While disasters can happen at any moment, sending catastrophe adjusters all over the nation tohandle the massive claims that can result from a disaster, theseare usually calamities that no one sees well in advance.

As one of the co-authors of Catastrophe Claims — InsuranceCoverage for Natural and Manmade Disasters, there was one typeof disaster that I did not discuss in my chapter on manmadedilemmas — the urban riot.

This article was written in March after the election in manystates including Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and Florida. The outcomepromises to create a big a ruckus in Cleveland, Ohio, at theRepublican Convention this month and verbal duels until November.As an adjuster in Miami during the 1972 Republican Convention it,too, resulted in riots and burning neighborhoods, and for a week ormore there were certain neighborhoods where one did not venturewithout great concern.

Adjusters need to be prepared for urban riots

Eight years earlier in August 1964, there had been similar riotsin Chicago during the Democratic Presidential Convention. Politicalbattles are common in America, despite the primary system, andanimosity of a mob can turn to damages that are covered by propertyinsurance policies. Adjusters in Cleveland need to be prepared.

This Iconoclast does not often venture into the hot wires ofpolitics; he's been accused of going too far in past columns evenwhen he wasn't expressing much more than a warning. But whether heis a hot blooded, gun tottin' radical, four steps to the right ofGenghis Kahn or a “Let's look at this reasonably and weigh theoptions” voter, he tries to be realistic. There is so much pent-upemotion, fear and hatred in this country that it is going toexplode, and that explosion is likely to occur in his hometown ofCleveland.

Despite recent events, such as the shooting by the police of ablack twelve-year-old boy with a toy gun and Detroit-like urbanblight and unemployment, Cleveland is a beautiful city. Rememberthe Higbee's Santa Claus in the movie Christmas Story,where Ralphie couldn't find the words to say “I want a Red Ryder BBgun with a compass in the stock” and was offered a footballinstead? Back in the 1940s I sat on that Santa's lap too. Onlytoday Higbee's is a gambling casino, and passenger trains no longerrun through the Terminal Tower (other than the Rapid Transit trainson which I rode to school and college.)

There is still a magnificent Playhouse Square and some goodhotels, but the beating manufacturing heart of the nation thatCleveland was until the mid-1960s has suffered a thrombosis andseveral by-pass operations. What a riot at the GOP convention willdo to the city remains to be seen, but the scene may not be veryencouraging for the November election.

Risk management issues for cities

Any time a big event comes to any city there will be turmoil.Los Angeles and Atlanta have seen political conventions and theOlympics, and both have presented risk management issues. Theseevents are expensive for cash-conscious cities, with the over-timepay for law enforcement, fire service, crowd control, and in theaftermath, medical care for the injured and court costs for thearrested.

Rioting and vandalism can be just as expensive for a city (andits citizens' insurers) as any flood, windstorm or forest fire. Itis also a perfect target time for terrorism, foreign or domestic.Not only will the politicians and candidates slug it out before TVcameras, there will be masses of people on the street, probablyhalf of them who really have no interest in the politicalissues.

Related: Baltimore burning: Rioters set the cityablaze, battle police

Cleveland, the “Forest City” with its “green necklace” of parksincluding the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, of which I wrote in1993 in Valley of the Gray Moon, deserves recognition asone of America's greatest cities, not the brunt of jokes, as sooften is the case. It is now a city of many races and cultures,first, second and third generations of founding immigrants (my ownparents included), and of great institutions and universities.Hopefully it will escape the devastation that is predicted for thisconvention.

Ken Brownlee, CPCU, is a former adjuster and risk managerbased in Atlanta, Ga. He now authors and edits claims-adjustingtextbooks. Opinions expressed in thisarticle are the author's own.