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Wealth Matters

Protecting Andy Warhol From Flood, Fire and Quake

By Paul Sullivan

People commonly pay insurance companies to secure their property against loss or damage. But for the affluent, insurance companies sometimes take matters into their own hands.

Believing that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, some insurers will send in specialists to prepare a home for disaster, for instance, while others will pay to move valuables out of harm’s way.

Jeremy Alters, a personal injury lawyer in Miami, found out how far his insurer would go to protect his art collection when Hurricane Irma hit Florida last week. As the storm was gathering force in the Caribbean, he started to get nervous because it appeared that the hurricane was headed directly toward his beachfront home in Golden Beach, Fla.

So with help from family and friends, Mr. Alters began to move his collection — which includes works by Jeff Koons, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol — to the second floor, hoping to protect it from flooding caused by the storm surge he was anticipating.

In the end, the hurricane took a different path, but the wind ripped a hole in his roof and piled sand three feet high around his home.

When Mr. Alters called his insurer to file a claim, the company sent an art preservationist and a team of art movers to his home. The collection had survived the hurricane, but the hot, humid conditions posed a danger. Had he called sooner, the company told him, it would have moved the art out — at no charge — before the hurricane hit.

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