When would you say enough with the house rebuilding?

Not sure. Was there 40 years before that with no tornadoes or flooding? Will the insurance company just give the money, and allow the owner to build somewhere else? Is it a very small house on a farm? A farm I own, and that is my life’s work? Tornadoes and flood happen to be the twp disasters that freak me out the most. So, I would be inclined to not want to live there anymore. If you had said hurricanes I would definitely keep rebuilding.

A tough call to be sure. Even theoretically if you want to build a storm-proof domicile you want to burrow into the ground to make it tornado-“proof” and up off the ground to make it flood-“proof”. Either of which is expensive and together possibly impossible.

If you are rebuilding with your own money, rebuild forever for all I care. If my tax dollars are contributing, please move ASAP.

Okay, no homes in the Midwestern/Southern tornado alley, check. No homes in the vicinity of a body of water for fear of flooding, check. No homes on the West Coast because of earthquakes, check. No homes on the East or Gulf coasts because of hurricanes, check. No homes in California, for mudslides, check. No homes in Texas because of the forest fires, check. No homes in the Great White Blizzardy North, check.

Where am I supposed to live again?

Where is there a perfect place to live where there is no risk? On the moon we all would get hypothermia…..that’s no good, either.

@laureth No homes on the West Coast because of earthquakes, check. Earthquakes do not come every year, and at least not in the same area or hard enough to do damage. There has not been one here like that since 1989.

@Hypocrisy_Central – According to your question, tornadoes don’t come every year either. Do they hit the same house whenever they do come by, too, as your question implies, or do they strike different places, like earthquakes do?

@laureth According to your question, tornadoes don’t come every year either. How so? Tornados come every year but they do not necessarily distroy the same houses every year. The question didn’t ask if a house got destroyed by a tornado in 1989, 1999, 2000 and then 2001, that would be near impossible or highly unlucky for the home owner to have a tornado his his/her house every year even if they rebuilt in the same area or on the same lot. Every year there are several hundreds of tornados and many of them large enough to do serious damage. There maybe hundreds of earthquakes but most are so small only non-native Californians notice them, many native Californians hardly play them any attention and they do no damage at all.

@Hypocrisy_Central – If I understand correctly, you’re saying that natural disasters, while they happen from time to time, do not destroy the same property every time. However, you seem to be saying that when earthquakes come periodically to California, whoever has the bad luck that year to have their home destroyed just rebuilds. But when it comes to tornadoes, another natural thing that people can’t really prevent, you seem to be implying that if it happens to hit them a few times, they should just move on and not live there anymore. Am I correct?

@laureth What I am asking is how many time does it make sense to rebuild when you know statistically the likelyhood of your house not surviving another decade is far less than in other areas? It would be like how many times would you drive on a road that had tons of pot holes causing you to have to replace your muffler more than you should or getting wheel alignments all the time when there are other roads you can use? If you have deep pockets I guess you can rebuild no matter what wipes out your house but if you don’t, when does it become a money pit driving you to financial ruin?

If a tornado hits the same house in 1995, 2002, 2004, and 2009, that would be a horrible streak of bad luck. Are you talking about a particular person’s real house, or just a hypothetical and unlikely person?