Coverage guide

Earthquake insurance

Kern County has a serious seismic record. On 21 July 1952 an earthquake on the White Wolf Fault struck southeast of Bakersfield. The United States Geological Survey lists it at magnitude 7.5, and published estimates run from roughly 7.2 to 7.5; on any of those figures it remains among the largest recorded in California. A strong aftershock damaged the city's downtown the following month. That is local history, not a risk rating, but it is a reason the subject deserves more than a shrug here.

It is excluded, and that is normal

Standard California homeowners policies exclude earth movement, and earthquake falls inside that exclusion. This is not a gap that a particular insurer has chosen to leave open; it is a structural feature of residential insurance nationwide, driven by the fact that earthquake losses are correlated — one event damages an enormous number of insured buildings simultaneously, which is precisely the pattern ordinary insurance economics handles worst.

California addresses this by requiring insurers who write residential property cover in the state to offer earthquake cover, either their own or through a participating arrangement. The offer must be made; buying it is the homeowner's choice.

The deductible is the whole conversation

Earthquake policies do not use a flat dollar deductible. They use a percentage of the coverage limit, and that percentage is typically substantial. On a home insured for several hundred thousand dollars, a deductible expressed in double-digit percentages becomes a very large number before the policy pays anything at all.

This has two consequences people often miss. The first is that earthquake cover is not designed for cosmetic damage; a cracked wall and a broken chimney will usually sit entirely inside the deductible. The second is that it is designed for the loss that would otherwise end you financially — a home rendered uninhabitable or structurally unsound. Judging the product against the first purpose and rejecting it makes little sense; judging it against the second is the honest comparison.

Lower deductible options generally exist and cost more. Cover for contents, and for the additional living expenses of being displaced, may be included, limited, or separately selectable depending on the policy.

What the building itself contributes

Construction matters more here than in almost any other line. Older houses built on raised foundations frequently sit on short wooden cripple walls that were never braced, and were not bolted to their foundations at all. In a strong shake those houses can slide off. Retrofitting — bolting the sill plate down and bracing the cripple walls — is well-understood, comparatively inexpensive against the alternative, and is the single most effective thing most owners of older homes can do.

Inside, the cheap measures are genuinely worth doing: strapping the water heater, securing tall furniture and bookcases to studs, and fitting latches to cabinets that would otherwise empty themselves onto the floor.

What a claim actually looks like

Earthquake claims differ from fire claims in a way that matters practically. Damage is frequently structural and partly hidden — a foundation cracked below a finished floor, a frame racked out of square, plumbing sheared where it enters the building. Establishing the extent generally requires an engineer rather than only an adjuster, and that assessment takes time.

Two consequences follow. Keep any documentation of the building's condition and of retrofit work, because it establishes what was sound beforehand. And expect the settlement to proceed in stages as the investigation develops, rather than as a single figure produced in the first week.

Deciding without pretending to predict

Nobody can tell you when a fault will move, and any agent who implies otherwise should be treated with suspicion. What you can assess is your own position: how much of your net worth is inside the house, whether a mortgage would survive the building becoming unusable, whether you could fund a rebuild from savings, and how long you could pay for somewhere else to live.

Those questions have answers. They are the right basis for the decision, and they are more useful than any general statement about regional risk. The California Department of Insurance publishes a consumer guide on earthquake insurance that explains the offer requirement and the deductible structure in detail.

※Where this page comes from

• United States Geological Survey — The 1952 Kern County, California earthquake
• California Department of Insurance — Earthquake Insurance consumer guide