How much do you really know about your flood risk? Hurricane Ida showed how more people are at risk of flooding than we thought. One inch of floodwater can cause as much as $25,000 in damage.
As remnants of Hurricane Ida passed over the mid-Atlantic region Wednesday, they unleashed a deluge of record-breaking rain.
The situation and future projections were so dire that entire neighborhoods on coastal Staten Island took advantage of a New York State program to sell their homes and move elsewhere, allowing the state to turn the land into unpopulated flood protections zones, rather than pay the costs of rebuilding over and over.
Nevertheless, newer flood zone maps for the five boroughs, the most recent being a 2015 preliminary FEMA map, did not include many of the inland areas that found themselves underwater thanks to Ida’s pounding from above. And property owners, many of whom were likely caught off-guard by the sheer possibility of such a storm, will be left footing the bill.
One of the primary uses for FEMA’s maps is to designate in what areas homeowners with certain mortgage must purchase flood insurance. There are multiple types of flood zones, labeled with letters. A and V zones are the most at-risk regions, where this insurance is required. A zones cover areas near lakes, rivers, streams or other bodies of water, while V zones cover beachfront locations.
“Every time they redraw a map, they’re redrawing it to today’s specifications — they’re looking at the recent past and the impact of climate change on flood risk to this point,” Lopes said. This has created a situation where there is a divide between property prices and insurance rates. One inch of floodwater can cause as much as $25,000 in damage to a home, yet people in the most threatened parts of the country will pay the most for insurance. “The bottom line is that if you live in a flood zone, you are going to pay more for your home insurance,” said Gareth Hedges, director of P&C Operations at Policygenius, a website where consumers can compare insurance rates.
“To most people, that sounds like something that only happens once every 100 years,” Lopes said. In reality, a 100-year storm is referring the probability of such a storm happening. It means that there’s a 1% chance of a storm of that intensity happening in any given year — and not that once it happens the area won’t see another storm like it for another 99 years.
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