ARE YOU COVERED?

Businesses face special challenges in insuring against nature’ s worst threats

BY STEVEN YODER

Last February, a California water policy expert issued a none-too-comforting warning. About 1,600 miles of levees guard the edges of the rivers and flood bypasses upstream of the Delta, wrote Jeffrey Mount of the Public Policy Institute of California. While the most robust of them protect cities like Sacramento, most of the project has weak and outdated levees that are“ unreliable in large floods,” he said.

The Sacramento region’ s disaster threat portfolio is as rich as they come— wildfire, even in urban areas, is no longer out of the question given what happened last October in Santa Rosa. And while earthquake risk is lower here than many other parts of the state, the California Earthquake Authority notes that

70 comstocksmag. com | January 2018