Do I Need Renters Insurance On Base?

YES, I think you do. You never can tell when a disaster will happen – tornado, flood, fire or something else. Here is my story on this topic.

We used to live in the Burnside Heights Community at Fort Riley, KS. The apartments were eight to a building, four upstairs four downstairs. They were all connected to each other and we all had a common area inside the building. Thankfully it wasn’t my house that caught fire, or my apartment building, but the home of a friend’s friend actually did.

The unlucky acquaintance, who lived upstairs and in the front of the building, left her stove unattended one day while she was cooking. Her kitchen soon caught fire, burned through to the first floor, and did a lot of structural damage to half of the entire building. After all was said and done, the water from the fire trucks and the smoke from the fire caused the family living under her to have to move out as well.

At first I thought that all would be well because no one was hurt and it was an accident. Well, it turned out to be quite a HUGE deal. The military found her to have been negligent, and they put her out of her house. Since the whole episode was her fault, she also had to pay around $100,000 or so in of damages.

This really got me thinking – wow, what if this was me!?! What would I do? We all know that unfortunate situations often happen when our military members are deployed. Since she didn’t have renters insurance, she lost everything. It was a huge mess and I felt so bad for her and her child. So that’s when I decided to get renters insurance. It doesn’t cost much, and at least I know I’m taken care of if something happens. We have maintained our policy ever since, and it just provides a lot of peace of mind for me.

Just for everyone’s information – Picerne has renters insurance on all their homes now, and it just increased to $20,000. I am not sure about other military branches, but I know the Army has a Resident Community Initiative (the privatization of Army housing), so many base housing units are now run by civilian contractors that often require such insurance.

If something like that were to ever happen to my family, I would hate to loose all my memories; but at least I can start over quickly and begin making new ones.