Posted on 12/10/2017 5:34:53 AM PST by Elderberry
The National Flood Insurance Program, designed to protect Americans from catastrophic floods, has failed in almost every way, encouraging people to buy and build in flood-prone areas while increasing the cost and magnitude of disasters.
Congress' efforts to reform the program have failed just as thoroughly.
Attempts to fix flood insurance have been derailed repeatedly by special interests, political expediency and powerful lobbies that have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into congressional campaigns, a three-month examination by the Houston Chronicle reveals. Banks, builders, insurers and real estate agents — supported by property owners and allies in Congress —have combined to thwart even the most practical changes.
Earlier this year, for example, a proposal to stop the federal government from insuring homes built in flood plains beginning in 2021 was scuttled by coastal lawmakers and the National Association of Home Builders, which spent $39 million lobbying Congress since 2005.
The impact of Congress' failure is undisputed. The National Flood Insurance Program was supposed to discourage development in flood-prone areas, but new development has spread across flood plains, including thousands of homes in the Houston area that flooded during Hurricane Harvey.
(Excerpt) Read more at houstonchronicle.com ...
Big flood plain in my county. Houses are rebuilt elevated.
Elevated works.
Her house made it thru OK.
Well if Houstonians should not be allowed to build in flood plains then should Californians be not allowed to build in “smog traps” (inversion layer basins) or wild fire areas? Let’s take Amsterdam which has dikes to prevent the flooding; or take Palm Springs/Coachella Valley, California that has “dry” flood channels that sit dormant almost always except for the rare flash flood event. Not all of Houston is a flood zone. Perhaps it needs to invest in a giant grid of flood channels to take rain water to the sea quickly. Just as smog aggregates in inversion layer basins in Los Angeles, flood waters aggregate in impervious clay soils of Houston. But then everyone should have to pay for such a flood channel grid not just the insured because there is no way to mitigate the effects of flood without passing it to one’s neighbors.
Insuring people against financial losses is not an enumerated power of the Federal Government.
End it entirely.
L
My father-in-law has lived in his home in North Central Florida since 1967. He is nowhere near any body of water. He is also over 50 miles from the west coast of Florida, and 80 miles from the east coast of Florida. Many times over the years there have been times of high rainfall. There had never been any problem, the rain percolated into the soil rapidly.
In 2004 two days after the last storm had passed over the area, and two days after the last rainfall, someone uphill released water. It flowed about a mile to the lowest point it could find, forming a wave of water and crossing a least one paved street. The lowest point unfortunately was my father-in-law’s home (30” inside the house). The area went from dry to over 30” in the home within 45 minutes. Within two hours the water dropped a foot, and by the next morning, except for puddles in the home, the area was dry. The insurance company took the position that it was a flood and hence they owed him nothing.
Although the city and county got into a legal argument about who had swamped the city's pumping station (located outside the city limits), by pumping water off a major roadway, no took responsibility for the home’s flooding. The king can do no wrong.
He struggled to restore his home, but even then one of the rooms had paneling that couldn't be matched. they dried as much as they could and moved back in.
For over a year he tried to get flood insurance. The powers that be said he was not in a flood zone, and could not get it. Finally he was able to get flood insurance and paid it from approximately 2006 until November 2016. The premium was about $500 per year. In November of 2016 the insurance rate was raise to $2,500 per year. He took the position that he was never flooded in the first place, and that the county/state/city had release water, and canceled the insurance.
This year on September 11th, after the rains had stopped from Irma, he was sitting on his porch, when his next door neighbor came running across the yard letting him know a wave of water was on its way. This time about a foot of water ended up in the house. He ended up getting his truck stuck in the yard and had to hitchhike to his church. Again, the next morning the water had drained.
Again, no one wants to take responsibility for releasing the water, and insurance again took the position that he was flooded. The company did replace his roof. He now again has a shell of a house with walls cut out.
Little by little family and friends have worked at cleaning out the house and putting up drywall. The painting starts soon. He salvaged what he could in 2004, but this time after a second inundation, with threat of mold, very little furniture is left, and he’s homeless until at least January. He is living with us until then.
There was a large county commission meeting last week on “flood mitigation”, but after all was said and done, there is no hope, and no money, for help in alleviating the problem. The only possibility is grants but is “a least a decade away”. His home, along with his neighbors, has now been noted on county maps as a flooded area, and prone to flooding in the future, but are listed as #12 on a list of 14 in order of importance for funding.
He’s 87 and a Korean War Vet, He loves his home and doesn’t want to leave it.
Again, flood insurance is important. If you can get it do so, because regular insurance won’t protect you from other people decisions about where water should be released.
For a calm flood, yes. But for a moving body of water with heavy debris, those piers can be struck and topple the home into the water. Yikes!
I don’t understand. We live in a “floodway”, which is a step better than flood plain. When we moved in 11 years ago, the flood insurance was $500 per year, and was increasing dramatically. We flooded 2 years in, while we were permitting to have the house raised. If we had not raised, premiums would have been over $5,000 per year now(they are at about $500 still, but we only have a garage at ground level ... and can move things up quickly and take the cars a few blocks away).
How come the repetitive loss houses in Houston are still at $500 when we’re paying $500 for just replacing uninsulated drywall? I can replace it myself for less than the cost of the required annual premium. And we have not flooded in the interim 9 years anyway.
Whew! OK, thanks. I love a happy ending, when it’s finally told. :-)
That's actually not true. Let's say you have 10,000 square feet of property. If there's a foot of rain, that's 10k cubic feet of water to pass on. But if there was a property tax or other incentive you could build a 50 by 10 by 10 dry reservoir and keep half of it. Retaining 1/2 your water is more than enough, even 1/4 would be enough.
There would be some details to resolve like how to build a deep sunken patio and keep it dry, or a deep natural area with plants that survive underwater or dry.
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