
secretsatan 2y ago
If you limit the range of disasters to US ones, maybe, but flooding is a big issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_European_floods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_European_floods Coming from the UK, increased flooding has been an issue for 20+ years and still it's a bit taboo to maybe say it's climate change to older generations
Ferret7446 2y ago
I mean, the answer is obviously no as long as you allow insurance prices to rise accordingly. Insurance is always possible if you pay the right price for the given level of risk/cost; if you can't afford the insurance, you can't afford the risk.

etchalon 2y ago

We're bad at so very many things while thinking we're the best at everything.

anonymou2 2y ago
don't worry, pretty soon you're gonna be great...

nejsjsjsbsb 2y ago

Climate change enters the chat...

adrianN 2y ago
Even pessimistic scenarios don't predict threats to buildings (other than war, which to my knowledge never was insurable) in most areas of the world.
- agsnu 2y ago
  A significant portion of human structures are located close to the coast (seaborne trade having been a huge enabler of economic development for a few hundred years) and are exposed to flooding from rising sea levels, or built in valleys that are increasingly at risk from flooding due to far-above-long-term-historic-norms precipitation runoff (higher atmospheric temps lead to more energy in weather systems; see eg massive floods in Europe in the past few years).
  - adrianN 2y ago
    Compared to the other challenges climate change poses those are fairly simple engineering problems. The Netherlands manage fine with large parts of the country below sea level.
    - graemep 2y ago
      and sea level rises are slow enough that countries with more high ground than The Netherlands can just not rebuild/maintain old houses in vulnerable positions and build higher (often just a bit further in) instead. Some buildings buy the coast (especially in port cities) and have steep rises anyway. There is a huge threat of cultural loss - e.g. Venice.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      A few critical ingredients being: no denialism about their vulnerability, strong social and economic commitment to reducing vulnerability, lack of reflexively blaming floods on illegal immigrants or trans people
      - mrguyorama 2y ago
        Also they don't blame the climate or weather on democrats there.
        llamaimperative 2y ago
        I forgot that one! The Dems controlling the weather. Big one!
    - jyounker 2y ago
      The Netherlands has been planning for the impacts of sea-level rise for decades now. At least twenty years ago the government broached the idea (with TV commercials) that they were going to have to abandon some are areas to the sea.
    - avianlyric 2y ago
- CalRobert 2y ago
  Seems like having the ocean at your door would be bad for the structure? Or burning down in a hot dry period…
  - adrianN 2y ago
    Why would a city like London or Paris burn down in a hot dry period?
    - snacksmcgee 2y ago
      You're refuting a lot of established facts about the risks of climate change, in a way that seems indicative of a certain ideology. Can you explain more what your position is?
      - adrianN 2y ago
        My position is that climate change is an existential threat to civilization, but buildings are not at a risk that would make them uninsurable. We build cities both in very wet and very hot and dry climates without much trouble. Those are engineering problems we can solve without much trouble.
        llamaimperative 2y ago
        But with lots more money, which is what insurance deals with Of course they’re insurable at some premium. The question is whether there is any premium someone is willing to pay that can also cover the risk.
        notabee 2y ago
        It's also a social coordination problem. For example a neighborhood where all the homes have to be fire resistant is going to fare a lot better, and probably be cheaper for the individual home owners to build and insure, than the one fire-resistant home in a neighborhood of tinder boxes. I don't think the prognosis is good for the U.S. in that regard. We have very little social cohesion and a lot of parties interested in making the situation worse for their own benefit.
- swiftcoder 2y ago
  I don't know about that. The Iberian peninsula is not historically at much risk for natural disasters, and we now suffer alternating forest fires and floods pretty much every year...
  - lores 2y ago
    I remember forest fires yearly in northern Spain in the 80s. Are they more violent now?
    - nejsjsjsbsb 2y ago
      Climate change deals frequency, rather than novelty. Oh and as crypto bros like to say: we're early.
    - swiftcoder 2y ago
      Mostly they seem to have planted a lot more Eucalyptus, which makes the fires worse. The severe floods on the other hand seem to be catching everyone by surprise.
- nejsjsjsbsb 2y ago
  Except for Fire?
- helboi4 2y ago
  [flagged]
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > Even pessimistic scenarios don't predict threats to buildings Floods, storms, droughts, fire? They appear to be getting worse. More restrictive codes designed for better fireproofing buildings, for instance, can solve a number of problems in California in fire prone areas. Another thing that has a political solution is forest management. Lack of water can be solved by desalination, which becomes an energy problem rather than a water one. Very dry areas can benefit from solar panels because they reduce water loss from evaporation, thus reducing the pressure on water supplies. It is expensive, but that's another problem.
- notabee 2y ago
  That's not really true. The introduction of so much extra energy into the atmosphere is going to make weather extremes worse all over the world, and harder to predict as historical models become less relevant. Large scale pattern changes like the AMOC shutting down are going to completely change many local weather patterns so that e.g. places that have little history of tornados will start having them, or places that used to be too wet for wildfires will suddenly experience them in extreme drought conditions. Despite scientists' best efforts, we're running a global experiment with no control group and predictions will only become more difficult the harder we push the system into a new state.
jeffhuys 2y ago
Pole drift.
- defrost 2y ago
  Magnetic, rotational, geodetic .. ? What are you trying to say?
  - falcor84 2y ago
    Can there even be geodetic drift of the poles? I sort of assumed that our lat/lon system is based on the poles being fixed points as a matter of definition.
    - defrost 2y ago
      Each ellipsoid is rigidly defined (well, some historic ones are sloppy), so WGS84 won't drift .. (that's a bold statement, is it true down to the micron and if so what are the absolute* datums to reference against?). That said, there are literally hundreds of historic pre WGS84 ellipsoid|datum pairings, each with a somewhat different "survey map pole". Historically geodectic poles have shifted as a function of datums. The main point here, such as it is, was to poke at the infomation free aspect of "polar drift" as a comment .. which pole and what does that have to do with climate change? etc.
      - avianlyric 2y ago
        We still use many of those old ellipsis and datum’s today. When you’re doing human things, like surveying land, and defining property boundaries. It’s nice to work with a coordinate system which remains fixed relative to the area you’re surveying, and doesn’t drift due to annoying things like tectonic movement, or your entire country slowly tipping into the ocean.
        defrost 2y ago
        FWiW I'm old enough to have navigated via LORAN and travelled through over two thirds of the 190+ countries on the planet tying in multitudes of old datums to the "new" WGS84 standard as part of a career in geophysical surveying (Gravimetrics, tides, magnetics, radiometrics, EM, etc.) I'm not old enough to have seen Great Britain and relate isles pressed down by the weight of kilometres of ice though .. that'd be a great great great grand something that saw that.
ekianjo 2y ago
Still waiting for the water to flood New York...
- fragmede 2y ago
  Hurricane Ida in 2019 brought torrential rains which flooded the city, especially the subway.
  - ekianjo 2y ago
    Torrential rain has nothing to do with sea rising which is the topic discussed at hand. You can have torrential rains anywhere in the world not just on the coastline.
- jyounker 2y ago
  That happened six years ago: https://www.businessinsider.com/severe-rainfall-hits-new-york-city-leaving-thousands-without-power-2019-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/severe-rainfall-hits-new-yor...
  - Macha 2y ago
    And last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxqswOkZMSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxqswOkZMSI
- randerson 2y ago
  Hurricane Sandy flooded big parts of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. I have friends who couldn't go back to their apartments or offices for months afterwards.
topspin 2y ago
How did climate change cause vast neighborhoods of single-family wooden mcmansions to be constructed with ~3 meters of separation?

HacklesRaised 2y ago

To be fair we are talking about an area of the country that is prone to seismic activity, it does limit the building materials. Perhaps what should be more commonly accepted is that the US is a land of great natural beauty! And large tracts of it should be left to nature. What's the average monthly leccy bill in Phoenix during the summer? $400? Where does LA get most of its water? Local sources? I don't think that's the case. New Orleans is a future Atlantis. San Francisco is a city built by Monty Python. Don't build it there it'll fall down, but I built it anyway, and it fell down, so I built it again...

simianparrot 2y ago
> To be fair we are talking about an area of the country that is prone to seismic activity, it does limit the building materials. Japan comes to mind as a country that's solved this. > Where does LA get most of its water? Local sources? I don't think that's the case. Relevant: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-10/as-flames-raged-in-palisades-a-key-reservoir-nearby-was-offline https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-10/as-flame...
- niemandhier 2y ago
  Sure Japan did it, so did Mexico. The latter is probably much more important as an example for the US. https://www.preventionweb.net/news/not-drill-how-1985-disaster-taught-mexico-prepare-earthquakes https://www.preventionweb.net/news/not-drill-how-1985-disast...
  - galangalalgol 2y ago
    Many of the gouses burning weren't built to current codes, but the cost to retrofit houses to code was insurmountable by any of the owners and apparently by the state or even the nation. So they will just wait for them all to burn and then rebuild them I guess?
  - forgotmysn 2y ago
    Mexico is in the middle of a crippling drought

ReptileMan 2y ago

[flagged]

9dev 2y ago
was that understanding formed by Fox News, perhaps?
- throwup238 2y ago
  Rush Limbaugh zombie in a polkadot dress.
- ReptileMan 2y ago
  Didn't know that fox news was in charge of forestry in LA.
  - 9dev 2y ago
    Nope. Last time I checked, they were in the business of spewing hate and misinformation (sorry: Alternative facts), undermining any sensible discussion. Accusing thousands of people of being incompetent is more telling of you than them.
    - ReptileMan 2y ago
      >Accusing thousands of people of being incompetent is more telling of you than them. Not me. Facts on the ground do it. Honest question - if I wish upon you every medical professional from now on that treats you and your family to be as competent as the part of the administrative state that is responsible for wild fire management and prevention in LA - will you take that as a blessing or a curse?

Over2Chars 2y ago

I would assume that earthquake insurance in japan is a reasonable model for "world insurance". It looks like it's a reinsurance program: https://www.mof.go.jp/english/policy/financial_system/earthquake_insurance/outline_of_earthquake_insurance.html https://www.mof.go.jp/english/policy/financial_system/earthq... So, I think the answer is "no".

tzs 2y ago
Japan is probably not a good comparison for home insurance because houses in Japan typically only have a 20 to 30 year lifespan. After that they are usually torn down and a new house is built.
- Over2Chars 2y ago
  Its a country built on seismically active volcanoes. If there's earthquake insurance in japan, it should be do-able. "In and around Japan, one-tenth of earthquakes in the world occur. " https://geoscienceletters.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40562-017-0069-4 https://geoscienceletters.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/...
  - klodolph 2y ago
    Home values in Japan are somewhat anomalous. There are some good policies that contribute to this, but also other factors that make me reluctant to generalize from Japan. It’s a country with declining natural population, where houses are assets that rapidly decline in value to the point where they’re nearly worthless not that long after you buy them. Average home age in Japan is 30 years. I think, maybe once or twice, I’ve lived in a building less than 30 years old in the US. I’ve spent most of my life in buildings built pre-war. There aren’t so many pre-war buildings in Japan, but the US takes the blame for that one :-(
    - Over2Chars 2y ago
      The topic was "is the world becoming uninsurable?" with some climate-panic being implied, oh gosh. If a country with 1/10th of the worlds seismic activity can have (earthquake) insurance, then well dammit, I think it can be done. Insurance, afaict, is just gambling, and well darnit you can gamble on anything. The odds might be terrible, but there's ways of hedging your bets I've heard. I am not a gambler.

epolanski 2y ago

I'm always baffled at the fact that Americans don't build houses out of bricks. I read those arguments of the advantages this method has, especially financial ones, but to me it's nonsense considering that it would prevent an endless number of problems that cause the total loss. I still remember when New Orleans was hit with by Katrina, large parts of the suburbs where houses where made by wood and plastic where destroyed, yet downtown where buildings where made of bricks required maintenance, sometimes little of it, but none faced a total loss.

throwup238 2y ago
The entire west coast sits on top of a fault line. That’s why people don’t build with brick here. There’s plenty of brick buildings on the east coast (and on the west coast like in Oregon, but they have to be seismically retrofitted which is expensive).
- j16sdiz 2y ago
  It works for Taiwan and Japan
  - bane 2y ago
    Japanese houses aren't built with brick.
  - grvdrm 2y ago
    Is that brick or is it reinforced masonry?
    - CharlieDigital 2y ago
      Both. Older single story tends to be brick. Newer multistory is typically cast in place with rebar reinforcement from what I can tell. In the countryside, you might find more masonry block construction, but not in dense urban areas like Taipei and Taichung where the norm is to build up. Most "single family homes" are what we would consider very large condos in the US.

infecto 2y ago

Honest question. Why when people describe wood framed homes do they always phrase it like houses made from "firewood", "sticks", "twigs" etc? It at least for me always detracts from the argument at hand. You could just as easily build a wood framed home with an exterior shell that is fire resistant using modern materials or brick.

ajsnigrutin 2y ago
Some of us live in reinforced concrete socialist-built apartment buildings, and our homes don't burn like american houses do. Same for single family houses made from brics and cement (most houses here) Same for eg. gas explosions, this is one one looks like in us: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230812191220-02-pennsylvania-deadly-house-fire-explosion-081223.jpg?q=w_1110,c_fill/f_webp https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/23081219122... And this is one over here: https://www.prlekija-on.net/uploaded/2018_11/eksplozija-plina-v-mariboru_7708089630.jpg https://www.prlekija-on.net/uploaded/2018_11/eksplozija-plin... Same for eg floods, pump the basements and ground levels, repaint, move stuff back in. Someone from US I work with on a project had a pipe burst while on vacation, and insurance wrote off their whole house, because of a few days of water. I mean, sure, you could that, but looking at the photos from fire-affected areas, nobody did that, it's all burnt to the ground.
- infecto 2y ago
  I think you missed the point. Its the same as me asking about the drab prisons you live in. Not to mention your cherry picked examples don't really hold up. A 2500sqft home filled with natural gas has a different explosive potential than a small apartment. I am also not sure it makes sense to build homes expecting for a natural gas explosion, not even a measurable risk. You can absolutely build a home that is fire resistant which most modern homes in fire risk areas are.
  - tossandthrow 2y ago
    A lot of people do, in fact, talk like that about eastern european homes (them selves included).

netdevphoenix 2y ago

I hope you don't get downvoted for stating the obvious. This tendency of equating the US to the world happens so frequently and it is 99% a non-US person pointing it out.

api 2y ago

There were houses that survived recent wildfires because they were built to be in a fire zone and survive fires. I’m sure there was damage but nowhere near total loss. I’m sure when homes are rebuilt the majority will not be fire resistant. It’s possible to build for hurricanes and floods too but few do it. They build houses that get blown away and then tap insurance. Insurance rates for properties not built to withstand the stresses of their environment will go up.

briffle 2y ago
we had a huge wildfire in my area in 2021 that burned through a few small towns. In one town, the only houses that survived where the ones that followed the guides out there for creating defensible space. They were also newer homes, which is obviously easier then retro-fitting an existing home, but the town got rebuilt essentially the same as it was, which is kind of sad to see. https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_marshall-fire-mat-homeowners-guide-defensible-space.pdf https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_mars...
- api 2y ago
  We don't do this in e.g. aviation, where after every crash we study it and make changes if possible. Not sure why we don't seem to care in housing.
lern_too_spel 2y ago
> I’m sure when homes are rebuilt the majority will not be fire resistant They are required to be: https://heatmap.news/climate/california-wildfire-building-code https://heatmap.news/climate/california-wildfire-building-co... The problem is that in many desirable places to live in California, many houses are very old and are not compliant with the latest building codes.

chillfox 2y ago

It’s possible that solve the hurricane problems with proper building regulations and lower the risk of huge wildfires with controlled burning. But the US as always prefers to pretend that there’s nothing to be done when other parts of the world has figured it out. We have cyclones here similar to the hurricanes in the US and usually it just blows over some trees maybe causes a power outage. The absolute worst I have experienced was 3 days without power. I have never seen a house destroyed by a cyclone here. As for wildfires, they do unfortunately claim a few houses most years.

skywhopper 2y ago
Where is “here”? Are you sure you aren’t confusing hurricanes and tornados? Hurricanes rarely destroy houses in the US, either.
- chillfox 2y ago
  Good to know. The news always seems to find footage of destroyed suburbs whenever the US is hit by a big one.
- alistairSH 2y ago
  How are you making this claim? Every time a hurricane hits Florida, there are photos of entire neighborhoods devastated by wind and storm surge. How many people were permanently displaced by Katrine? Etc. Maybe many of the homes weren't technically "destroyed", but each storm brings millions or billions in damage.
  - tetromino_ 2y ago
    Hurricanes usually don't affect the structure of a house. They might damage the roof, parts of exterior cladding, perhaps windows, and the flooding which accompanies hurricanes destroys personal possessions, interior furnishing, electrical wiring, and appliances. In the US, manual labor is very expensive, home construction or repair is highly regulated and requires permits and multiple inspections from the local government, and the amount of flood-destroyable stuff - material possessions, furnishings, appliances - in a typical home is massive. As a result, a cyclone which a poorer country would survive with a shrug in the US becomes an extremely expensive disaster.

rsynnott 2y ago

America isn't the only place having an uptick in extreme weather events, though.

tedivm 2y ago
Spain just had the worst flooding ever, Australia has massive wildfire issues, coastal areas all over the world are flooding, inland areas are dealing with drought. It's definitely not just the US.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  Climate change is gonna be really expensive. Some people have tried to point this out.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    The problem is liability, to an extent; if you imagine a perfect market system, then maybe it would fix climate change; the parties responsible would be on the hook to pay for their externalities, so would be incentivised to stop producing them. In the real world, ah, not so much, though I do wonder if we'll see insurers/reinsurers attempting to sue big CO2 emitters in the near future.
mossTechnician 2y ago
"Pakistan floods: One third of country is under water - minister" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62712301 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62712301
- atlintots 2y ago
  Pakistan mentioned! Let's go!!

gibsonf1 2y ago

A key issue in the LA fires was bad management at all levels of government that could have prevented an order of magnitude of the damage (If procedures from the past were followed).

vantassell 2y ago
You’re a fire management expert? What did LA do wrong?
- gibsonf1 2y ago
  1. Santa Ynez Reservoir right above Palisades was empty for the past year, depriving fire hydrants of water. (State incompetence) 2. La City defunded fire department removing 100 fire trucks from service due to maintenance. (City Incompetence) 3 Severe fire warnings reported days in advance of the fire. Rather than take precautions and position fire trucks and equipment etc as was done in the past, the Mayor flew off to Ghana. (City Incompetence, Fire Department incompetence (but partly because of cut budget) 4. Forest maintenance has been stopped. (State incompetence) Competent management is needed or even worse can be expected in future.
  - electrondood 2y ago
    re: point #1, the fire command team captain himself refuted this disinformation in an interview with Musk. I don't know about the other three offhand, but it's absurd to claim that state and local governments in California are somehow not taking fire risk seriously. Do you seriously think that the state that has annual wildfire season just happens to be "incompetent" when it comes to preparing for wildfires?
    - gibsonf1 2y ago
      How does the statement of "not taking fire risk seriously" explain the fact that the Santa Ynez Reservoir was and still is empty, and is a primary uphill source of water for those fire hydrants, or that the mayor defunded the fire department and left for Ghana after getting extreme fire danger warnings?[1] Because Santa Ynez was empty (for the past year), water was supplied from downhill water sources and the pressure needed dropped off to the point there was no longer any water out of the hydrants. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pacific+Palisades,+Los+Angeles,+CA/@34.0722353,-118.5697901,441m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x80c2a37a08897a89:0x4f7c6b3e45e83223!8m2!3d34.0467365!4d-118.546434!16zL20vMDI3bDRx?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDExNC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pacific+Palisades,+Los+Ang...

mtalantikite 2y ago

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in here is the ornamental planting of non-native plants all over LA, like eucalyptus which is highly flammable, as opposed to the native coastal oak, which is not. All those iconic, non-native palm trees are fire hazards.

doug_durham 2y ago
That's because that wasn't a material effect in this situation. It was hurricane force winds blowing over native shrubs and scrub land. It wasn't forests of eucalyptus that caused this. California has a decades long effort to restore native plants in areas. Eucalyptus groves are being torn out. The problem is that the native shrubs and grass are pretty flammable. They evolved to burn and regrow. They aren't resistant.
- mtalantikite 2y ago
  For sure, they're not fireproof of course, but they do survive and seem to be more resistant than non-native species [1]. And, like all things, of course there are many interdependent pieces in play, like those hurricane force winds, but oak trees don't burn the same as a palm [2]. I just keep seeing that viral video of a firefighter trying to put out a palm while a guy escaped his house on a bike -- it was shedding embers like crazy. [3] [1] pdf warning: https://www.fs.usda.gov/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr217/psw_gtr217_551.pdf https://www.fs.usda.gov/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr21... [2] https://abcnews.go.com/US/elderly-couple-battles-flames-la-fires-saves-home/story?id=117703132 https://abcnews.go.com/US/elderly-couple-battles-flames-la-f... [3] https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california-wildfires/palisades-fire-evacuations-bicycle/3597584/ https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california-wildfires/pali...

jollyllama 2y ago

Meh, couple this with articles about drone inspection of roofs and properties, and the trend of insurance getting harder to come by emerges.

snakeyjake 2y ago

>don't live on a hurricane highway nor build houses made from firewood in an area prone to wildfires Fireproof concrete bunkers would be worse for insurance because when the firestorm blows through and shatters the 7-centimeter windows slits your fireproof design calls for and ignites the interior you have to demolish steel reinforced concrete with machinery instead of knocking down wood with a sledgehammer and muscles. A Caterpillar D9 is more expensive per day than a migrant laborer. There are so many images of concrete buildings being burned out that if I search "california fires" the 9th image is of a steel-reinforced concrete building has ~10 meter fire jets blowing out one of its windows.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

trgn 2y ago

pretty much any area can get flooded though by freak rainfall

hintymad 2y ago

Do we know why the insurance companies can't simply raise the insurance price to match the risks in those areas that are prone to natural disasters? I mean in general, not as in California where the government imposes strange policies. Speaking of the policy, why wouldn't California allow the insurance company raise the premium by region? Doesn't such policy benefit the rich at the cost of the poor as the rich love to live by the hills, lakes, or beaches, which is very much against the ideology of California?

KerrAvon 2y ago
It's more complicated than that, as always. Here's some (incomplete) background on Florida: https://www.civilbeat.org/2024/03/how-floridas-home-insurance-market-became-so-dysfunctional-so-fast/ https://www.civilbeat.org/2024/03/how-floridas-home-insuranc... Re: California, I don't understand the context for your question, or why you would think the California government is more strange than any other US state government. There's no universally-accepted "ideology of California." It's a big state with a huge, diverse population. tl;dr, though: California does allow insurers to do that, but is using currently an antiquated set of rules that don't allow for modern risk management approaches. It's been rewriting those rules recently to fix this; I think the new rules are supposed to be in effect starting this year.
- happyopossum 2y ago
  > There's no universally-accepted "ideology of California." It's a big state with a huge, diverse population. Population is diverse and large, yes, but the state government (including the insurance commissioner) is radically biased left/progressive and has been for decades.
- dlcarrier 2y ago
  California's insurance policies are more strange, due to proposition 103, passed in 1988. It creates a condition where the state can prohibit insurers from selling to residents, if it doesn't like their prices, which has recently lead to a lot of insurers no longer selling in the state, as construction prices in the state have risen significantly faster than inflation, leading to insurance premiums that the state doesn't like. Residents who no longer have any insurers available can buy insurance from the state, but its far more expensive than the plans it rejected from private insurers.

hedora 2y ago

You also have to exclude areas that are now in flood planes (most cities), subject to freezing when the infrastructure can’t handle it (all of Texas), tornado prone (everywhere in the US(?)), and consider that the wildfire risk area for the US has expanded dramatically in the last few years. For example, there was a red flag warning that ran from Colorado to Texas at the beginning of this month.

Matticus_Rex 2y ago
Parts of many cities have always been in floodplains, but after just looking it up, it does not seem that "most cities" are meaningfully in floodplains. This also does not automatically make even the parts within a floodplain uninsurable, depending on the circumstances. Likewise, the level of infrastructure, tornado, and wildfire risk for the vast majority of the country is not sufficient for them to be uninsurable. "Occasionally a tornado comes through and gets 1 out of 10k houses" is not even a huge pressure on insurance prices. An

HumblyTossed 2y ago

As for the hurricanes, stop allowing builders to build SFH in areas that are at or below sea level. They're going to flood. Period. That's not sustainable from an insurance perspective.

deaddodo 2y ago

> nor build houses made from firewood in an area prone to wildfires. The alternative is to build quadruple-the-price houses out of brick in an area prone to earthquakes. It's much easier to repair/replace the former. And theoretically would be easier to avoid, if the fed would clean up the brush wood in their land (or give it back to the state, so they can manage it).

lezojeda 2y ago

[dead]

secretsatan 2y ago

If you limit the range of disasters to US ones, maybe, but flooding is a big issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_European_floods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_European_floods Coming from the UK, increased flooding has been an issue for 20+ years and still it's a bit taboo to maybe say it's climate change to older generations

Ferret7446 2y ago

I mean, the answer is obviously no as long as you allow insurance prices to rise accordingly. Insurance is always possible if you pay the right price for the given level of risk/cost; if you can't afford the insurance, you can't afford the risk.