Is such a thing as "evacuation insurance" available?
Many Americans live in places where natural or man-made disasters can force them to evacuate on relatively short notice, and find somewhere else to stay for long enough to ride out some hazard. If that hazard destroyed their primary home, homeowners' or renters' insurance can help cover that situation. However, in the case where evacuation was seen as being the best option for preserving one's own health but where there is not significant damage to one's normal home or property there, the evacuee may still be stuck with all those costs of the evacuation, and a claim on homeowners or renters insurance may be viewed as infeasible due to the "small-dollar" aspect.
An example might be those living near wildfires in California, those living in flood/hurricane zones, those living near volcanoes predicted to erupt soon, or those affected but not killed by a nuclear event. A solar storm or cyber attack taking out utilities in a region might also prompt some to leave; an epidemic (in which it's easy to tell who's infected) might as well. Events like an earthquake, 9/11, or the 2016 Paris attacks might lead local area residents to leave temporarily until the dust settles and it can be verified that the area is safe to return to.
If an evacuee needed to fly somewhere to connect with family or other willing hosts, the flight ticket might be pricey last-minute fares. Hotels might also be relatively expensive when booked last-minute during high demand. (Potential destinations for evacuation could be specified in advance.)
There is a category of insurance (or at least insurance-like) products called "home warranties" which have much lower deductibles and lower typical claim amounts than homeowners insurance, intended for e.g. a major appliance breakdown, which provides better budget predictability and is helpful to many customers.
Is there a similar insurance product that covers the costs of evacuation from one's home location?
Travel insurance products that cover evacuation while on a trip away from home do not count as good answers to this question.
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I cannot find specific insurance that can be purchased individually to cover an evacuation, but there are provisions in some homeowner's and renter's policies that will cover evacuation-related expenses. Unfortunately, the policies are written vaguely with regards to what may or may not be covered. You should check with your current provider to see, before you need it, if you might be reimbursed.
Here's a news article from 2008 that talks about Hurricane Gustav and evacuees from Texas:
After filing a claim by telephone on Wednesday, the River Ridge
resident went to an Allstate mobile catastrophe claims center in front
of the Lowe's Home Improvement store on Veterans Memorial Boulevard.
About 30 minutes later, he had a check in hand.
"They're very good about it, " said Chabborn, sitting on a plastic
lawn chair in a parking lot camp of tents and an RV. "They just told
me to keep receipts."
While many in the New Orleans area have waited in long lines for
emergency food stamps to help repair their evacuation-busted budgets,
others have discovered that their homeowners insurance will cover the
cost of fleeing the storm.
Depending on the company, the coverage might be called loss of use,
prohibited use, additional living expenses or civil authority
coverage. It generally starts the day an evacuation was ordered and
ends the day people are allowed to return home, for a maximum of two
weeks.
But whether it applies to Gustav evacuees who returned home to little
or no damage is a judgment call.
The article goes on to state that although policies state that reimbursements are only for when there is "damage in neighboring premises", the insurance company gets to decide how close a "neighboring premises" is.
While I both agree and disagree with the comments, I think the issue with a product like this is much more practical than what's being discussed up there.
In order to insure an event the event must be defined. Life insurance, are you dead or not? Critical Illness insurance, did you receive a covered diagnosis? Etc.
To me the issue in my mind is how an evacuation event is defined. If I live in a city adjacent to a city where there was some terrorism event can I evacuate out of an abundance of caution? Is it only when a government entity declares a state of emergency? What does live near a wildfire mean? How near? Where is the edge of the fire? Underwriters of lump sum types of coverage typically have a very obvious line drawn, death, medical diagnosis, house burned down, etc. Even in the example of a warranty service, the item is either broken or it isn't. It's not 'some event' 'is happening', or 'happened recently', 'nearby'; it would be a real challenge to underwrite something that vague.
There's all kinds of insurance. I think it's silly to ignore a potential market for anything by citing some statistic of how people spend their money, a lot of the people who can't come up with for an emergency are walking around with iPhones. I think the issue here is it would be very hard to underwrite and only useful to people in high risk areas.
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