[ExI] stormy year

[spike at rainier66.com]

...> On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson via extropy-chat
Cc: Kelly Anderson <postmowoods at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] stormy year

>...I've often thought that insurance should pay to replace your hurricane destroyed house at a new safer location, paid for by the insurance company, but if rebuilt at the same location, insurance would no longer be offered beyond the single rebuild...

Kelly you can buy insurance with any contractual agreement you want.

>...Is there a big downside to this plan? Other than the obvious that people want to keep living in the same stupid places.

-Kelly

Ja to all, but keep in mind that the individual property has a very low risk of ever seeing storm damage.  We heard of a Florida hurricane where a storm surge flooded a bunch of houses, but the risk of that happening to a particular coastal property is very low, perhaps 1%.  So... OK insure against that risk, be done with it.

Alternative: the house where I misspent my childhood in Florida was at elevation 9 ft above sea level.  Knowing the risk of storm surge, the builders figured out a way to build the home to where there was little damage to the home if the water came up to knee level.  They were made of cinder block and the floors were polished concrete (terrazzo) and the utilities were up at about waist height (which looks a little strange but is convenient in a way.)  So if a storm surge came, the furniture would be destroyed of course, but the house itself was good to go after the residents swept out the debris from the receding flood waters.  We were only flooded there once in 1964.  Our house was dry but the neighbor's house in back had about ankle deep waters.  No worries, clean it out, next day it was fine.

spike