In this difficult age of climate change and sea level rise, one fact is now very clear: Fewer Floridians are entirely safe from the flooding caused by a hurricane.
Consider the soggy reach of Hurricane Ian, a Category 4 storm that killed at least 127 people during its slow march through Florida last month. Ian’s winds were formidable. But its primary weapon was water, with much of the damage happening far away from where the storm came ashore near Fort Myers.
Parts of the Florida Keys were swamped by seawater that flooded homes and destroyed apartments. Across the state in Orlando, the storm dropped almost 2 feet of rain, overwhelming stormwater and sewage systems. Officials say at least 3,000 buildings were damaged in inland Polk County. Another 4,000 structures were flooded in Volusia County, along Florida’s east coast. St. Augustine took a hit. So did homeowners in Hardee County.
But too few residents have the kind of insurance that will allow them to rebuild. Standard storm insurance covers mostly wind damage. You need a separate flood policy from the federal government or a private insurer to cover the ocean surges and flash floods that cause much of the damage in a major hurricane.
Earlier this month, property data and analytics provider CoreLogic estimated insured and uninsured losses from wind and flooding for Hurricane Ian at between $41 billion and $70 billion. Insured losses are estimated at between $31 billion and $53 billion. That leaves billions of dollars in property damage that wasn’t insured, much of it lost to flooding.
In coastal Lee County — where Ian made landfall and at least 58 people died — only one-quarter of single-family homes are covered by federal flood insurance. The percentages get even lower as you move inland.
About 4 percent of single-family homes in Seminole County are covered by flood insurance, according to the Insurance Information Institute. In Polk County, it’s about 2 percent. In total, only 18.5 percent of the homes in Florida counties that ordered evacuations for Ian have flood insurance.
While discouraging, the numbers aren’t hard to understand. Floridians already pay three times the national average to buy property insurance. A flood insurance policy would cost the average homeowner an additional $1,000 annually, according to data from Forbes. That’s just the average. Homeowners in flood-prone areas could easily pay three or four times that amount.
And flood insurance isn’t mandatory. Though most people can buy it, it is required on government-backed mortgages for properties the Federal Emergency Management Agency deems highest risk. Many banks require it in high-risk zones, too. But some homeowners drop it once they pay off their mortgage.
That’s a bad idea. The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that even an inch of water in an average home can cause $25,000 in damage. Without flood insurance, property owners have to tap their own savings to rebuild. Federal assistance payments can help people get back on their feet, but they rarely cover anything close to the full cost of repairing or replacing a flooded home. In fact, the typical Individual Assistance grant awarded by FEMA is between $3,000 and $6,000, according to the agency. In contrast, a policy with the National Flood Insurance Program will pay up to $250,000 to cover damaged property and another $100,000 for possessions. The national program is far from perfect, but it protects properties at risk of flooding a lot better than crossing your fingers.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis characterized Ian’s impact as a “500-year flood event.” That won’t be true in the future, not when climate change is turning the Gulf of Mexico into a warm bathtub every summer.
In these difficult times, the last thing anyone wants is another sizable expense. But after seeing thousands of fellow Floridians lose everything to Hurricane Ian — with no insurance to make them whole — it’s time to ask yourself:
What’s your price tag for peace of mind?
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Editorials are the institutional voice of the Tampa Bay Times. The members of the Editorial Board are Editor of Editorials Graham Brink, Sherri Day, Sebastian Dortch, John Hill, Jim Verhulst and Chairman and CEO Conan Gallaty. Follow @TBTimes_Opinion on Twitter for more opinion news.
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