<\/p>\n
First off, I know, I\u2019m an insurance agent that depends on people buying insurance policies from me to make a living. \u00a0You see right through me and you know where my biases are. \u00a0I\u2019m just trying to sell you something. \u00a0Yes, you are correct that I do need to sell policies to feed my family, but in this case, I really don\u2019t care about that. \u00a0In fact, I ask that you don\u2019t call me. \u00a0I\u2019m already all booked up right now. \u00a0If this post moves you, call your current agent. \u00a0What I care more about than selling a policy is exposing\u00a0the truth and dispelling falsities. \u00a0Maybe I\u2019m a bad business man. \u00a0I don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n
So; one thing that drives me nuts is when I hear the same wrong thing stated more than once. \u00a0Yes, I get it: buildings made of concrete tilt up, brick, block, stone, and metal are all less likely to burn\u00a0than wood (which is why the insurance rates for those buildings are lower). \u00a0And I also understand that most buildings will never get near a fire. \u00a0It is only a small portion of buildings that ever suffer any\u00a0sort of fire damage. \u00a0But I plead: let\u2019s not delude ourselves into thinking that just because your building is not made of wood that it\u2019s somehow fireproof.<\/p>\n
Anyone heard of the Great Fire of London of 1666? \u00a0The Great Fire of Chicago of 1871? \u00a0The fire that followed and caused most of the damage to San Francisco after the Great Earthquake of San Francisco of 1906? \u00a0In either three of those incidences were there any mentions that the fire only burned only the wood buildings and just crept around the brick, block, or stone ones leaving them undamaged? \u00a0No! \u00a0Of course not because it didn\u2019t happen. \u00a0They all went down. \u00a070,000 homes and 88 churches (including the massive Old St Paul\u2019s Cathedral) were burned in London. \u00a017,500 buildings were burned in Chicago, and another 25,000 buildings went down in San Francisco. \u00a0It is estimated that the fire reached\u00a02282 degrees in London which is, by the way, hotter than molten lava.<\/p>\n
\u201cOK,\u201d you\u2019re saying, \u201cthree big fires in 400 years. \u00a0Big deal. \u00a0MY building won\u2019t burn.\u201d \u00a0Agreed, it probably won\u2019t. \u00a0But let\u2019s not pretend it can\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Assuming that another Great Fire of ______________ of 20__ doesn\u2019t sweep through your part of town, here\u2019s what can happen to your concrete tilt up, brick, block, stone, or metal\u00a0building even if it doesn\u2019t actually burn to the ground.<\/p>\n
One<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 it can warp or melt. \u00a0This is more likely to happen to a metal frame building than a tilt up, block, brick or stone building. \u00a0Your building does not have to come into direct contact with flames for this to happen. \u00a0Let\u2019s say you have a bunch of plastic items in your building that catch on fire. \u00a0Plastic burns really hot and the flames from the plastic can warp or melt your metal building even if the flame never touches your walls. \u00a0No it didn\u2019t burn down, but the cost is the same to you as if it did: you will have to replace the melted or warped parts of the building with new parts. \u00a0That can be expensive!<\/p>\n Two<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0it can become brittle. \u00a0This is more common with a concrete tilt up, brick, block, or stone building. \u00a0Yes, it may not actually burn to the ground like Old St Paul\u2019s Cathedral (which was made of stone) in London in 1666 but it can become brittle enough to where you might not trust the structural integrity of it any longer. \u00a0Maybe the bricks, blocks, or stones endure the fire un-phased, but it\u2019s the mortar in between them that weakens. \u00a0What would the cost be to remove each brick and install new mortar? \u00a0I imagine: pricey.<\/p>\n Three<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 it can get smoke damage. \u00a0This is probably the most insidious threat\u00a0of them all. \u00a0Let\u2019s say you have, like in the first example, a bunch of plastic items in your building that burn up, but don\u2019t actually do any structural damage to the building. \u00a0But you have smoke stains everywhere. \u00a0All over the ceiling, walls, and the rest of your stuff in the building. \u00a0What is the cost to clean that up? \u00a0This is one of the main reasons insurance companies require a building to be 1000 feet or more from a wildfire zone. \u00a0They\u2019re not worried so much about the actual fire damage: they don\u2019t want to pay to clean up the smoke damage.<\/p>\n Again, I\u2019m not trying to scare you into buying insurance for your building. \u00a0Since I only insure a few niche industries, if you called for a quote on your commercial building, there\u2019s a good chance I couldn\u2019t help you anyway. \u00a0I don\u2019t want you to have insurance if you don\u2019t want insurance. \u00a0I respect your right to live uninsured. \u00a0I\u2019m only telling you this because I care about you too much to let you believe the lie that is just because your building isn\u2019t made of wood that it can\u2019t burn. \u00a0It most certainly can and given the right conditions, it most certainly will and the damage can cost you a lot of money. \u00a0None of us like to be blindsided. \u00a0Believing that your building can\u2019t burn only to find one day that it did burn will blindside you, and that would make me sad. \u00a0I want less sadness in this world. \u00a0So you could also say I\u2019m also trying to increase joy. \u00a0You\u2019re welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWhat, this building? \u00a0It\u2019s made of (some material other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3310,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-insurance","category-property-insurance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finfrockweb.com\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finfrockweb.com\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finfrockweb.com\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finfrockweb.com\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finfrockweb.com\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/finfrockweb.com\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44636,"href":"https:\/\/finfrockweb.com\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473\/revisions\/44636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finfrockweb.com\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finfrockweb.com\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finfrockweb.com\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finfrockweb.com\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}