Safety First

Go away on a seemingly innocuous business trip. Return to find your house in ruins with gaping 4- and 6-foot holes exposing your home to the elements, with airplane debris scattered about your yard. Sound like a bad dream? It gets worse, because not only is your home a wreck, but your homebased business has also been effectively dismantled by a freak accident.

You're probably shaking your head and thinking a plane will never crash into your home. Before it happened, Bette Price probably thought the same thing. Until a small plane with a malfunctioning engine came down and crashed into her house in two places before ending with a final crash into a neighbor's home. Luckily, there were no fatalities, both Price and her husband weren't home, and the majority of damage was done to her living quarters, leaving her office relatively intact. But she still suffered a 40 percent profit loss in 1997 due to the accident.