Random Twaddle: Can you buy Insurance for Sinkholes? Are they on the rise?

This is now a 2-part post, since I moved another article over here from a deleted website. The first part is called "Can you buy Sinkhole Insurance?" The 2nd post will be about how this sinking earth situation is on the rise, question about what is going on inside the Earth, and provide several detailed images....

Part 1:

I heard the other day that if you own a home and it falls into a sinkhole, that they will not cover it even if you have house insurance. WTF? Can you buy sinkhole insurance? LOL! Actually, you can...

In a way, it sounds sort of silly. I mean, you'd think House Insurance would cover everything. The last place I rented, the home owners were required to purchase flood insurance in addition to their regular house insurance if they were still paying on the loan for their home. With that being said, some areas have other additional plans for stuff like hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. However, I've never really thought about sinkhole insurance before. These things can happen anywhere, apparently. I wonder if this applies to car insurance as well? No, surely not... I say that because I've also heard of cars getting trapped inside sinkholes while driving down the road. Anyway...

I was reading about this topic last night and there seems to be a lot of information on the Internet about this subject. I even seen a couple silly how-to "articles" out there about this type of insurance. I mean, who needs to read a how-to page about getting sinkhole insurance? They both had 3 steps listed, followed with some superfluous, vacuous details. It was like: 1) Contact the insurance agent 2) Identify the coverage terms and conditions 3) Pay the premium. Ha-ha! Really? Thanks for that useless how-to advice!

Even though I was somewhat ignorant about sinkhole policies, for years I've known about a market called "Lloyd's of London" that you can basically insure any crazy thing you want, at least that's how I used to hear it explained. People used to make it out like if you eat too much, you can get stomach insurance; if you smoke too much, you can get lung insurance or that you can insure your dog's left paw, if needed... Ha! I doubt if that particular market is that crazy, but I have heard similar when it comes to Lloyd's of London albeit maybe that was just in the movies. I remember as a kid thinking they were saying "Lords of London" instead, but it does sound similar.

Well, since we are on the subject, I may as well provide an excerpt and then a link to this via Wikipedia: "Lloyd's of London is an insurance and reinsurance market located in London, United Kingdom. Lloyd's is not an insurance company; it is a market of members. As the oldest continuously active insurance marketplace in the world, Lloyd's has retained some unusual structures and practices that differ from all other insurance providers today. Originally created as a non-incorporated association of subscribing members, it was incorporated by the Lloyd's Act 1871 and is currently governed under the Lloyd's Acts of 1871 through to 1982. Lloyd's itself does not underwrite insurance business, leaving that to its members." Read more about that, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd%27s_of_London

Dang, it looks like I've sunken into the wrong hole on this post. Anyway, this post was supposed to be about if you can buy sinkhole insurance, not for you to embark upon a Lloyd's of London endeavor. At any rate...

Here are a couple related articles on the Web to further your reading:
www.einsurance.com/journal/homeowners-insurance-sinkholes/
www.insurancequotes.com/home/sinkhole-insurance

Image Credit: This photograph is in the Public Domain and is not under copyright protection.

---End of Post "Can you buy Sinkhole Insurance?"

Semi-related Post:

http://perpendicularity.org/blog/2013/03/06/sinkholes-on-the-rise-whats-going-on-inside-the-earth/ [Link is no longer active]

Since the above link was on another website of mine that I ended up deleting, I will just go ahead and re-post it here. It's an old post, dating back to March of 2013...

Part 2: "Sinkholes on the Rise? What's going on inside the Earth?"

With all the talk of global disasters, excessive earthquakes and crazy, erratic, extreme weather, sinkholes also appear to be on the rise. One may ask, what in the hell is going on inside the Earth, that is kicking our ass above it?

I’m not here to talk about a polar shift or cosmic alignments and I’m not here to ramble about global warming and the human input involved or the natural cooling and warming cycles of the Earth, either. I’m just curious about the increase in these “sinkholes” throughout the globe. Is it really as normal as some people play it off to be? Is it really normal for these things to occur all the time? If so, is more attention simply being drawn to them now, due to all the doom & gloom chatter of late?

I don’t know, but I will say that you would have to be somewhat oblivious to your surroundings (along with local & global news) if you lived during the last few years and have not noticed that harsh living conditions have been on the rise.

Oh, before we go any further, one must dabble a little Wikipedia crap down from two separate entries to form one good description, in the event that some people are unsure what a sinkhole actually is, here: “A natural depression or hole in the Earth’s surface caused by the chemical dissolution of carbonate rocks or when loose soil, loess or other non-cohesive material lies on top of a limestone substratum containing fissures and joints. Rain and surface water gradually wash this material through these fissures and into caves beneath. Over time, this creates a depression on the landscape of varying depth. Sinkholes may vary in size from 3.3 to 2,000 ft. – both in diameter & depth and vary in form from soil-lined bowls to bedrock-edged chasms. Sinkholes may be formed gradually or suddenly and are found worldwide.”

On this post, I will share a few helpful resource links and provide some friendly images of sinkholes along with some not-so-friendly ones. In short, sinkholes are a part of life, whether speaking metaphorically or literally, albeit it does have the tendency to make the pedestrian commoner wonder just what all in the hell is going on inside this Earth. Many scientists and reporters would have you believe that most of these inconveniences known as sinkholes are due to collapsed earth via floods and the superfluity of rainfall, however there are many possible causes, nonetheless. Dang, it sounds like there will be a separate policy for this stuff when it comes buying Insurance, but that's another subject...

An excellent resource page for these pitfalls featuring ground-based snares, can be found here: “Information & Discussion about the Earth Changes and the Pending Pole Shift.” [I no longer have the specific URL to that page; lost it during the process of transferring content from an old website, but that was the title of the link anyway and it was from a site called "Zeta Talk."]

From there, you will see many images and descriptions of these sinkholes that seem to be happening a lot more than the general public is aware of. I mean, seriously, we can only provide the masses with so much news about global disasters during any normal span of time because, like, some celebrity might have a pimple on their face that you need to know about or some poorly talented “pop star” might have received their first million-dollar payout or, uh, we might have to fill the headlines up on a news channel featuring political nonsense. Anyway, you get the point…

Now, back to this whole sinkhole thingy, from Zeta Talk, they give a nice intro (on the last page I linked to) with: “What happens to rock layers under a diagonal pull, or [that are] being pulled apart? As can be seen during recent years, this has resulted in derailing trains, sinkholes suddenly appearing, gas and water main breaks, torn roadways and separating bridges. Despite the effect on man, crawling about on the surface of what they assume to be terra firma [which means, solid earth], these changes are superficial. When the pulling starts, weak points break and thereafter the plumbing and roadways hold, giving the impression that the pulling has stopped, but this is misleading.” You can read more from the prior link about the Earth changes and pending polar shift, as you’ll also find an image on that page showing a cross-sectional view of a tectonic plate in a “stretch zone,” for example.

I usually don’t like to elaborate about the obvious, as I’ll let the links and images do most of the talking here, unless, of course, we get an opinionated blast within the comment field down below, although there should be a sufficient amount of content above the fold, nevertheless.

If you just can’t get enough of this sunken subject, check out some more of these Recent Sinkholes [link is no longer active].

Okay, it's time for some images...

Friendly Sinkholes: