Originally written on October 14, 2018
Updated August 27, 2020 on the day that another Category 4, Hurricane Laura impacted the Louisiana/Texas Coast.
Today, Louisiana and Texas were battered by Hurricane Laura, a Category 4 hurricane with over 140mph winds. 2 years ago, Hurricane Michael struck the Florida Panhandle with over 160 mile per hour winds as a Category 5 hurricane and brought with it an estimated storm surge of 14 feet. Since 2017, the US has been hit by three other Category 4 Hurricanes with Harvey in Houston (perhaps the wettest storm in history, dropping over 60” of rain in some locations), Irma in the Florida Keys and Southwest Florida, and Maria which decimated the US territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Untold millions of lives were disrupted by these 5 storms and their impacts across the coastal states of the Southeast US.
In 2018, Hurricane Florence weakened from Category 4 to Category 1 near landfall, but still became the wettest storm to ever impact the Carolinas, dumping more than 24” of rain in some areas. This heavy rainfall led to weeks of flooding as the inland rainfall flooded rivers all over North and South Carolina, and that water in the rivers had to make its way back down to the Atlantic Ocean by rushing down through watersheds throughout the area.
Unfortunately, most of the people impacted by these storms, and the others that have ravaged this country in the past several years, do not carry flood insurance. Many people incorrectly assume that their homeowner’s insurance covers them from all perils, including flooding, but homeowner’s insurance very rarely covers flooding, which is the most common natural disaster in the United State. The term “flood” is defined as a general and temporary condition of partial or complete inundation of 2 or more acres of normally dry land area or of 2 or more properties.1 A flood does not mean a burst pipe, or an overflowing bathtub, both of which may be covered by your homeowner’s insurance policy.
Some people incorrectly assume they will be eligible for free money from FEMA if their house is damaged by flooding or a hurricane. While FEMA does have programs that give cash payments to survivors of certain storms, these typically require the storm to have impacted a large area and have done widespread damage, enough to meet the damage thresholds required under the Stafford Act for a Presidential Damage Declaration. If the storm is not sufficiently damaging to a large area or a high enough total cost of damages, many of the elements triggered by a Presidential Damage Declaration will not become available. Even when programs like FEMA’s “Individual Assistance” (IA) program are activated, the average IA payment from recent storms have been $5,000-6,000, compared to the average National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) flood insurance payment of $90,000+.
Other available programs include the Small Business Administration, which offers low-interest loans to people and businesses needing to rebuild, but these loans must be paid back. Long after the storm, mitigation assistance funding becomes available through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, but a homeowner typically needs to have already been working with their local government on a plan to mitigate or buy-out their property for the community to prepare a grant application and submit to their State or FEMA for HMGP or other mitigation funding.
Flood Insurance
By now, I hope you are seeing that Flood Insurance is the best option to protect the largest investment most people ever make in their lives – their home. Did you know that over the course of a 30-year mortgage, homes in the “Special Flood Hazard Area” or ‘flood zone’ has a 26% chance of flooding from a 1% annual chance flood (commonly referred to as a 100-year storm)? That’s about twice as likely as suffering a house fire, yet we all carry insurance that covers fire.
Flood insurance is most often sold through your typical flood insurance companies, on behalf of the NFIP, which assumes the flood risk. Flood insurance is available to homeowners, renters, and businesses. For residential properties, the maximum structural coverage is $250,000, with a maximum of $100,000 in contents coverage. Renters don’t need to carry the structural coverage to be able to purchase up to $100,000 in coverage for their belongings. Non-residential properties can purchase up to $500,000 in structure coverage, as well as $500,000 in contents coverage, since many businesses have expensive equipment necessary to run their business.
The private insurance market is small but growing in this country. Many private insurers may have similar coverage limits as the NFIP policies, while some have their own underwriting standards and coverage limitations. A hybrid approach is also available, with coverage up to the maximum of the NFIP coverage limits, and then a policy with a private insurer for “surplus lines” in excess of the NFIP limits. This is advantageous to the private companies because the NFIP flood insurance fund is on the hook for the first $250,000 in structural damage and the first $100,000 in contents. The surplus lines coverage would not have to pay out unless/until a major disaster wiped out at least a quarter million in the home’s value.
Some reasons that flood insurance may be cheaper through private insurance companies because NFIP premiums are collected into the National Flood Insurance Fund, which pays out flood insurance claims, flood insurance studies and mapping for participating communities, and for hazard mitigation programs such as Flood Mitigation Assistance and Pre-Disaster Mitigation grant programs. In addition, the Flood Insurance Fund is paying interest on money borrowed from the US Treasury to cover past claims, especially Hurricanes Katrina (mostly forgiven by Congress in 2018), Sandy, Harvey, Irma and Maria. Furthermore, FEMA has been tasked with building a reserve fund to pay future claims without borrowing from the Treasury. FEMA also has purchased “reinsurance” from large global insurance companies for the past 2 years to help spread the NFIP’s risk exposure.
Higher standards and a discount program
The NFIP makes flood insurance available in over 22,000 participating communities nationwide that have agreed to adopt and enforce development standards in their identified floodplain areas. Among these 22,000+ communities, approximately 1,500 communities have joined the voluntary Community Rating System that awards flood insurance premium discounts to policies in those communities for adopting higher standards than the minimum, and for other public education, outreach and other floodplain management-related activities. The three goals of the Community Rating System (CRS) are to:
- Reduce and avoid flood damage to insurable property
- Strengthen and support the insurance aspects of the NFIP
- Foster comprehensive floodplain management.
The CRS program is a points-based program, offering a 5% discount for every 500 points that a community earns from 19 Activities and 92 specific elements, subject to certain prerequisites. Discounts range from 5% for many beginner communities in the CRS program, up to 45% for 1 community in California that has earned the required 4,500 points to earn the highest rating of Class 1. These discounts are applied automatically to NFIP policies in the CRS-participating communities, so be sure to check your “declarations page” for a CRS discount. While “only” about 1,500 communities participate in CRS, those communities represent over 70% of the policies in the nation. This make sense, as the largest communities and areas with the highest rates of flood insurance coverage stand to gain the most by documenting their efforts to reduce and avoid flood damage in their communities.
If your property is not in a “Special Flood Hazard Area” or if you have been recently mapped into the SFHA, check with your insurance agent about receiving a Preferred Risk Policy. These typically can be had for a few hundred dollars per year, rather than the full-risk rate which may cost $1,000 or more, depending on the specific flood zone and/or the elevation of the finished floor of the home. The only way for an insurance company to properly rate a policy is with an Elevation Certificate prepared by a licensed surveyor. This will show information such as the community name and community ID number (to properly apply any potential CRS discount), the flood zone and required Base Flood Elevation, the elevation of the finished floor of the home or structure, the elevation of any attached garage or enclosure, and the elevation of any machinery or equipment servicing the building. All these factors are factored into the rate that each policyholder will pay for their unique flood risk on their property.
To recap:
- Your homeowner’s insurance does not cover flood damage.
- Flooding is more frequent than ever and has affected all 50 states since the year 2000.
- Individual Assistance from FEMA averages $5k-$6k, while flood insurance pays out an average of nearly $90,000.
- Your community is probably already working hard to earn you a discounted premium. If they are not, ask them to join the CRS to save their residents and property owners money on their flood insurance.
- If your home is flood-prone, there may be mitigation grant money available to buyout or elevate the home.
Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions, as I have been a Certified Floodplain Manager since 2012, with experience in coastal and riverine communities, and previously worked 3.5 years in the State Floodplain Management Office in Florida. I currently serve as the Chair of the Florida Floodplain Managers Association, and I have presented at the Association of State Floodplain Managers national conference. I can be reached at Josh.Overmyer@gmail.com.
1 FloodSmart.gov, the official website of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).