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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

(charleshughsmith.substack.com)
478 points spking | 2 comments | 17 Jan 25 00:32 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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MagicMoonlight ◴[17 Jan 25 06:12 UTC] No.42734580[source]▶
What are we betting that the Americans rebuild in wood again? It seems like they never learn. We had a single city fire like this 500 years ago and since then we haven’t… because we built the city back in brick instead of wood.
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jandrewrogers ◴[17 Jan 25 08:24 UTC] No.42735251[source]▶
Americans used to build cities with brick and masonry. They were repeatedly destroyed by strong earthquakes, as would happen to your city if subject to similarly severe earthquakes. Americans paid for that lesson in blood.

European houses are not designed to withstand American disasters. A brick house that can survive a M8.5 earthquake, which is the safety standard where I live, will be almost purely steel structurally and very expensive to build. The brick would be decorative, which can be (and is) done on a wood frame.

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1. throw310822 ◴[17 Jan 25 09:41 UTC] No.42735769[source]▶
The entire south and south-east of Europe has a similar seismic risk to most of California, and wooden houses are nowhere to be seen.
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2. fuzzfactor ◴[17 Jan 25 20:44 UTC] No.42743051[source]▶
In LA a lot of non-mansions were destroyed but plenty of them were modest to reduce overall cost initially because the area has always been expensive to build or live in, even for the original homes to be put up.

Then you have to consider how quickly development took place by comparison, and the collective degree of certainty among the original buyers on whether or not they would be able to afford to stay very long anyway.

So many come there just to give California a try since it's supposed to be the golden state, who are depending completely on the occurrence of good fortune within a limited amount of time before they would expect to return to states with less-expensive hometowns in mostly less fire-prone environments.

This would influence what kind of home they would expect to be suitable for their needs to begin with, and how long it might need to endure.