Emergencies and Fema

I ran across this article this AM about a family whose house was destroyed in an earthquake. With no quake coverage they still are homeless with a mortgage to pay. Something like 90% of California homeowners do not having quake insurance. Here in Florida there are many hurricanes. FEMA will come in and help get roads open and power and water restored. If a storm surge wipes you out, unless you have flood insurance you are on your own. talking with neighbors, even though we are far inland, most don't have flood insurance. Yet the rain can really come down and palm fronds and debris can clog storm sewers.

Average personal disaster assistance (article from 2016) outlines what people received from fema after prior big disasters, with the average being just a few thousand dollars.

Have you thought about the disasters that can befall your area?.

I have two residential properties here.

Mountain: my main residence, halfway up the top of the tallest mountain for many miles.

Ocean: Two homes there on the shore, one my mother is living in, the other cottage on that property my sister and her partner live in.

Shared dangers:

Earthquakes
Heavy storm damage (I've had 90mph winds up at the mountain house...)
Severely poor air quality from wildfires in Canada/WA/Oregon/Idaho
Volcanic eruptions (prevailing winds would save us most of the time from being buried in ash, but on a bad weather day...)
Asteroid impact

Mountain property-specific dangers:
Wildfire
Large trees falling over and crushing things even in non-high-wind events
Infrequent severe snow events

Ocean property-specific dangers:
Flooding from storm surge
Flooding from snowmelt and high rains in non-storm situations
Proximity to propane and gasoline storage facilites - have 3 times evacuated due to accidents at the fuel depot
Plane crash - property is very near our small airport
Oilspills from tanker traffic

Honestly, complete loss of both of our properties, while a blow to our assets, would not break us. We live in cheap-real-estate land.

When we were quite a bit younger and building our stash we did have earthquake insurance on our city house, but not all insurance companies provided it. St. Louis is on a major fault line. When we had multiple tiny houses that no one lived in and we used for garden spaces, we had “liability only” coverage on two of them because they were vacant. I didn’t want to lie to the insurance company and do a song and dance about coverage for vacant properties.

Here in .hermann tornadoes are probably our biggest threat from mother nature. Also probably the earthquake fault is near here. We are high on a hill, so lightning strikes and subsequent fire might be a threat. I can see backed up storm sewers causing flooding into our house.

I’m not terribly worried about any of it.

I have toyed with the idea having a winter house, a small one somewhere warmish, maybe in northern Florida or ?carolinas., possibly Jacksonville area. There are plenty of cute houses under $200,000 but of course I don’t know if the neighborhoods are decent. I would probably go with a “liability only” insurance in that situation and just take the risk.

Okay---Since those Supremes don't wanna do something about the student-debt trap them college kids fell into, I figure they should also rule that FEMA is unconstitional, as well. If you wanna move to the Gulf Coast, that's your business. But don't expect the gummint to bail you out, if you get swamped by one a the frequent storms they have. Tough luck. Bad move, on your part. Oh, well. Start over. Yup. But yeah---hope that places things in perspective. Thankk mee.

There was an article the other day in the Washington Post about Smith Island MD, located on the Chesapeake Bay, that is expected to be completely underwater within a century due to both climate change and sinking land. Average elevation is only 2 feet above sea level. The state offered to buy the residents out some years ago but they refused. Since then home sales there are surging and the residents have successfully lobbied for various government funding to try and stave off the likely end of the island's existence. That just isn't rational. Not even from a politician's perspective since there aren't enough voters there to sway any election unless it's incredibly closely contested.

https://wapo.st/3riVWkS

They definitely seem in denial in that article. Then there’s all the people crowding into FL.

Unless the New Madrid Fault goes off, tornadoes and winter weather are the disasters for the Midwest. And we don’t get winters like we used to.

We have a wildfire five miles from us which has been controlled, but not contained. It started July 4 (imagine that). That is our greatest risk as we've experienced more wildfires the past few years and it is thought to be our new norm. We are surrounded by conifer and mixed tree forest.

We also experience earthquakes and we know the Big One could come any time. So could any of the beautiful nearby peaks blow, but I made it thru St. Helen's unscathed. Just the ash was a mess.

Floods are also a regular in our area as we have many rivers & streams all over which swell with mountain runoff + relentless rain. Thankfully we live on a hill so not much flood worry unless roads are washed out.

I've lived in Florida (1 year) and I did love it for the most part. I was there during Charley, but rented an apartment and our city didn't have too much damage, just storm surge flooding and sand sucked up into town from the gulf. Cars being flooded was a real problem. Not sure if ins companies cover that messy, stinky, disabling damage or not.

I don't think I could live in a tornado-prone area. That scares me to death.

Kay, tornadoes are predictible. You know when they are coming. The lead time is not as long as hurricanes, of course, but still, you have some minutes to get to the basement south west corner.

When I was quite a bit younger, they used to scare me too, and I would gather all the pets and go down the basement when the rest of my family were still upstairs. But now I’m pretty casual about them.

New England is a great place to live as far as natural disasters go.