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The concept of insurance has always represented a myriad of human reaction to the idea that unless someone does not have a paid-for paper promise, even further harm will befall them to where they may never, ever recover from. And soon!
So unless it's burial insurance (insurance won't matter to you when you're dead), it isn't necessarily the insurance policies themselves that tends to set me sailing into the falling darkness (although that's a relative statement).
Instead it is the sets of books that govern not only how these insurance policies can be exercised, but that also contain mandate after mandate after mandate after mandate: health care, car, home, commercial...hell! Even body parts can be individually insured...as long as someone is willing to pay the price for such a paper promise.
So this particular series is born from one single cascading blip of an event - damage caused by lightening connecting with a piece of property.
It isn't that insurance doesn't cover Acts of Mother Nature recorded by Father Time, rather it is what building parts are mandated not only in the building of new constructs, and the illusionary effects of Grandfather clauses.
Let's take the most recent circumstance in which a church steeple tumbled down upon Richard Schwartz on Thursday, July 27, 2012 who later died from the injuries.
Now onto building the head-scratching numbers.
Demoralizing as the column heading can appear to some, each and every person has a dollar amount associated with Total Amount Due.
First there is the cost of health care RS left behind. Without exact numbers, it is reasonable to apply at least a short list of standard practices to derive at least a temporary placeholder for this one single line item. Therefore, suggesting the bill was at least $3,004.00 may actually be a severely undervalued representation, but for the purposes of this particular strike out towards what isn't mandatory, it fits.
But that's not the only insuranc policy affected by the event. The church itself suffered thousands of dollars worth of damage (how do you attach a dollar amount to a sentimental sentinal symbol?) and insurance may not even cover the $14,000 cost of rebuilding the steeple.
Although I grabbed the $14,000 from a different topic (that's the amount of money being spent on a one-year contract for a municipal website) I figured it was as good a place as any in trying to guess a starting point for the reconstruction effort...assuming it can even be undertaken.
Creeping towards the $19,000, not all of this Total Cost of the Event is the responsibility...remember, the instrument of casualty in this case was a church steeple. Even the cost of cleanup is perhaps spread to others, let alone any damage to property owned by the government (I recall a sidewalk somewhere in the story).
But this isn't about health care costs and who is going to cover it when it is needed.
It is about what it takes to continue minimizing the shattering effects of Fire Starters From the Sky, namely lightening strikes.
It's 2012 and while the list of mandatory purchasing of insurance policies grow, the list of mandatory safe-guards continues to remain a little too trim and slim when it comes to mandating protections from such an event.
The idea that storms are unpredictable enough and with current statistics showing it isn't "that big of a deal - see? Barely a blip on our books! But look at this hurricane data over here and the forest fire data over there" it is easy to dismiss any need for yet another mandate to be placed upon our Books of Standards.
The Life of RS may or may not represent the most idealized reflection of having lived a "good" life, but a life is a life and his was taken away during a rain storm.
With citations of mental tilting on the part of RS for being out in the storm in the first place, there still is the circumstance of the church steeple. Was it supposed to head to shelter when the storm broke or was it supposed to help shelter the heads and bodies of its hosts and guests during a storm?
All questions pertaining to this particular example using this particular approach are nothing compared to the question of whether or not the building had a lightening rod system in place.
Lightning strikes are uncontrollable laser-like strikes of energy capable of causing significant damages with each connection. Survival stories filled with amazement and awe of victories over life and limb roam the memories of some, but it is the laboring onward after something is damaged by lightening that can create hyper-complex confusion over the basics of the basics, such as wondering where one will live after losing a home to lightening, let alone eating, bathing...
The International Building Codes and the National Fire Protection Codes are entirely absent of this standard.
Those who have added and subtracted standards that continue to be adopted as law over the decades have been entirely absent on the topic of lightening rod mandates.
Lightening rods save lives just as much as seat belts do.
Seat belts are mandatory in many states. Driving and being a passenger in a vehicle is not a basic opportunity.
Being secure in your person and property during a storm filled with lightening?
Lightening rods save property
Even more striking than the absence of lightening rod mandates, serious disclosure issues arise as to why all residents are not informed as to whether or not a building has a lightening rod if they are renters and how many home buyers even think about asking as to whether or not the home they are buying has one.
One would think that by 2012, the mandate would have not only already have been in place for at least a few decades, most buildings would have already achieved signficant compliance and who knows...even insurance rates could be re-calculated based on such a cheap and easy product.
Installation of the item aside, let me put two numbers together.
$30,000+ for a church steeple, health care costs, surrounding property damage, one soul and one more wave of sorrow for the community to bear.
$10.00 for a lightening rod
Now whether or not a lightening rod could have prevented this particular cirucumstance from rolling the way it did is something for the scientists and experts to figure out.
There's nothing else I am capable of figuring out on this one and there doesn't seem to be anything left to learn about the reasons why the mandate isn't there, let alone the topic.
There are those that will believe this is an irrelevant topic needing a "shut up and take one for the team already," which is why I decided to gather at least a few more statistics to prove something I already claim to know.
Lightening rods save lives and property.
Too bad I can't find out how many buildings and lives have been saved due to a lightening strike being absorbed by existing lightening rods, but I know thousands were preserved a few weeks ago when I got stuck in a thunderstorm in a heavily populated area.
Wicked stuff to watch. Quite humbling, in fact. Any number of buildings could have come down at any given moment if they hadn't been designed with lightening in mind. But they didn't.
Knowledge is power. Know that lightening rods save lives and property and if you really are someone who worries about things like health care costs, perhaps its time to begin shoring up some of these smaller things that take far greater of a toll on our society than anyone's dataset can portray...
No matter how the numbers are estimated...or by who.
