Flooding is separate from typical US home insurance and many homeowners are not adequately covered
As millions of US residents begin working to file insurance claims on their homes in the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, many could be denied, particularly if their homes were damaged by flooding.
A quirk in the US home insurance market is that flood insurance is separate from typical home insurance, which usually covers wind damage from hurricanes but not flooding. Homeowners must purchase flood insurance separately if they want their homes protected against flooding.
And many don’t. In some areas where Hurricane Helene hit the hardest, less than 1% of homes had flood insurance when the storm hit. In Buncombe county in North Carolina, home to Asheville, only 0.9% of homes had flood insurance, according to data from the Insurance Information Institute.
The number of people with flood insurance in Florida, which was hit by Hurricane Milton two weeks after parts of the state were battered by Helene, is higher than in other parts of the country. But still, the take-up is low. In Sarasota county, which took a direct hit from Milton, just 23% of residents have flood insurance.
How the heck is that even possible? I was forced to get flood insurance on a house that’s nowhere near an ocean just because there is a stream nearby that almost never even has water in it. Getting a damn LOMA processed is confusing as all hell. Do 90+ percent of people not have a mortgage or something?
That’s so weird because my house is literally on a lake and I didn’t have to get flood insurance. I had to look up all of the flood maps and saw that the chance of flooding is once every 1000 years.
NOAA (I think) updated flood predictions and the flood line moved slightly toward my house. Still no flood insurance required.