Hurricane Helene Shows How Broken the US Insurance System: Is Many homeowners in North Carolina

[riversedge]

This is a depressing article--as it seems so many will NOT have had flood insurance.


Oct 2, 2024 12:43 PM


Hurricane Helene Shows How Broken the US Insurance System Is

Many homeowners in North Carolina won’t be insured against flooding or landslides due to the fragmented way in which disasters are covered.

https://www.wired.com/story/hurricane-helene-shows-insurance-industry-that-no-homes-are-safe-north-carolina/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us


On Tuesday morning, five days after Hurricane Helene ripped through Boone, North Carolina, David Marlett was on his way to the campus of Appalachian State University. The managing director of the university’s Brantley Risk & Insurance Center, Marlett was planning to spend the day working with his colleagues to help students and community members understand their insurance policies and file claims in the wake of the storm. He didn’t sound hopeful. “I’m dreading it,” he said. “So many people are just not going to have coverage.”................


..................

For North Carolinians, the issue right now has to do with what, exactly, private insurance is on the hook for when it comes to a storm. An average homeowner policy covers damage from wind, but private homeowners’ insurance plans in the US do not cover flooding. Instead, homeowners in areas at risk of flooding usually purchase plans from the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)..............


................This breakout of flood insurance from home policies dates back to the 1940s, says Donald Hornstein, a law professor at the University of North Carolina and a member of the board of directors of the North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association. Private insurance companies decided that they did not have enough data to be able to accurately predict flooding and therefore could not insure it. “In some ways, that calculation of 50 years ago is still the calculation insurers make today,” he says.................................


.................While the NFIP, which was created in the late 1960s, provides virtually the only backup against flood damage, the program is saddled with debt and has become a political hot potato. (Project 2025, for instance, recommends phasing out the program entirely and replacing it with private options.) Part of the problem with the NFIP is low uptake. Across the country, FEMA statistics show that just 4 percent of homeowners have flood insurance. Some areas hit by Helene in Appalachia, initial statistics show, have less than 2.5 percent of homeowners signed up for the federal program.................


....................

[UpInArms]

1. I could be wrong, but I think that you can get flood insurance

only if your property lies in a designated flood plain.

Edited to add

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_insurance

Very few insurers in the US provide private market flood insurance coverage due to the hazard of flood typically being confined to a few areas. As a result, it is an unacceptable risk due to the inability to spread the risk to a wide enough population in order to absorb the potential catastrophic nature of the hazard. In response to this, the federal government created the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) in 1968.[9]

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) found that 33 percent of U.S. heads of household still hold the false belief that flood damage is covered by a standard homeowners policy. FEMA states that approximately 50% of low flood zone risk borrowers think they are ineligible and cannot buy flood insurance. Anyone residing in a community participating in the NFIP can buy flood insurance,[10] even renters. However, unless one lives in a designated floodplain and is required under the terms of a mortgage to purchase flood insurance, flood insurance does not go into effect until 30 days after the policy is first purchased.[11]

Individuals who are eligible and who have mortgages on their homes are required by law to purchase a separate flood insurance policy through a private primary flood insurance company or through an insurance company that acts as a distributor for the NFIP. Flood insurance may be available for residents of approximately 19,000 communities nationwide through the NFIP. Flood insurance may be available through private primary flood insurance carriers in any of the 19,000 communities participating in the NFIP as well as other communities that are not participating in the NFIP. In March 2016, TypTap Insurance became the first private market, admitted carrier in the state of Florida to offer non-NFIP flood coverage to policyholders.[12] With increasing risk from extreme weather events that can partially be attributed to climate change, there are increasing risks to the flood insurance market and its longterm sustainability.[13]