Are there natural disasters like flooding, earthquakes, fire or hurricanes in San Miguel de Allende?

Over all these years, one of the first things people want to know is what are the carrying costs, like property taxes (about US $250 per year for a US $250,000 property) and homeowner’s insurance. I often say, “I’ll tell you what, with regard to home owner’s insurance, for $1, I will insure your home against earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and all the other things we don’t have here.”

 

People accustomed to...

Over all these years, one of the first things people want to know is what are the carrying costs, like property taxes (about US $250 per year for a US $250,000 property) and homeowner’s insurance. I often say, “I’ll tell you what, with regard to home owner’s insurance, for $1, I will insure your home against earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and all the other things we don’t have here.”

 

People accustomed to houses in the States, in Canada, or somewhere else made of materials such as wood and sheetrock, worry a lot about the damage that can be caused just by water. We do get some heavy rain here, but I joke that if you have a roof leak here and neglect fixing it for millions of years, maybe you will grow a stalactite! 

 

In addition to being greatly water damage resistant, with construction materials consisting of stuff like steel, brick, cement, and stone, you’ve basically got like a rock house, so even fire isn’t a much of a risk here, other than maybe grass or brush fires, or perhaps kitchen fires, but really no structurally threatening type of home fires. 

 

Although emergency services providers like the fire department and Red Cross may not have to contend with natural disasters here, to point out a potentially disastrous risk that can exist here, they do occasionally respond to propane gas tank and heater related incidents. One of the things that you need to be careful about is to make sure that your gas tanks and hot water heaters are appropriately positioned and vented. Almost every year, particularly during winter months, there are maybe one or two fatalities attributable to propane gas fumes, usually from improperly ventilated heaters. This is not a common occurrence, but it does happen occasionally.

 

(Interior patio, San Miguel Allende, Mexico, pictured.)

San Miguel de Allende doesn’t have flooding or earthquakes. There is nothing like that at all in San Miguel de Allende. Mexico City has a lot of earthquakes and I don’t like going there because of that. I went to Mexico City a couple of times when it shook. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. In San Miguel de Allende, I insured my house but nothing destructive like an earthquake happens here.

 

It could get very dry in San Miguel de...

San Miguel de Allende doesn’t have flooding or earthquakes. There is nothing like that at all in San Miguel de Allende. Mexico City has a lot of earthquakes and I don’t like going there because of that. I went to Mexico City a couple of times when it shook. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. In San Miguel de Allende, I insured my house but nothing destructive like an earthquake happens here.

 

It could get very dry in San Miguel de Allende so there could be fires but most of the time, people control the fires. I could call the fire department 5 days a week but there are people watching these fires. If you see a fire in the country, you might be surprised but most of the time, these are controlled fires. I live in the country and I am a little concerned about wild fires.

 

(Countryside near San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, pictured.)

Typically, San Miguel de Allende has a fairly dry climate that for only a handful of times a year, we would experience heavy rains. The streets in San Miguel de Allende don’t have a serious draining system because we haven't needed it. You can see massive movement of water down the cobblestone streets but it's a rare enough event that if you're downtown, you take out your camera and take pictures of the flood. We're not in an earthquake zone and we’re a long way...

Typically, San Miguel de Allende has a fairly dry climate that for only a handful of times a year, we would experience heavy rains. The streets in San Miguel de Allende don’t have a serious draining system because we haven't needed it. You can see massive movement of water down the cobblestone streets but it's a rare enough event that if you're downtown, you take out your camera and take pictures of the flood. We're not in an earthquake zone and we’re a long way from the coast so the hurricanes aren't going to happen.

 

Occasionally, San Miguel de Allende has brush fires because of a controlled burn that maybe gets a little out of hand, but there’s never a catastrophic event like wildfires. San Miguel de Allende used to be heavily forested, but through the centuries, it's no longer near the forest that it was. Since wood is somehow hard to come by, it makes more sense cost wise to build a solid house with bricks or a stone house, than to do what we think of in the States with the timber framing. Even if fire were to come through to some areas, it's probably going to do very little damage to the standing houses anyway. Fire's not an issue that we contend with in San Miguel de Allende. You see some smoke that you know can be easily handled and that there's no fire that’s raging out of control.

 

There’s nothing interesting, as far as weather phenomena or earthquakes, in San Miguel de Allende. With earthquakes, you can tell San Miguel de Allende doesn’t have earthquakes because much of the architecture is still standing that’s many hundreds of years old.

 

(The terrain around Ventanas de San Miguel, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, pictured.)