Climate Denial Crock of the Week

“I don’t think we could live here if we had to buy flood insurance”.

Exactly.

Assoiated Press:

Christine Barrett was inside her family’s North Port home during Hurricane Ian when one of her children started yelling that water was coming up from the shower. 

Then it started coming in from outside the house. Eventually the family was forced to climb on top of their kitchen cabinets — they put water wings on their 1-year-old — and were rescued the next day by boat.

After the floodwaters had finally gone down Barrett and her family were cleaning out the damp and muddy house. On the front lawn lay chairs, a dresser, couch cushions, flooring planks and a pile of damp drywall. Similar scenes played out across the block as residents tried to clear out the soggy mess before mold set in. 

North Port is about 5 miles (8 kilometers) inland and the Barretts – like many of its residents – live in areas where flood insurance isn’t required and therefore, don’t have it. Now many wonder how they’ll afford much-needed repairs.

“Nobody in this neighborhood has flood insurance because we are a nonflooding area,” she said. “But we got 14 inches of water in our house.”

Many people associate hurricanes with wind damage — downed power lines, shingles or roofing materials ripped off, trees blown over into homes or windows smashed by flying objects, and Hurricane Ian’s 150-mph (241-kph) winds certainly caused widespread damage.

But hurricanes can also pack a massive storm surge as Ian did in places like Naples or Fort Myers Beach. 

Heavy rains from hurricanes can also cause widespread flooding far from the beach. Ian dumped rain for hours as it lumbered across the state, sending waterways spilling over their banks and into homes and businesses far inland from where Ian made landfall. People were using kayaks to evacuate their flooded homes, and floodwaters in some areas have still not gone down a week after landfall.

“This is such a big storm, brought so much water, that you’re having basically what’s been a 500-year flood event,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

But flooding is not covered by a homeowner’s insurance policy. 

It must be purchased separately — usually from the federal government. Although most people have the option of purchasing flood insurance, it is required only on government-backed mortgages that sit in areas that the Federal Emergency Management Agency deems highest risk. Many banks require it in high-risk zones, too. But some homeowners who pay off their mortgage drop their flood insurance once it’s not required. Or if they purchase a house or mobile home with cash they may not opt for it at all. And flooding can and does happen outside those high risk areas where flood insurance is required

There have long been concerns that not enough people have flood insurance especially at a time when climate change is making strong hurricanes even stronger and making storms in general wetter, slower and more prone to intensifying rapidly. According to the Insurance Information Institute, only about 4% of homeowners nationwide have flood insurance although 90% of catastrophes in the U.S. involve flooding. In Florida that number is only about 18%.

“We have experienced catastrophic flood events across the U.S. this year, including in Kentucky and Missouri, where virtually no one had flood insurance,” said the Institute’s Mark Friedlander.

Hurricane Ian caused extensive flooding in areas outside of the high-risk zones. According to the consulting firm Milliman, roughly 18.5% of homes in counties that were under an evacuation order had federally issued flood insurance. In areas under an evacuation order that were outside of high-risk zones, 9.4% of homes had a policy.

Last year, FEMA updated its pricing system for flood insurance to more accurately reflect risk called Risk Rating 2.0. The old system considered a home’s elevation and whether it was in a high-risk flood zone. Risk Rating 2.0 looks at the risk that an individual property will flood, considering factors like its distance to water. The new pricing system raises rates for about three-quarters of policyholders and offers price decreases for the first time.

Carolyn Kousky in The Hill:

There is no such thing as hurricane insurance in the United States. More than 85 percent of homeowners have property insurance, which covers wind damage, but only a much smaller percentage are insured against floods. Floods are not included in a standard homeowners or renters policy; households must buy a separate flood policy to cover storm surges, river flooding, or flooding from heavy rain. This is confusing and costly. While some private firms offer flood insurance, the majority is sold by the federal National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). 

To ensure those at higher risk have financial protection from floods, Congress mandates those with a mortgage from a federally backed or regulated lender who are located in high-risk areas, as mapped by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), purchase flood insurance. For everyone else, flood insurance is voluntary, and those not subject to the mandate often don’t buy it. But that doesn’t mean they are safe from floods: for example, Ian dumped vast amounts of rain across central Florida, inundating communities where hardly anyone has flood insurance. The FEMA maps can be out of date, don’t include climate changes, and often fail to include areas at risk of flooding from heavy rain.