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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

(charleshughsmith.substack.com)
476 points spking | 1 comments | 17 Jan 25 00:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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Animats ◴[17 Jan 25 04:28 UTC] No.42734092[source]▶
Not uninsurable, but buildings are going to have to become tougher.

It's happened before. Chicago's reaction to the Great Fire was simple - no more building wooden houses. Chicago went all brick. Still is, mostly.

The trouble is, brick isn't earthquake resistant. Not without steel reinforcement.

I live in a house built of cinder block filled with concrete reinforced with steel. A commercial builder built this as his personal residence in 1950. The walls look like a commercial building. The outside is just painted cinder block. Works fine, survived the 1989 earthquake without damage, low maintenance. It's not what most people want today in the US.

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altairprime ◴[17 Jan 25 04:37 UTC] No.42734140[source]▶
Note that brick is much worse than wood for wind-stoked wildfires; think ‘explosive fiery-hot shrapnel’ rather than just catching on fire like wood.

(This is not a contradiction of your point, just a useful related factoid for the modern era.)

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MagicMoonlight ◴[17 Jan 25 06:09 UTC] No.42734565[source]▶
Think about what you’ve just written… you’re saying that a stone building is less safe than a wood building in a fire.

Have we seen any stone cities burn down lately? Because I haven’t seen London burn down since they replaced all the wooden houses with brick in 1666.

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1. megaman821 ◴[17 Jan 25 14:16 UTC] No.42737707{3}[source]▶
I am not sure the wood framing matters much in this case. The fires are burning houses because the roofs are flammable, or embers are getting in the house through the eaves or a broken window. So in the end you have a completely burned down wood-framed house or a hollow concrete house that is no longer structurally safe.