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The passage of Hurricane Ian exposes the nightmare of Florida homeowners who do not have flood insurance

2022-10-12T15:41:55.084Z


Only 18.5% of homes in Florida counties that faced a mandatory or voluntary evacuation order had such a policy. The number of insured has decreased due to the impact of the pandemic and the price of these insurances.


By Phil McCauslandNBC

News

Hurricane Ian caused several-foot-high flooding of homes on Florida's west coast, leaving behind mold, dirt, mud and a flood insurance nightmare for residents looking to rebuild their homes.

Many Floridians who experienced major flooding did not have a flood insurance policy to cover damage from the deadly storm.

This has left homeowners, and even renters, with considerable expense and possibly

a life change that could make a difference in whether or not they become homeless

.

Susan Cavanaugh and her two children are living through that ordeal after the first floor of their home on Sanibel Island, where the three live and work, was submerged by storm surge.

A ship displaced in the wake of Hurricane Ian on October 1, 2022 on Sanibel Island, Florida. Sean Rayford / Getty Images

Cavanaugh's flood insurance coverage expired because he faced a costly divorce earlier this year.

Now he doesn't know how to get his family back home without an insurance check to pay contractors and buy building materials.

"As a single mom, there's not much I can do," said Cavanaugh, who is living in a hotel for now and doesn't know where she'll go next.

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"

We just want to get back to the house

. It's considered structurally sound, but we have to get it back up and running and that's not just cosmetic. It's going to take blood, sweat, tears, and it's going to take a lot of muscle and a lot of work to get it done." .

Sanibel Island last month took a direct hit from the Category 4 storm and storm surge (up to 15 feet in some places) brought from the gulf into people's homes.

The community remains inaccessible by car, forcing many to pay charter boats to take them out to start the cleanup.

[Latinos Rebuilding Florida After Hurricane Ian Face Wage Theft, Unsafe Conditions]

Cavanaugh isn't alone in facing flood damage without insurance backing.

Many residents of this small coastal community, located on the Gulf of Mexico southwest of Fort Myers,

did not have flood insurance coverage.

Sanibel Island, in fact, is a microcosm of the larger insurance challenge facing Florida and the nation.

Only 18.5% of homes in Florida counties that faced a mandatory or voluntary evacuation order the night before Hurricane Ian made landfall had a flood insurance policy with the National Flood Insurance Program, the federal government program administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), according to an analysis by risk management consultancy Milliman.

A destroyed vehicle lies in the rubble after Hurricane Ian passed through the area on October 08, 2022 in Sanibel, Florida.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Even in the designated flood hazard zones in those counties, fewer than half of the homes had a registered policy.

It appears that despite the rise in devastating floods, a shrinking percentage of people across the country have flood insurance policies.

The number of policies maintained by the National Flood Insurance Program

has dropped by nearly 700,000 since 2008

, according to data obtained by the federal agency.

"There are many factors that influence this decline in insured, such as the economic impact of the pandemic, the housing market, affordability or the purchase of flood insurance in the private market," said David Maurstad, head of the National Program Flood Insurance, in a statement.

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Maurstad said FEMA "continues to market flood insurance across the country" in an effort to "increase the number of properties covered by flood insurance."

Currently, about 5 million policies are under the National Flood Insurance Program, which was created in the 1960s as the private insurance market increasingly shrank to cover flood events.

An expensive undertaking for the federal government

Since 2008, the program has paid $40.100 million to just over 910,000 claims, according to FEMA data, and the agency still owes about $20 billion to the US Treasury after borrowing funds to pay many of those orders.

With climate change causing more dangerous storms and increasing risk of flooding, the United States and its coastal communities are beginning to experience the drawbacks of building in flood-prone areas.

"The risk is there as

weather claims are on the rise

," said Lynne McChristian, director of the University of Illinois Office of Insurance Research and Risk Management, "and those exposures are growing because we're building more expensive things in the most vulnerable areas.

[We enter the 'ground zero' of Hurricane Ian, where the destruction is almost total]

This has become a growing challenge for FEMA as it often provides aid to flood-prone communities.

FEMA has hoped that more people in these areas will purchase insurance, especially those in flood-prone areas. 

FEMA guidelines have gone so far as to deny aid to those who have received funds from the federal flood agency in the past if they haven't purchased flood insurance in the meantime.

[“The priority is to save lives”.

FEMA asks not to lower our guard in the face of Ian's passage in Florida]

"I think anyone who lives near water should absolutely buy flood insurance, because it's their number 1 tool to help protect their family and home after the storm," said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell. , to the CNN news network.

One major problem is that many homeowners assume that the typical homeowners insurance policy covers flooding.

Florida law requires insurers to inform their customers of the lack of coverage

, but many Floridians were surprised to discover that their policy did not cover flooding. 

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One of Florida's requirements is that each policy, at the time of issue and renewal, must include in 18-point bold type at least four sentences advising of the need for a separate flood policy.

"Your homeowners insurance policy does not include coverage for damage resulting from a flood, even if hurricane-force winds and rain caused the flood," the warning text reads.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2022-10-12

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