Posted on 10/02/22
| News Source: Bloomberg
Deborah Palmer let the flood-insurance policy on her Florida preschool lapse when it was forced to close during the pandemic two years ago and never gave it a thought. Until Hurricane Ian.
As the monster storm bore down on Florida’s western coast this week, the 71-year-old fled her home in Venice to shelter in the former school, situated in a less vulnerable neighborhood. While winds howled and rain thundered down, “I thought, ‘Great move, genius, dropping flood insurance when the biggest storm in a century is coming through,'” she said. “I really gambled.”
A majority of Florida homeowners caught in the hurricane’s path now face rebuilding without the benefit of flood insurance — and some might not even realize they’re uncovered.
Ian made landfall in Florida Wednesday with 150-mile (241 kilometers) per-hour winds and a swell of seawater that inundated Naples, Fort Myers and other cities. Damage estimates quickly began climbing, with at least one reaching $100 billion. The latest projection for insured losses from risk modeler Karen Clark & Co. is almost $63 billion.
Only 18% of all Florida homes — of which there more than 10 million, per census data — have flood insurance, according to the Insurance Information Institute. And some property owners harbor the misconception that policies protecting against damage from wind and rain will also apply to losses brought on by rising water.
“Many homeowners in hurricane-prone states assume they have flood coverage because they have hurricane coverage,” said Mark Friedlander, a spokesman for the institute. “Many do not understand there’s a difference between windstorm coverage, which is in your homeowner’s policy, and flood coverage.”
The confusion arises in part from the way flood insurance is handled in the U.S.