July 05, 2006
Flood insurance, FEMA flood maps - News
Reading about flooding and home insurance lately the first thought I had was - "Do I need homeowners insurance or just flood insurance for my home?" The article points out that Ninety percent of all natural disasters in the U.S. involve flooding. Ninety-nine percent of the homeowners policies do not cover flood damage to the home or the contents.
Flood insurance numbers: The maximum amount per home of flood insurance that a homeowner can buy under the N.F.I.P. is $250,000 but $250,000 is not always enough. The owner of the larger homes can buy an excess flood policy to cover the full amount. The average cost of policies countrywide as of June 2005 was $446.00. The cost of the cheapest type of flood policy is $112.
FEMA has posted new satellite-generated flood maps post Katrina for Jefferson, Orleans, upper Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes online. Diana Herrera, a FEMA natural hazards program specialist, said the maps were hand-delivered to the four parishes before being posted online. FEMA planned no public notice of the new resource on its Web site.
Maps appeared online without any publicity but why was this so? Maybe because it’s not going to be very helpful for regular homeowners - "They're useful for land surveyors and city planners and code enforcement agencies, but the average person isn't going to know what to make of it," said Michael Centineo, New Orleans' safety and permits director. "It's hard to explain to them that unless they get a survey, there's no way to know how high they need to build."
Now moving on to California - The Federal Emergency Management Agency is slated to release a new set of flood maps in early October that could force Central Valley cities to spend millions on repairing local levees to keep every homeowner in town from having to spend roughly $1,200 a year on mandatory flood insurance. This is making things uncomfortable for lawmakers here as they are facing elections and they have promptly asked FEMA to delay the release as it could influence the election result.
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