While meteors aren’t exactly rare, one making landfall in the middle of a densely populated area is. But that’s exactly what happened yesterday afternoon in Blacksville, a town just south of Atlanta, Georgia.
Around noon local time, hundreds of reports of a fireball in the sky flooded into the American Meteor Society and the National Weather Service. The meteorite is estimated to have started as a roughly three-foot wide chunk of asteroid, barreling through the atmosphere at approximately 29,000 miles per hour before breaking apart about 27 miles above the earth, according to NASA.
But the rare event may have literally hit home for one resident of Henry County, just south of Atlanta. According to a National Weather Service Facebook post, the Henry County homeowner reported a rock piercing through their roof and cracking their floors as it landed inside their home at about the same time that reports were coming in about a fireball in the sky. While local officials are still investigating the situation and have yet to confirm whether the rock was a piece of the meteorite, radar imaging from NASA does suggest that debris from the meteorite fell in the area where the home is located.
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There are more than a few surprising things home insurance won’t cover, so this news may have you wondering if you’d be able to file a claim with your insurance company if this were to happen to you. The good news is that it should be covered by a standard home insurance policy. But here’s what you need to know.
What are the odds of a meteorite crashing into your home?
According to NASA, Earth is pummeled by over 48 tons of meteoritic material every day. But nearly all of it vaporizes in the atmosphere before reaching Earth’s surface. That phenomenon is what creates the shooting stars and meteor showers that stargazers hike out to remote locations to watch.
Those that do make it to the Earth’s surface are known as meteorites – and the American Meteor Society estimates between 10 to 50 meteorites make landfall each day. But only around two to 12 of those will hit anywhere near an inhabited area, with the rest falling into the ocean or landing on uninhabited land.
So, the odds of a meteorite careening into your home are comfortingly low. But, as that Georgia homeowner may soon find out, low is not the same as zero.
Does home insurance cover meteorites and other objects from space?
Fortunately for that Georgia homeowner and for you, most standard home insurance policies would cover falling objects, including meteorites, satellites and space junk.
Specifically, a standard HO-3 policy usually protects the physical structures on your property – like your home and garage – against all perils except for those expressly excluded, like flooding or earthquakes. While you’d need separate flood insurance or earthquake insurance to cover those exclusions, falling objects are not typically excluded in a standard policy.
At the same time, your personal property, or the contents inside those physical structures, will either have that same coverage or be covered under a specific set of named perils, with anything not named in your policy being excluded.
Even in this case, falling objects are often one of the named perils covered in a standard policy. Still, if you want to be absolutely sure, you can review your policy now and look for “falling objects” as a named peril or, less likely, as an exclusion.
Now, on the off chance that a fireball crash lands into your car, you would only be covered if you had comprehensive car insurance. An event like this is rare enough that you shouldn’t let it scare you into adding extra coverage. But there are plenty of other more likely causes of damage to your car that would only be covered by a comprehensive policy. So, if you don’t already have this type of car insurance, it’s worth looking into the cost of adding that coverage.