Rubble With a Mortgage

What could be worse than a devasting earthquake in the Bay Area? The day after, when we all realize that no one is covered by insurance.

Comments (0) By Marc Herman Wednesday, Aug 1 2001

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The upshot of the statistic is that San Francisco and Alameda counties, even if the costs are spread over decades, will suffer deeper financial hits from a quake on average than most other parts of the state, with no mechanism in place to insure many of those probable losses.

Even so, this year, state insurance reform is a long way off, and Corbett is pushing retrofits instead. She is sponsoring a bill seeking a state tax credit and $4 million in funds for low- and middle-income people to retrofit their homes (currently, few cities offer tax incentives to perform costly retrofits of old houses; Corbett's bill is in committee). She has no specific thoughts on what incentives might be possible for providing better earthquake insurance, though she agrees it is a large problem.

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The 7.0 Loma Prieta quake hit the Marina hard in 1989. Despite such disasters, earthquake insurance remains a hard sell. Only 17 percent of California homeowners are covered.

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So, politically, it will wait until the horse is out of the barn.

"I think that's when we're going to get policy," says Comerio. "After a devastating earthquake. Where there's lots of damage, and no one is going to have insurance. That's when we'll have it. It's pretty classic."