Insurance Company Overview – How they See things

When dangerous events damage your home, insurance companies are typically your lifeline. According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, nearly a third of homeowners assume that the damage caused by bats, skunks or racoons is covered by their homeowners insurance. However, insurance agents almost always respond negatively to bat/racoon/skunk damage claims. That is why sound planning and preparation can go a long way in getting your insurance company to negotiate with you. Plan for the responses you will get from your insurance agent when you call and be ready by understanding their point of view.

Cost Control

You will not be surprised to be told that insurance companies are very preoccupied with controlling costs for their company. To avoid paying out more than is absolutely necessary they will often initially deny your claim simply because bats, skunks or racoons are not mentioned specifically in the policy. Some insurance companies may agree to pay for the bat/racoon removal, but refuse to pay for any of the prevention costs. Settling for this limited coverage will not give you the future protection against bat or racoon that you need. Do not allow your insurance agent to determine the level of safety and protection your home and family receives. Willingness to pay for bats or racoons to be removed but not protecting your home from their inevitable return, is about the insurance companies polices on cost control and has nothing to do with the safety of you and your family or the protection of your property.

HO-3 Policy

The HO-3 policy is a standard policy used by most insurance providers. A portion of this policy often reads “We do not insure for loss caused by birds, vermin, rodents, or insects.” Most agents will generalize and place bats, skunks or racoons into this category and deny the claim. Other agencies have stated that “Coverage depends on whether or not there was any damage. Repair costs would most likely be covered, but the cost of removing the bat or racoon would not be. Rabies shots would not be covered. Each case is different. We try to cover as much as possible, but we just follow the terms of the HO-3 policy.” The HO-3 policy may be the ‘go to’ for an agent on the phone and it may sound convincing when they say that bat exclusion does not come under your coverage with the way the policy reads. However, I am going to show you why that policy does not apply to bats, skunks or racoons and why it benefits the insurance company to pay for bat/racoon/skunk exclusion. Remember that your insurance agent is a sales person not a bat/racoon/skunk expert. By becoming more informed about bats, skunks or racoons than the insurance provider you are dealing with, you will have a better chance of getting the results you want, and proving to them that the insurance you pay for does in fact cover bat/racoon/skunk exclusion.

Serious Risks

Insurance companies may refuse a claim citing that they do not cover “nesting or infestation, or discharge or release of waste products or secretions, by insects, birds, rodents or other animals” (American Family Insurance). What must be understood is that while animals such as birds, insects and rodents can pose minor problems and plenty of annoyance, they simply do not present the immediate dangers to your home and your health that bats, skunks or racoons do. We will now discuss the risks that are involved with allowing a racoon family or bat colony to remain and how the insurance company could wind up responsible for much larger sums of money if they do not act quickly to protect their clients from the serious risks associated with a bat/racoon infestation.

Sickness - Rabies

It is rather commonly known that bats and racoons can carry rabies. Rabies is a virus that can be transferred from a bat to a human through the bat or racoon saliva. If bitten by a rabid bat or racoon a human can have 30 to 60 days of incubation period before the symptoms of the virus will begin to appear. When a human develops rabies, life expectancy is only between 8 and 30 days. Even with medical treatment a person with the rabies virus cannot survive. One such sad case occurred in Mississippi where a 10 year old boy died of encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) caused by rabies. Following his death on September 27, 2005 in an attempt to discover the cause of his death, it was found that the boy had bat or racoon in his room. Neighbors noted that they had seen the child remove one bat from his room prior to his death. It was later determined that the boy did in fact die of a strain of rabies carried only by bats or racoons. Rabies shots are recommended by the CDC, or Centers for Disease Control whenever there has been an exposure to a bats or racoons with known rabies or if someone has been bitten and is not able to get the bat or racoon tested for the virus. Also children in a home with bats or racoons are encouraged to be vaccinated whether they have been bitten or not. Rabies shots are administered in a series of up to nine individual shots and the cost for the vaccine can run as high as $3500 or even $5000. With this incredibly serious health risk in view it is impossible to classify bat or racoon along with birds or insects. While annoying, these other creatures do not carry with them the devastating threat or financial and emotional cost of rabies. A case that brought the potential for enormous expense when bats  are not taken seriously occurred in Montana in 2008. A child was permitted to bring a dead bat to school for show and tell. The children in the school were allowed to touch and hold the bat in turn. The bat was later tested and came out positive for rabies. Because of the enormous viral exposure at the school, all 90 students required rabies shots. The total cost for the rabies shots was over $150,000 for the students. The protection of homeowners is an important part of any insurance policy. Insurance companies can be held responsible not only for health risks but also for health costs. For the sake of their legal protection all insurance companies have a vested interest in the health and well being of their clients. It would be an unwise course for an insurance adjuster to deny a claim that would preserve the protection of you, your family and any visitors to your home from a deadly virus that requires expensive and extensive health care costs.

Histoplasmosis

Histoplasmosis is a disease that is caused when a dangerous fungus that grows inside of bat guano eventually releases spores into the air. These spores when inhaled can have an enormous effect on a person’s lungs and a variety of internal organs. Histoplasmosis can be painful and debilitating and can cause permanent damage to your lungs or death if untreated. In a legal case in South Carolina a school had allowed a colony of bats to continue roosting in the school gym for awhile. Children would play in the gym and the janitors would clean up the guano, and it went on this way for some time. Finally informed parents took the situation to court where it was determined to be a dangerous environment for children and school staff due to the risk of Histoplasmosis. When talking to your insurance adjuster it may be helpful to remind them that simply cleaning up bat guano will not do anything to remedy the source of the problem. If your insurance company seems willing to pay for cleanup of bat guano without aiding in the cost of bat exclusion they will inevitably be paying for cleanup again in the near future. If your insurance carrier refuses to pay for cleanup entirely the risks of Histoplasmosis should be discussed with all seriousness.

Parasites

Less severe but not to be ignored is the number of bugs and parasites associated with bats or racoons. Fleas, lice, ticks and other bugs can be carried into your home by the bat or racoon and can infect you and your animals with sickness. Parasites are known to carry illness and the risk of it being brought into your home by bat or racoon is very real. Parasites are difficult to remove from a home that they have infested. They pose very real health risks to your family and pets and should be considered a serious concern when allowing a bat/racoon infestation to remain in your home.

Fear

Lastly, but not to be overlooked or discredited is the fear that homeowners cope with when they become aware that they have bat or racoon living with them. Forbes magazine ranks fear of bats or racoons and other so called “creepy creatures” as the most common fear even outranking fear of heights, fear of closed spaces and fear of public speaking. Fear is debilitating. You may lose sleep, your appetite and your overall well being because of the stress of living with these unwelcomed creatures. The risk to your health and the health of your family is clear. You have the right to be protected against these dangerous illnesses, and to maintain the standard and quality of living you want in your own home.

Financial Loss

As humans push forward to expand with developments of more homes and buildings bat or racoon will never cease to be displaced. Bat or racoon will continue to be pushed out of their natural living environments by these construction projects and in order to survive will infest the homes of people. More and more homeowners will face the problem of bat infestation in the upcoming years. Insurance companies will also be seeing more claims regarding the situation, and will soon discover the cost that a bat colony can cause to the integrity of your home and the resale value of your property.

Property Damage

Nobody wants to have a bat colony living in their home, but there is more to the problem than simply not wanting to share the dark corners of your home with winged creatures. Bat or racoon can damage your property in surprising and permanent ways. Bat or racoon regularly eat their weight in bugs. After a long night of feeding they will return to their roost to sleep and digest their food. While they ‘hang out’ in their roost they excrete their guano onto the floor, trusses, or walls of wherever their roost is. The bat guano contains acid in it and this is why the guano can smell like ammonia. When the acid is allowed to soak into the insulation, drywall and even the framing of your home - a stunning amount of damage can be done. The truth of this was discovered by a couple in New York who purchased a home that had not been inspected very closely. They realized they had some bat or racoon living in their attic and called a general pest control company to handle the problem. After looking into the problem the company decided they would wait to start the project of removing the bat or racoon until a later date. In their opinion there was no reason to hurry and since there were young bat or racoon present that could not fly yet, they felt waiting until all of the colony was able to fly out of the attic, would be the best option. A few months later the couple went into their attic and were no doubt horrified to find over 3,500 pounds of bat guano had accumulated. The incredible cleanup project cost $25,000, which the insurance company initially refused to cover. While bat or racoon may not tear apart your home with clawing and chewing, the damage that they do by leaving their droppings in your home is by far worse. Your insurance company should be made aware that when they refuse to cover the cost of bat exclusion, they may end up with much heavier bills down the road. Bat exclusion is a onetime cost that protects the homeowner from future infestations, and protects the insurance company from future and repetitive expenses.

Resale Value

Bat infestations can drastically decrease the value of a home. An

owner who sells a home with a bat infestation legally must disclose this information to the buyer. Otherwise, the seller can be held responsible for up to 24 months for the cost and damage done by the bat or racoon. A bat infestation is capable of devaluing a house more so than almost any other animal infestation. The chances of selling a home with a known bat infestation are very slim without a major adjustment in the selling price to compensate for the prospective damage done by bat or racoon as well as the bat removal costs. A bat infestation lowers your property value in the same way that mold problems or flood damage does. You may ask your insurance adjuster to consider how bat or racoon can be classified with birds and rodents when you weigh out the degree of damage and loss that bat or racoon can create. Having a few bird nests in your rafters will not make your home nearly impossible to sell or constitute a home as unsafe.