Earlier quoted context omitted.
Climate change enters the chat...
Still waiting for the water to flood New York...
That happened six years ago: https://www.businessinsider.com/severe-rainfall-hits-new-yor...
Is the world becoming uninsurable?
441–450 of 1001 posts
Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?
#442Earlier quoted context omitted.
If people like them, they are not too big or too fancy.
It is if they cannot afford them. Most people would love far more than they can afford, but reality wins.
The problem with "people should aim lower" type arguments is eventually everyone is living in a tent.
Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?
#443American, 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.
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 dest…
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).
Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?
#444So let me try to put the author's argument in order: (1) The author tried to get homeowner's insurance, but was denied because their home was a significant hurricane risk (2) The author (maybe?) got insurance through a state-run FAIR program, but then cites news reports that these programs are close to insolvency (As are a significant amount of non-state-run homeowner insurance programs). (3) The author is like, "wel…
Makes sense to me. Good comprehension
Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?
#445Earlier quoted context omitted.
Resistant homes will pay nearly the same prices as everyone else. So the cinder block home owner is subsidizing the sticks houses. Same happens in autos. Monitored safe driving nets at most 10-20% discounts. Biggest factor is age, and even then, difference between 20yo and 35yo driver is 38%. There are no tricks or deals to insurance.
> Biggest factor is age, and even then, difference between 20yo and 35yo driver is 38%. That's because age is both observable and strongly predictive of risk.
Try and extend this logic to other highly correlative, immutable individual factors.
Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> What's the average monthly leccy bill in Phoenix during the summer? $400? The average high temperature in Phoenix in July is 106.5F (41.4C). If you are cooling to 70.0F (21.1C), that's a difference of 36.5F (20.3C). The average January low in Berlin is 28.0F (-2.2C). If you are heating to 65.0F (18.3C), that's a difference of 37.0F (20.5C). I feel like many people living in climates that don't require air condition…
This is such an interesting perspective that I've never thought about. Thanks!
Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I'm surprised that the damages of the LA fire occurred, because it was known beforehand that California had a fire problem (and also have an earthquake problem I think). I'm here in Eastern Europe and our buildings can withstand a lot of things. > we need to take action to mitigate their impact in the future. As a foreigner, it seems to me that Americans prioritize building cheap homes over constructing better…
The fire problem can be managed by burning or removing some of the dead wood, and building adequate water storage. Apparently California has been neglecting those two problems for decades.
The problem is the houses.
In lots of pictures from LA, there are green trees right beside burned out houses. The video in this NYT article is a great example: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/15/us/los-angeles-wildf...
One of the biggest problems are vents in the eves. Typically these vents have a single screen with a coarse mesh. Embers from fires easily pass through these vents, land on a surface, and start a fire.
Replacing the one coarse mesh with two or more layers of fine mesh significantly reduces the odds of an ember getting into the house.
This is a trivial improvement that dramatically increases survivability.
Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Recently there was a major public building collapse in Serbia: the porch of the Novi Sad railway station collapsed, killing 15 people. This has really focused attention on corruption and caused massive protests.)
What collapsed was the newly rebuilt part of the porch, not the old one built to those codes. It has nothing to do with insufficient building codes, hence a corruption scandal.
Not really. Old concrete cannopy collapsed. It was minimally modified as part of station reconstruction by adding some glass panels, but cannopy itself and its suspension beams were not rebuilt. It's not clear at this point whether this modification was responsible for collapse, but what is clear is that old cannopy and beams were not even inspected during this renovation. That's a major blunder which lead to loss of 15 lives, and main reason for that is systematic corruption where minimal work is performed while full price is billed by private companies close to rulling party.
Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?
#449Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?
#450American, 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.
We're bad at so very many things while thinking we're the best at everything.
don't worry, pretty soon you're gonna be great...