Here massive earthquakes are a known inevitable hazard, and giant brush fires have already consumed almost entire cities. Accelerated global warming is only going to make things worse everywhere. At a more daily level, idiots playing with firecrackers are the more persistent risk. I simply can't afford 100% coverage at present rebuilding rates. Almost nobody can, especially in this area. The house is single story and the foundation well bolted; my property is level and atop granite down below. Any earthquake strong enough to outright wreck it all would unquestionably lead the insurance companies themselves into either default or bankruptcy anyway. Thousand of structures way more expensive than mine would be leveled, if an event was really that extreme. The last "big one", the Loma Prieta quake, merely tipped over a stack of magazines and shook a few pictures wire-suspended on the wall slightly out of level.

I could replace every window on the house for less than the cost of a single year's worth of official earthquake insurance. Residential Fires are usually stopped in this city before they consume everything, because I'm a reasonable distance from the woodsy interface, with a wide freeway in between, and no petro industrial facilities nearby. You can't insure against everything - not against "acts of God" like an asteroid strike, or a world war, or seemingly against hoodies playing with fireworks nearly every night.

If my whole house were to burn down, well, isn't that what old folks do anyway - move into something tiny that we can pay for? ... No, not my darkroom! - that's even has cement-asbestos siding (still perfectly legal, because the asbestos is integrally bound within the cement and very difficult to free up - just illegal to still manufacture) - and that building has a dedicated usage, off limits. If push comes to shove, we can simply live in a back yard tent, along with the outdoor cats instead of the indoor ones, and look around to see where they bury their own litter. That worked for the first million years of human culture.