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Natural hazard insurance: Well insured against natural disasters

2021-07-17T09:50:16.399Z


The storm disaster shows that homeowners will have to build or convert differently. Natural hazard insurance will increasingly be part of everyday life. Until then, household contents policies will help. An overview.


Enlarge image

Destruction in the Ahrweiler district

Photo: Boris Roessler / dpa

Other countries have been suffering dramatically from the consequences of climate change for a long time, now the climate catastrophe with monsoon-like continuous rain has apparently also reached Germany.

In the future, homeowners will have to build and convert differently, and municipalities will have to plan differently in order to avoid similar tragic events.

Insurance against natural hazards for house and household effects will become part of everyday life in more and more regions.

And authorities need to upgrade civil protection to prevent similar tragedies.

So what needs to be done?

First: minimize the risk to life and limb

Ever since the floods on the Elbe, Oder and Danube caused great devastation at the turn of the millennium, the debate has flared up again and again as to what needs to be done about it.

Unsealing and discharge areas on the large rivers are the key words.

Actually, however, it is about the question of how we will build and convert in the future in order to survive the changes in the climate reasonably well.

Political task must not only

protect against even more climate change

be, but also

to protect the

already unavoidable climate change.

Increasingly frequent heavy rain is obviously the biggest challenge.

But there could also be devastating forest fires like 2019 in Brandenburg again soon.

And yet a coherent overall concept is missing, every federal state is tinkering with its own strategy.

Some examples:

In

Bavaria

, the State Environment Agency provides information for residents and municipalities.

Citizens are asked to clarify whether, in the event of a heavy rain event, they could "get themselves to safety with their own means and strength, recover from the event and compensate for all damage".

In

Hesse

there are flow path maps with which even small communities can identify danger spots within the city during heavy rain.

The state office provides heavy rain hazard maps for larger municipalities.

After the Oder flood,

Brandenburg

created flood areas along its rivers, which, as overflows, are intended to reduce damage and, above all, the risk to human life.

And the four federal states of

Saxony

,

Saxony-Anhalt

,

Lower Saxony

and

Berlin

have made the insurers' maps of flood risk available to all citizens after the Elbe floods.

Homeowners in other federal states have little benefit from the natural hazards compass.

Of course, employees at water authorities often know about the risks in their city.

But this knowledge does not always flow into construction projects.

Authority employees complain about a lack of money, but also a lack of hardship when discussing structural measures for flood protection with private investors.

A few years ago, Manfred Müller, head of the civil engineering department in Solingen, described numerous measures in detail for his municipality in an action plan for flood protection that could help prevent flood disasters: from the publicly available hazard map to green roofs and retention basins to better use of the sewerage system.

Second: Protect our property and share the social costs fairly

In Baden-Wuerttemberg there was a law from 1960 to 1994 that prescribed natural hazard insurance for every homeowner.

The protection of private homeowners there is still particularly good.

Switzerland still has such regulations.

In the GDR, too, the so-called elementary protection was a compulsory part of household insurance.

The federal states of Saxony and Baden-Württemberg in particular have made efforts in recent years to reintroduce compulsory elementary insurance that pays for damage to houses and property caused by natural disasters such as floods and landslides. However, the proposals failed due to the rejection of the other federal states.

The idea behind the compulsory natural hazard insurance is twofold: On the one hand, it creates a system based on solidarity. Every homeowner pays, regardless of how close or far they live, for example, from the nearest stream or river. At the same time, every owner is also insured. In times when the risk of natural disasters - clearly visible in the example of heavy rain - is less calculable, this is a sensible approach. On the other hand, the insurers then have an interest in providing their customers with better support in protecting houses and apartments, for example with tips and handouts on structural protection against ingress of water.

House owners can already buy such insurance against natural hazards coupled with their classic building insurance. But because insurance coverage is still not compulsory, the policies are comparatively expensive. In the last comparison this spring, »Finanztip« determined additional costs between 10 and 35 percent compared to conventional building insurance.

Natural hazard insurance for everyone also means: Nobody can save themselves the protection anymore, the state does not have to step in with financial aid.

Homeowners who may not be able to take out a policy today because they live in a particularly dangerous area can still get one - with a high price and high requirements, maybe, but they get one.

And building authorities that have approved buildings in risky places will certainly have to justify more.

Help is of course always necessary after a disaster like this.

In a 2019 report, the German Advisory Council on Consumer Issues also

proposed

“mandatory natural hazard

insurance

.

Not entirely without pathos did the scientists compare such natural hazard insurance with the introduction of pension insurance by Otto von Bismarck and came to the conclusion: "The introduction of compulsory insurance against damage caused by natural hazards would be an adequate response to new types of risks due to climate change."

And what to do right now?

If you don't want to wait for a possible insurance obligation, you can find cheap contracts for building insurance including natural hazard protection via comparison portals.

»Finanztip« tested this in the spring.

The price of the insurance depends on the sum insured, the place of residence, the extent of the damage and whether you agree to a deductible.

And you should.

With some insurers you have to reckon with a ten percent deductible for damage caused by natural forces.

The combination of household contents insurance with elementary protection can also be useful, also for tenants.

Then the contents insurance pays for the destroyed contents of the basement if it is full.

The homeowner's building insurance does not reimburse this.

more on the subject

  • Flood in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate: The weather disaster that changes the election campaign

  • Extreme rain events: How climate change is related to floods A guest contribution by Stefan Rahmstorf

  • Munich Re's chief climatologist: "Even if you live ten meters below a hilltop, the water can rush through your house" An interview by Martin Hesse

Household contents insurance is generally not a must, and some people may not want to insure their contents.

At the moment, it is mainly the insurers who make money from household insurance.

Most recently, they spent less than 40 cents on damage for every euro that customers pay.

But if you want, good tariffs including elementary protection can be found, our analysis shows.

Incidentally, the flooded car or motorcycle is usually already insured in the event of a heavy rain catastrophe by the partial car insurance.

At no extra charge.

At least if you hadn't been able to drive it away.

Don't just keep an eye on heavy rain

The

Authorities must be put in a position to be better able to deal with natural disasters beyond the heavy rain. Political activity may still prevent worse climate change. But it will no longer be able to protect us from a number of effects. It must therefore now organize protection against the worst consequences of this change.

The next time it will not be rivers in the low mountain ranges that flood entire towns and sweep away individual houses.

Maybe it will be the great flood on the Elbe again.

Or there are large-scale forest fires in the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which are eating their way through villages and the outskirts of the capital Berlin.

During the fires of 2018 and 2019, people in Brandenburg noticed with concern how poorly equipped the local fire brigades were for wildfires, some of them on former military training areas.

Fire or water: Then people in Germany will have to be evacuated again, sitting in escape cars, on roofs or in trees.

Like in Canada or Bangladesh.

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2021-07-17

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