Now Californians find out they don't have flood insurance!

[thewayne]

*sigh*

47% of Americans surveyed think that flood protection comes with homeowner's insurance. It does not. It is an add-on policy. It not only protects you against things like the massive California floods, but also if your water heater bursts and damages the floor and carpets, or pipes in the ceiling leak and you have problems up there.

It's not a bad idea.

Californians? Apparently only 1.3% of them have flood insurance.

Oh my, do they have a wake-up call coming! And with Republicans in charge of the House - which allocates the nation's finances - and their broad hatred of things California, I would expect any sort of major financial relief to be quite stingy.

https://gizmodo.com/california-is-in-for-a-flood-insurance-wake-up-call-1850001122

Comments

[mtbc]

I wonder how many think they have earthquake insurance also.

[thewayne]

I have no idea how earthquake insurance would work, might be quite expensive if you lived near a major fault zone.  We don't have flood insurance, though probably should since the risk of having a pipe burst due to a serious freeze is decidedly non-zero.  We're very careful about setting faucets to drip when we know a big freeze is coming: my wife grew up in northern Ohio and went to school at Penn State, undergrad in the Boston area, so she knows snow and prevention/preservation.

[dewline]

Oh...HELL.

[thewayne]

Yeah.  I had a condo in Phoenix and it was in a flood plain.  The interesting thing is that some of the condos in the complex were, some were not.  I think I had flood insurance, mainly against household problems, I wasn't concerned about century floods.

[kathmandu]

I had not realized 'flood' as in rising waters and 'flood' as in broken plumbing were covered by the same clause. That explains why the mortgaging bank wanted flood insurance on my mother's house even though it was located on the top of a hill. We used to joke that if that house were ever flooded by the river rising from below, we'd need a new Ark.

[disneydream06]

And yet the Deep South, aka hurricane alley, aka Bright Red States, have their hands out every year for government handouts.
They never think about it when they are the weather victims. :o
Hugs, Jon

[kaishin108]

I was just thinking that the other day! How the heck are all those repairs going to get paid for.
We never had flood insurance in Calif. and I am pretty relieved we moved!

[devilc]

I don't have flood insurance, because in my part of the Vegas valley, it would be a 10K year event for me to flood, given the massive and deep culvert* about 5 football fields from my house, and also all the houses on my street are built above street level, for drainage purposes.

That said? In different parts of my valley, it really is a necessity, even as much as the valley has done for flood control. And given where I'm seriously considering retiring, I'll totally be getting it.

Back to California, as these sorts of storms become more common with climate change? Yes, everybody who's not east of the High Sierra needs to consider it.

*Said culvert is as wide as a 2 lane street and deep enough to put a 2 story house in. There's also a 30 foot (9M) elevation gain between my house and the top of the culvert, so yes, if flooded hard enough to overtop that? Holy. Shitballs.

Also, I will say that my greater metro area makes national or international news about every 5 to 10 years for flooding. The floods happen in areas where the flood control hasn't been completed, or on the Vegas Strip, which, some 60 years ago was built over the top of the wash that funnels water through that part of the valley -- at the place where it formed a sort of internal delta, so it was deceptive just how much water came through when it poured rain. The first 2 floors of the LINQ parking garage are considered a part of the flood control district, and every local knows that when it rains, you don't go there.

The flood control district would dearly love to demolish that parking garage and install the drainage that is needed, but the property owners don't want to sell, eminent domain would be astounding, and attempts to partner the cost of a demo and rebuild have never succeeded. ~sigh~

[thewayne]

We live at 9,000', in the middle of a national forest and literally on the top of a mountain.  There are few places in town higher than ours.  We should have flood insurance, but don't.  We live in a manufactured house, so all the plumbing is beneath and accessible.  Yeah, the insurance is basically for catastrophic water damage, which the California floods certainly fall under!

[thewayne]

The worst part of that is the gov't allowing them to rebuild in the same damn place, in the flood plain, year after year!  A lot of state and local governments are now buying out those areas to prevent them from being repeatedly flooded and destroyed and costing tax money.

[acelightning73]

After Superstorm Sandy, many people in the NY metropolitan area found out why they should have had flood insurance. I think if you have renters insurance that includes your landlord's flood insurance. We had to buy more insurance to qualify for a loan to rebuild and re-furnish the house. (The landlord's insurance paid for the kitchen appliances.)

[thewayne]

If I lived in a coastal area, especially if I was very close to sea level, guaranteed I'd carry flood insurance!  Nowdays it's more a question of when, not if, you'll need it.

[disneydream06]

That is so true.
The Feds need to say, Enough is Enough. :o

[acelightning73]

Even though the waters of Raritan Bay are kept in place by a seawall at the end of my street, the storm surge was higher than the wall - there were water stains on my interior walls at shoulder height on me, and I'm 5'3". When we moved here, I didn't even think about how close we were to the water's edge; I grew up on Long Island, and we always had one fairly intense hurricane every year. But in order to get a FEMA loan to help recovery, we had to get renters insurance that includes flood insurance. And our landlord's insurance got us new kitchen appliances (and new floor tiles and lower cabinets) - and the landlord's mother (a woman close to my age) helped him pick out what she though I would like. She got it right - she remembered how fond I am of stainless steel, and all the appliances have stainless steel fronts, which makes it hard to keep my fridge magnets from falling off.

[silveradept]

I knew that flood insurance was an additional rider, but I hadn't realized that it was non-specific to weather events but instead to cover any and all water damage. That makes it a more interesting choice to talk about with an agent since I live in a place that gets a lot of rain, and sometimes very heavy rain.

[thewayne]

Yep.  It'd also help you if your roof was surreptitiously leaking on you.  I think it also gives you add'l protection for your goods if water-damaged, but I may not be accurate on that.