Ok, so you don't live in Florida or Louisiana
So you don't think that you need sinkhole coverage, right?
Hmmm… think again if you live in the Lehigh Valley! Incidents and the probability of sinkholes in the Valley are pretty high http://ow.ly/p0VPz as you can see from this map. The A/B/E region is actually one of the highest in the state of Pennsylvania.
According to the PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and confirmed by client and geophysist, Matt McMillan of Bucks Geophysical, many sinkholes, particularly in the state of Pennsylvania are caused by the deterioration of limestone. Sinkholes in Pennsylvania, generally occur where there are voids in the limestone below the soil. These voids were formed over thousands of years and can occur gradually or sudden
Sinkhole coverage is excluded under all homeowners policies in Pennsylvania, unless you request that it be added by endorsement. In fact, any type of earth movement is not covered (earthquake, mudslides, etc) and must be added separately. If you rent a home, most companies do not even offer sinkhole coverage.
A potential client, that we'll call Al, stopped by our office about three years ago with his wife. They live in the Bethlehem area. Al and his wife wanted to add sinkhole coverage to their policy that was placed through a different agency. Their current company, however, did not offer sinkhole coverage, so he stopped in to see what we could do.
Here's the situation: Mr. and Mrs. Al had a built in swimming pool in their back yard. Keyword: HAD. A sinkhole devoured it. After sending tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of meetings with Township zoning and a huge engineering bill, the problem was corrected.
If Al had sinkhole coverage, the entire event would have been covered. Since the problem was totally corrected and they were able to provide engineering surveys to attest to the correction, we were able to help Al and his wife. We wrote a policy that included sinkhole and it actually was less expensive than the policy he had that did not cover the sinkhole!
If you do not have sinkhole coverage on your policy and live in a high probability area, you need to add it. Call us today if you'd like a comparative quote. If you don't want a comparative quote, that's fine, just do yourself a favor an contact your agent to add it today. The cost of the coverage is based on the value that your home is insured for and is quite inexpensive compared to the alternate (should you be unfortunate enough for that to occur).
