Key Takeaways:
- While earthquakes and flooding are never covered by regular home insurance, many other natural calamities are.
- In most cases, homeowners who wish to insure against earthquake and flood damage can add these types of coverage or buy them separately for a higher price.
- If the homeowner resides in a region that is highly vulnerable to natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes, some insurers will exclude certain natural disasters like those. In such a scenario, an additional or separate policy would be required to protect against these disasters.
With the exception of earthquakes and flooding, many typical natural calamities are covered by standard homes insurance. State by state and place by location in general, different natural disasters may be removed from the list. In order to be covered from some of these risks, high-risk and/or coastal properties might need to acquire standalone policies or supplementary coverages. A typical homes insurance policy would typically protect the homeowner against numerous natural catastrophes, including lightning, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and many more. While most natural disasters are covered, the specific natural catastrophes that fall under the purview of a house insurance policy can vary depending on the location and insurance provider. Furthermore, earthquakes and flooding are two natural disasters that are rarely covered.
What natural calamities does home insurance not cover?
Earthquakes, floods, sinkholes, landslides, and mudslides are generally not covered by homeowners’ insurance, if not always. These are expensive and somewhat frequent natural calamities. You might be able to add an endorsement to your policy to obtain coverage for one or more of these risks if you are concerned about being impacted by them. You can often buy stand-alone policies, which usually have large deductibles.
How can you obtain coverage for uninsured natural disasters?
In most cases, a homeowner can seek coverage through their state’s FAIR (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements) Programme, which is designed to give homeowners at high-risk insurance coverage, if their insurer excludes a specific natural disaster from their policy and does not offer coverage for that disaster as an endorsement or standalone policy. The National Flood Insurance Programme often offers flood insurance, which is frequently completely unavailable from commercial insurers.
What does this mean for you?
Most of the time, a normal house insurance policy will cover natural disasters; but, depending on the homeowner’s location, one or more natural disasters may be excluded. Two natural disasters that are always excluded are earthquakes and flooding. Homeowners can still obtain coverage in each of these situations to safeguard themselves against any prohibited natural disasters for an extra fee.
