Residents of the Gulf coast states and other states affected by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and even the tropical storms that followed, are beginning to pick up the pieces. But for many without flood insurance, the process is likely to be long, costly and frustrating. Iowans can sympathize as the destructive storm surge flooded hundreds of homes and businesses. While Iowa’s been plagued by many floods over the years, fewer and fewer Iowans qualify for flood insurance as at-risk properties are bull-dozed into green spaces.
Dave Maurstad heads the National Flood Insurance Program for FEMA and says flood plain lines are drawn to dictate who’s at most risk and who has to get flood insurance. “And if you’re on the high-risk side of that line, then you’re required, the government says you have to buy it if you have a federally-backed mortgage,” Maurstad says. “If you’re on the other side of that line and you’re just in the low- to moderate-risk area, the government’s really sending a message that you don’t need the coverage. We need to change that dynamic.”
The Houston, Texas area is still reeling from the flooding that resulted from Hurricane Harvey. At least 80-thousand claims under the flood insurance program have been submitted by policy holders in the Texas Gulf Coast area, though many thousands more homes that were damaged or destroyed did not have flood insurance.
Maurstad says, “We need to change the social paradigm where people do everything they can to avoid buying a flood insurance policy to one where it’s the individual property owner’s responsibility to their family and their community to protect their property from flooding.” So far, the National Flood Insurance Program has made more than $13.2 million in advance payments to insured survivors of Hurricane Harvey.
The damage caused by the combination of tornadoes and flooding in Iowa in 2008 was estimated at 848-million dollars. At the time, it was considered the sixth-worst natural disaster in U-S history, a list then-topped by Hurricane Katrina at more than eight-billion dollars.
(Radio Iowa)
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