Meteor Crashes Into New Jersey Home, But Is The Damage Actually Covered By Insurance?
A meteor landed and caused major damage to a home in New Jersey but luckily it should be covered by homeowners insurance.
In Marvel films and television, it’s not that uncommon for mysterious objects from space to end up inside the homes of everyday citizens. Sometimes, it’s damage from the battle between the Chitauri and the Avengers, and other times, it’s Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel unexpectedly popping up in Kamala Khan’s home. Recently, though, a meteor crashed into Suzy Kop’s New Jersey home and caused major damage, and NJ.com reports that this damage will most likely be covered by the homeowner’s insurance.
At first blush, it’s difficult to imagine meteor damage being covered by someone’s insurance policy. But it’s the kind of thing that most insurance carriers would not try to specifically include for a very specific reason: the odds of a meteor actually landing on your house are “1 in 3.9 trillion.” Numbers like that are so difficult to calculate for the average person or even insurance adjuster that we find ourselves agreeing with Han Solo’s simple philosophy on life: “Never tell me the odds.”
So, meteor damage is the kind of thing that insurance carriers won’t specifically include or require separate riders for like they do with flood damage. But why else would they cover something screaming into your home from outer space? Simple: despite sounding more like the kind of threats Starfleet has to handle in Star Trek, the basics of this damage actually would be covered by most homeowners’ policies.
We don’t imagine any carriers were seriously thinking about meteor damage when they wrote their insurance policies, but most standard policies for homeowners specifically protect against things falling on your home. The most common occurrence of this is trees falling on houses, particularly in the midst of major storms. But since meteors aren’t specifically included, they would most likely be covered just as falling trees are covered.
This is good news because a meteor has the potential to cause much more damage than a falling tree, which is likely to result in more damage for the insurance carrier to deal with. In the case of Suzy Kop’s home, the meteor was only six inches by four inches, so it wasn’t in danger of simply flattening her house. But once the object entered her home through the roof, it bounced into the ceiling before making its final landing, causing plenty of damage but (quite fortunately) no injuries.
Does this mean you can count on meteor damage to be covered by your own insurance carrier in case any rogue space rocks crash through your home? The short answer is “maybe.” As anyone who has ever had to file a homeowner’s claim can tell you, the devil is in the details, and it’s always important to check your own policy before assuming something is covered.
Speaking of protection, though, this one woman’s brush with meteor damage has some people worried about the kinds of damage that no insurance company can protect us from. For example, an asteroid the size of the moon is passing dangerously close to Earth this week, and this has many wondering what we would do if Earth was struck by the kinds of oversized asteroids that wiped out the dinosaurs. From where we’re standing, we’d hate to lose the planet where we keep all our stuff, but if this means never having to put up with Netflix canceling our favorite shows again, we might have to call this one a wash.
