The recent movement among consumers to pursue energy savings may dovetail with insurance industry initiatives to convince homeowners to properly prepare their dwellings for disasters, an expert in the field said.

Julie Rochman, president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS), said that many home improvements people are considering to save on energy costs will also help to protect against natural disasters.

She noted that properly mounted double-pane windows that seal air in and out to help with heating costs also help protect homes against high winds. The same is true for other improvements such as doors that close securely.

Ms. Rochman said, “There's a good opportunity for us on the cost side to leverage conversations that are already happening with consumers.”

If consumers are told, “'You should spend your dollars on X,' and the green side of them is saying, 'We should spend the dollars on Y,' we can say, 'You know what, you can kill two birds with one stone here. You can take that same dollar and not only save money on energy costs but also make your home more able to withstand natural disasters.'”

Ms. Rochman said research conducted by IBHS showed that consumers are more willing to spend dollars on improvements “if they think they're getting two benefits rather than one.”

In general, for protecting a home against disasters, Ms. Rochman recommended that homeowners become familiar with the natural catastrophe risks in their areas and prepare adequately for them.

She said the IBHS has a Web site, www.disastersafety.org, that consumers can log onto to assess risks in their area. Ms. Rochman said homeowners enter their ZIP code at the Web site, and then they can see what perils impact their part of the world.

Speaking broadly about the nation's response to disasters, Ms. Rochman said the United States remains “very reactive” and committed to “picking up the pieces and putting them back in the same places in the same way.”

She said, “Property rights in this country are very sacrosanct,” noting that people can essentially build what they want, where they want, and how they want.

Ms. Rochman added that while the U.S. does not spend a lot of time dealing with the issue of personal responsibility regarding where people build, the country does spend a lot of government and insurance dollars replacing lost property that is built and rebuilt in prime disaster zones.

Ms. Rochman attributed this mindset in part to what she called “weather amnesia,” where people quickly forget about catastrophes that have previously struck an area. “We know how to build better,” she said. “In many cases we just choose not to, and that's a mistake.”

“Cost is a huge, huge issue,” she said, adding that areas such as Florida and South Carolina have tried to address this issue by offering tax incentives to people who take steps to harden homes against disasters.

Speaking to the level of risks faced by the nation with respect to catastrophes, Ms. Rochman pointed to events over this past year.

She said she has been at IBHS for over six months. “When I got here, literally as I was first walking the halls of IBHS, Southern California was on fire.”

Moving into winter, she noted there had been record winter storms. “We've had early flooding, we've had tornadoes, we've had more flooding, and we've had earthquakes in weird places where we don't normally have earthquakes. I'm waiting for pestilence, and for frogs to come raining down from the sky.”

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