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.
What the fuck about it?
According to NOAA, the total cost of property damage for all tornadoes in 2022 was $700 million.
The damage cost from just Helene is estimated to be $47 billion.
Hurricanes are significantly more destructive than tornadoes.
There’s no place on earth that doesn’t suffer from natural disasters, and it’s foolish to compare hurricanes to the rest. Wildfires can be mitigated somewhat, and earthquakes aren’t predictable, neither of which are true about hurricanes. But hurricanes are going to get more destructive and more frequent as the climate warms, so rebuilding where they’re going to predictably continue to hit is just foolish.
What about that too? If people want to continue to build on the path of hurricanes, let them. Just stop using taxpayer money to bail them out.
OK, you’re the one that sounded like you wanted to move everyone. And I don’t think when natural disasters continue to get worse that it’s going to be just hurricanes causing mass destruction. We are eventually going to have the rise of sea levels coming into play, which will of course increase the destruction those hurricanes can create, but also the more water a hurricane like Milton spawning larger tornadoes has to move around inland.
Your stance that its OK for taxpayers to pay $2.5 million per tornado, but hurricane survivors should be on their own sounds kinda hypocritical.