Every homeowners policy excludes the ground moving.
Not most of them. All of them — earthquake, landslide, subsidence, earth sinking, rising or shifting. It's one of the cleanest exclusions in personal insurance, which means coverage only exists if someone deliberately added it. Whether you should is a fair question, and the honest answer for Northwest Arkansas is more nuanced than a scary map. Here's what the coverage does, how its deductible really works, and where Arkansas's risk actually sits. We shop it across 40+ carriers.
The short answer
Earth movement is excluded on every standard homeowners, condo and renters policy — so if you haven't specifically added earthquake coverage and seen it on your declarations page, you don't have it. It's usually added as an endorsement to the policy you already have. The mechanic that surprises everyone is the deductible: it's a percentage of your dwelling limit, not a flat dollar amount, so on a $400,000 home a 10% deductible means the first $40,000 is yours. Arkansas's serious risk sits in the northeast, not here — which is precisely why the coverage is inexpensive in Northwest Arkansas.
There's no version of a homeowners policy that quietly covers this.
Earthquake, landslide, mudflow, subsidence, and earth sinking, rising or shifting. The wording is deliberately broad and it appears on essentially every standard form, at every carrier, in every price band.
Most coverage questions are "it depends." This one isn't.
A lot of what we explain on these pages turns on policy language that varies between carriers. Earthquake isn't like that. Earth movement is excluded on standard homeowners, condo unit owners and renters forms across the market, and no amount of shopping produces a version that includes it by default. That makes the question unusually simple: either someone added it on purpose, or you don't have it.
There is one genuine wrinkle worth knowing, and it cuts in your favor. Fire is a covered peril on your homeowners policy, so a fire that follows an earthquake is generally handled by the homeowners policy even though the shaking is not. The shaking damage and the fire damage get treated as separate things. That's a real benefit — and it is not a substitute for earthquake coverage, because the typical earthquake loss is structural. Cracked foundations, failed chimneys, separated walls and collapsed masonry are what the money goes on, and none of that becomes covered because there was also a fire.
The deductible is a percentage, and it's the whole decision.
Every other deductible on your policy is a dollar figure. This one isn't, and people routinely buy the coverage without ever multiplying it out.
Earthquake deductibles are commonly written as a percentage rather than a flat amount, and the range of options a carrier offers is wide. This single number does more to determine whether the policy helps you than anything else on it.
It's applied to your coverage limit, not to the size of your claim. That distinction is the one people miss. A 10% deductible on a home insured for $400,000 is $40,000 — whether the damage is $45,000 or $400,000.
Some policies apply the percentage separately to the dwelling, to other structures and to contents. That can mean satisfying more than one deductible in a single event. Ask explicitly rather than assuming it applies once.
Do the arithmetic before you buy, not after.
Take your dwelling limit, multiply by the percentage, and look at the number. If it's more than you could produce in a week, the policy is protecting you against a total loss and nothing smaller — which may be exactly what you want, but it should be a decision rather than a discovery. A lower percentage costs more and is frequently worth it, particularly where the base premium is already modest. We'll run both figures for you in dollars on your actual home, because "10% versus 5%" means nothing until it reads as "$40,000 versus $20,000."
What the coverage actually buys.
Which of these are included, optional or limited varies by carrier and by the form used, so the declarations page is the answer rather than this list.
Dwelling
Repair or rebuild of the house itself after shaking damage — foundation, framing, walls, roof structure and chimney. The largest number in any earthquake loss and the reason the coverage exists.
Other structures
Detached garage, workshop, fencing, retaining walls and similar. Often subject to its own sub-limit, and sometimes its own separate application of the percentage deductible.
Personal property
Belongings broken by the shaking rather than by anything falling on the house — shelving contents, electronics, glassware, artwork and anything not secured. Worth carrying at replacement cost.
Loss of use
Additional living expenses while the home is unlivable. In a regional event this coverage runs long, because contractors, inspectors and materials are all being competed for by everyone else at once.
Building code upgrade
Sometimes called ordinance or law. Pays the extra cost of rebuilding to current codes rather than to how the house was originally built. On an older home this is not a small line item, and it is frequently optional.
Masonry veneer
Brick and stone veneer is common on homes here and is one of the first things to fail in a quake. Some earthquake forms limit or exclude veneer specifically, or price it separately. Ask about it by name.
Three things earthquake coverage won't do.
The gaps here are less about carrier differences and more about what the coverage was designed to be.
The land itself
Coverage responds to the structure, not the ground under it. Stabilizing a moved slope, regrading, rebuilding retaining ground or restoring the lot is commonly excluded or sharply limited — even when the damage to the house is fully covered. Ask about land stabilization by name.
Flood, including quake-caused
Water damage from flooding is a flood policy's job whether or not an earthquake set it off. A failed dam or levee produces flood damage, and flood is excluded on both your homeowners policy and your earthquake coverage.
Your vehicles
A car crushed in the garage is an auto claim, not a homeowners or earthquake one — comprehensive coverage on your auto policy responds to it. Which is a reason to check that the cars actually carry comprehensive and not liability only.
Arkansas has a serious fault. It isn't under Bentonville.
The New Madrid Seismic Zone reaches into northeast Arkansas around Marked Tree, in Poinsett County, and runs north through the Missouri Bootheel into Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois. It is genuinely active — the Arkansas Division of Emergency Management describes more than two hundred small earthquakes a year on the zone, most too weak to feel. In the winter of 1811 and 1812 it produced three very large earthquakes that the U.S. Geological Survey estimates between magnitude seven and eight, among the strongest ever recorded in the continental United States east of the Rockies. The USGS puts the chance of a magnitude six or greater event on the zone at 25 to 40 percent within fifty years, and the chance of a repeat of the 1811–12 events at 7 to 10 percent over the same window.
Now the part a lot of insurance pages leave out. ADEM places the state's most significant earthquake risk in nineteen eastern and central Arkansas counties — and Northwest Arkansas is not among them. If you live in Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale or Fayetteville, you are a long way from the zone that drives those probabilities, and we're not going to pretend otherwise to sell an endorsement. The same agency is equally clear about the other half of it: the rest of the state is not earthquake free, Arkansas has recorded quakes well outside the northeast, and events in neighboring Oklahoma have been felt here.
So the honest case for this coverage in Northwest Arkansas isn't fear. It's arithmetic. The exclusion is absolute, the potential loss is your entire house, and the premium in a lower-risk area is correspondingly low — that's how earthquake rating works, and being outside the high-risk band is exactly what makes the coverage cheap here rather than what makes it unnecessary. It's a small amount of money against a loss you have no other route to recover. Some households look at that and add it; others don't. Both are defensible, and the point is to decide on purpose.
Where we earn it.
The quiet mistakes on earthquake coverage are assuming a good homeowners policy includes it, buying it without ever converting the percentage into dollars, not asking whether the deductible applies once or several times, and missing that masonry veneer or building code upgrade was limited or left off. We tell you plainly what the coverage would cost and what the deductible works out to on your home before you decide, price more than one deductible percentage side by side, check the veneer and ordinance-or-law provisions rather than assuming, and say so when we think the honest answer for your household is to skip it. We don't adjust your claim and can't overrule an adjuster — but we build the policy to respond, and we compare it across our 40+ carrier markets rather than one company's appetite.
Priced to the building and the ground under it.
Earthquake premiums are driven more by geography than almost any other coverage, which is why a single figure would be meaningless — the same house costs very different amounts in different parts of this state. Price turns on the location and its distance from the seismic zone, the dwelling limit, the deductible percentage you choose, the age and construction type of the home, whether it has masonry veneer, whether there's a basement or crawl space, whether it's been bolted to its foundation, and whether the coverage goes on as an endorsement or a standalone policy. This isn't a quote or a guarantee. Send your homeowners declarations page and we'll price it properly, including what the deductible works out to in dollars.
What usually sits next to it.
Earthquake insurance questions.
Does homeowners insurance cover earthquake damage?
No. Every standard homeowners policy excludes earth movement, and the exclusion is written broadly to cover earthquake, landslide, mudflow, subsidence, and earth sinking, rising or shifting. This is not a gap that varies much between carriers or that a good policy quietly includes.
It is one of the cleanest exclusions in personal insurance, which is why coverage has to be added deliberately, either as an endorsement on your existing policy or as a separate policy. The same is true of a condo unit owners policy and a renters policy. If you have never specifically asked for earthquake coverage and seen it on your declarations page, you do not have it.
Is Arkansas actually at risk of earthquakes?
Parts of it, significantly. The New Madrid Seismic Zone reaches into northeast Arkansas around Marked Tree in Poinsett County and runs north through the Missouri Bootheel into Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois. It produces more than two hundred small earthquakes a year, and in the winter of 1811 and 1812 it produced three very large events that the U.S. Geological Survey estimates between magnitude seven and eight, among the strongest ever recorded in the continental United States east of the Rockies. The USGS puts the chance of a magnitude six or greater event on the zone at twenty-five to forty percent within fifty years.
The honest qualifier is geography. The Arkansas Division of Emergency Management identifies the state's most significant earthquake risk in nineteen eastern and central counties, and Northwest Arkansas is not among them, though the agency is equally clear that the rest of the state is not earthquake free.
How does an earthquake deductible work?
Differently from every other deductible on your policy, and this is the detail that surprises people most. Earthquake deductibles are usually a percentage of the coverage limit rather than a flat dollar amount, and the percentage is applied to your dwelling limit, not to the size of the claim. On a home insured for four hundred thousand dollars, a ten percent deductible means the first forty thousand dollars of damage is yours.
Some policies apply the percentage separately to the dwelling, to other structures and to contents, which means more than one deductible in the same event. Before you buy, ask what the percentage is, what limit it applies to, and whether it applies once or several times. Multiply it out on paper. A lower percentage costs more and is frequently worth it.
If an earthquake causes a fire, is the fire damage covered?
Usually yes, and this catches people from both directions. Fire is a covered peril on a standard homeowners policy, so fire that follows an earthquake is generally handled by the homeowners policy even though the shaking itself is excluded. The shaking damage and the fire damage can therefore be treated as separate things with separate coverage.
That is a real benefit, but it is not a substitute for earthquake coverage, because most earthquake damage is structural rather than fire. Broken foundations, cracked walls, failed chimneys and collapsed masonry are the typical loss, and none of that becomes covered because a fire happened elsewhere in the same event.
Does earthquake insurance cover my foundation or the land itself?
The foundation generally yes, the land generally no. Earthquake coverage responds to damage to the insured structure, and a cracked or shifted foundation is damage to the structure. What it does not do is pay to stabilize, regrade, retain or replace the land your house sits on.
If a slope moves and the ground has to be rebuilt before anything can be repaired, that excavation and stabilization is commonly excluded or sharply limited even though the damage to the house is covered. Ask specifically about land stabilization, debris removal and the cost of complying with current building codes during a rebuild, because those three line items are where the difference between two earthquake policies actually shows up.
How do I get earthquake insurance in Northwest Arkansas?
Start a personal quote online or call (479) 286-1066, or simply send your current homeowners declarations page. In many cases earthquake coverage is added as an endorsement to the policy you already have rather than bought separately, so the fastest path is for us to look at what you have and price the addition.
Useful details are the year the home was built, the construction type, whether there is brick or stone veneer, whether there is a basement or a crawl space, and whether the home has been bolted to its foundation. We will tell you what the percentage deductible actually works out to in dollars on your home before you decide, because that number is the whole decision.
If our coverage explainers are useful, mark Cribb Insurance as a preferred source so more Northwest Arkansas homeowners can find our local, plain-English guides.
We'll price it, and tell you the real number.
Send your homeowners declarations page and we'll price earthquake coverage as an endorsement or standalone, run more than one deductible percentage so you can see them in dollars rather than percentages, check the veneer and building-code provisions, and lay out what it does and doesn't reach. If we think the honest answer for your household is to skip it, we'll say that too.
Cribb Insurance Group Inc. is an independent insurance agency licensed in Arkansas. This page describes earthquake insurance in general, industry-standard terms for informational purposes only. It is not a policy, not an offer of insurance, and not a guarantee of coverage, availability, eligibility, or price.
Dwelling, other structures, personal property, loss of use, building code upgrade and masonry veneer coverages, along with limits, sub-limits, deductibles and the way a percentage deductible is calculated and applied, covered causes of loss, and exclusions, are set by the carrier, vary by state and by policy and over time, are subject to the carrier's underwriting approval and eligibility, and apply only as written in the policy actually issued to you. Earthquake coverage is not available from every carrier or on every home, and eligibility commonly depends on location, age, construction type and condition. Deductible percentages shown are illustrative examples of how the calculation works and are not an indication of what any carrier would offer you. Descriptions of what a homeowners, condo or renters policy excludes are general; your own policy language controls.
Statements about earthquake hazard reflect published information from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Arkansas Division of Emergency Management and are provided as general background, not as a prediction, a risk assessment of any specific property, or advice about whether to purchase coverage. Seismic hazard estimates are probabilistic, are periodically revised, and describe a region rather than an address. Nothing here is engineering, geological or structural advice; consult a qualified professional about your own building. Any cost or coverage descriptions are general and illustrative, not a quote, and not a guarantee; your premium and coverage are determined at quote and by the policy issued.
Last reviewed July 2026.