Homeowners affected by Hurricane Helene must rebuild without insurance

A week after Hurricane Helene devastated the southeastern United States, hard-pressed homeowners are wondering how to pay for flood damage from one of the deadliest storms to hit the continent. recent history.

The Category 4 storm that hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on September 26 dumped trillions of gallons of water on several states, leaving a trail of catastrophic destruction that stretched hundreds of miles inland. More than 200 people died in the deadliest hurricane to hit the continental United States since Katrina, according to statistics from the National Hurricane Center.

Western North Carolina and the Asheville area were hit particularly hard, with floods destroying buildings, roads, utilities and land in ways no one expected, much less prepared for. for

Rural areas of parts of Georgia and Tennessee were also washed out. The Oak Forest neighborhood in south Asheville lives up to its name, with trees towering over 1960s ranch-style homes on large lots. But on September 27, as the remnants of Helene swept across western North Carolina, many trees fell, sometimes landing on homes.

Julianne Johnson said she was coming up from the basement to help her 5-year-old son pick up clothes that day when her husband started yelling that a large oak tree was falling across the yard. . The tree almost lost the house, but it still crushed part of a metal porch and damaged the roof. Then her basement flooded, Johnson said.

On Friday, a blue tarp was held on the brick roof. The soft carpet that the family had torn up was lying on the side of the house, waiting to be sent to landfill. Without cell phone service or Internet access, Johnson said she was unable to file a claim with her homeowner’s insurance until four days after the storm.

“It took me a while to make that call,” she said. I don’t have a claim tool yet.”

Getting by without flood insurance

Roof and tree damage is likely to be covered by the average home insurance policy. But like many homeowners, Ms. Johnson doesn’t have flood insurance and doesn’t know how to pay for that portion of the damage.

Those recovering from the storm may be surprised to learn that flood damage is an entirely different matter. Insurance professionals and experts have long warned that homeowner’s insurance does not usually cover flood damage to the home, even though they contend that flooding can happen anywhere. is it raining

Of course, flooding is not limited to sea water entering the ground – it also includes river bank water, as well as mudslides and heavy rains.

However, most private insurance companies do not offer flood insurance, meaning that the National Flood Insurance Program operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the primary provider of this coverage for locations- residence Congress created the federal flood insurance program more than 50 years ago, when many private insurers stopped offering policies in high-risk areas.

According to the most recent FEMA data, North Carolina has 129,933 flood insurance policies, although most of those protections are likely to be located along the coast rather than in the Blue Ridge Mountains region, where Helene the biggest damage. In comparison, Florida has about 1.7 million flood insurance policies statewide.

Charlotte Hicks, a North Carolina flood insurance specialist who has led flood risk education and training for the state’s insurance department, explained that the reality is that many survivors of the Helene floods will never be compensated. Without flood insurance, some people may be able to rebuild with the help of charities, but most will have to fend for themselves.

“There are definitely going to be people who are going to be financially devastated by this event,” said Charlotte Hicks. It’s heartbreaking.”

Risks of bankruptcy or seizure

Some may face lock or break. All the neighborhoods may never be rebuilt. There was water damage everywhere, Ms. Hicks said, and for some, mudslides were even washing away the land their homes once stood on.

In the meantime, Helene is proving to be a disaster for the private home insurance market, as these plans usually only cover wind damage from hurricanes.

It is a relief for the region, which is under increasing pressure from other increasingly intense weather disasters, such as wildfires and tornadoes. Nowhere in the private market is the decline due to climate instability more evident than in Florida, where many companies have stopped selling insurance policies, meaning the Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, sponsored by the state, is the largest home insurer in the state.

Mark Friedlander, a spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group, called Helene a “manageable loss event” and estimates that insurers’ losses will be between about $5 billion and $8 billion. This compares to insured losses from Category 4 Hurricane Ian in September 2022, which was estimated at more than US$50 billion.

Mr. Friedlander and other experts say less than 1 percent of inland areas that suffered the most catastrophic flood damage were covered by flood insurance.