Is the world becoming uninsurable?

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 destroyed, yet downtown where buildings where made of bricks required maintenance, sometimes little of it, but none faced a total loss.

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).

Building out of wood is cheap and perfectly strong for most areas.

Engineering is always a set of trade-offs.

I don't get how can one put his own future in a cheaply built building you're one fire or thougher-than-usual natural event away from losing.

It's normal nobody wants to insure such risky assets, especially as nominal value of this wooden crap is stellar due to the skewed demand/offer ratio plaguing good parts of US.

In my life I've seen my and my family's real estate being hit by a tree, fire, floodings and I've never had to face anything close to a total loss.

Huge expenses? Sure. But never anything close to a loss.

The only thing that could put my real estate on a serious risk are earthquakes, I guess that's a scenario where lighter built houses would have instead an advantage.

It works for Taiwan and Japan

Japanese houses aren't built with brick.

Is that brick or is it reinforced masonry?

Both. Older single story tends to be brick.

Newer multistory is typically cast in place with rebar reinforcement from what I can tell.

In the countryside, you might find more masonry block construction, but not in dense urban areas like Taipei and Taichung where the norm is to build up. Most "single family homes" are what we would consider very large condos in the US.

I never understood this. We build in Europe, over earthquake-risk zones, with bricks and steel and we follow rules to make them earthquake resistant. It is not a problem anymore since like the 1980. We now have also methods to make old and very old brick buildings earthquake resistant without demolishing them

Given the choice between earthquake-proof and fire-proof I'd go with earthquake-proof every single time since you can't run from an earthquake.

It works fine for commercial buildings and multi-family structures here too , there’s even a ton of brick buildings in Oregon (which are currently being retrofitted), but not as well for single family homes because of the cost.

There’s a lot of historical context to understand here. The neighborhood that just burned down in the Eaton fire (Altadena), was built up by African Americans and Latinos who were redlined out of Pasadena even after desegregation. Some of them built their houses on land that they bought for under $100 in the 1950s and 60s. They wouldn’t have been able to afford the kind of construction they’d need to be both earthquake and fire resistant. Their choice was between owning an old tinderbox or renting from slumlords.

Unreinforced masonry is illegal in most of California and extremely dangerous- every brick becomes a projectile in an earthquake.

Despite the news coverage, fires are extremely rare but nearly every home in these areas is guaranteed to face multiple massive earthquakes that would bring down a brick building.

Wood is way cheaper and more available at large scale here than in Europe.

What? What earthquake zone in Europe is similar to the fault lines in California? We are talking about entire cities wiped out by earthquakes just 120 years ago.

In cusco basin in Peru spanish colons realized their brick made building were falling down at every earthquake. They also realized incas building made of thin walls built on top of large stones that can move relative to each others during an earthquake were resisting much better. They then decided to reuse the foundations of incas buildings and put their brick build constructions on top of it to have earthquake resistant building.

Earthquake resistant constructions made of stones have been known for centuries by the incas and probably other civilizations without having building entirely made of wood, why can't californians?

I don’t know but do they have ~7.9 earthquakes like California? I’ll bet they were not multi story homes with vaulted ceilings, giant glass windows with tons of natural light, and efficient insulation?

Wood is extremely cheap, and extremely earthquake resistant… it is an appropriate material for the area despite a slightly higher fire risk.

They have had up to ~9.0Mw earthquakes in their history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Peru

You can also look at some states like Chiapas in Mexico. There are daily earthquakes in Tuxla. Last 8.2 was in 2017 in Tapachula. They typically live in small building made of mud bricks and stones. https://earthquakelist.org/mexico/chiapas/#all-latest-earthq...

It's mostly that there is virtually no one in America who knows how to build with concrete/bricks.

It’s not just the West coast, brick buildings are simply not common all throughout the US, in places fault lines don’t exist.

Southern Italy. I believe the rest of Europe is quite seismically stable.

Define "cheaply built". These houses are already hugely expensive, to the point that we cant even afford to build more.

If you built a home out of bricks in New Orleans it will sink. Same (and even worse) for Florida. You can mitigate that somewhat but it's extremely expensive and bad for the environment/water table/aquifer.

For reference, to make a non-sinking, heavy building in Florida you have to drill down into the limestone layer which is usually 100+ feet below the surface. Then you have to create very strong concrete caissons to hold the building up, standing on that limestone layer. It's very similar to if you were to build a structure out into the ocean (LOL).

In practice, it is probably impossible to innovate on housing materials in California- I doubt you could get a permit or insurance, which is a shame.

Plus, I and most people wouldn't personally want to buy a any type of stone or brick house- it would take a lot of evidence to convince me it was earthquake safe, and I'm not sure how one could produce such evidence. Resale value and demand would be very low for something unusual.

Wood houses in practice aren't a big problem. There is something like a 3% chance per century of a wood house burning down in California, and almost all of those are centered on specific locations that are known to be very high risk and can be avoided if desired.

In most cases you would escape safely and be covered by insurance (neither of which would be the case with a stone house in an earthquake). In California almost everyone has fire insurance, almost nobody can get earthquake insurance. Probably if a stone house was in a large fire, it would still be burned to bare walls and still be as unlivable and expensive to rebuild.

If I’m choosing building materials to try and resist disaster, I’d just go straight to making a monolithic dome.

There’s a plate boundary running under Morocco and across the Mediterranean, but it’s not nearly as active as the Pacific Rim, and it’s quite a long way from Northern Europe.

Bricks have to be manufactured and transported. In denser countries, the transportation cost is lower and there is a factory near you. In the US, you’re damn well sure you can find timber, the US is loaded with timber.

Brick also isn’t some magical building material that solves all your problems without drawbacks. Wood isn’t some evil building material that creates a bunch of problems without benefits.

5 hours of thought later, I am recalling that Greece is also seismically active.

This is less like "well, I could get the $10 pants and have to replace them in a few months, or the $70 pants and have them last a decade" sort of cheap, and more the "well, I've been saving a mortgage down-payment for 15 years in the top 30% of individual wage earners, and this is the best built house I can afford" kind.

The options are either pay more for this one thing than literally any other possession you or anyone you know will ever own, or live in a tent or worse.

I feel like criticizing people for pragmatism in the face of (literally) existential threats is some kind of next-level privilege.