Flood Insurance

Why do I need flood insurance if I live on a hill and will never get flooded?

Floods can occur in any area, although to varying degrees. If you live on a hill or in an area that has never been flooded, your risk may be significantly reduced, but it is not eliminated.

Flooding can be caused by heavy rains, melting snow, inadequate drainage systems, failed protective devices such as levees and dams, as well as by tropical storms and hurricanes. Please make an informed decision about the flood risks you face before deciding not to purchase flood insurance. Talk to your agent for additional details – you may qualify for a Preferred Risk Policy (a lower-cost flood insurance policy).

Why do I need flood insurance, even though my community has never been flooded?

Flooding occurs in moderate-to-low risk areas as well as in high-risk areas. Poor drainage systems, rapid accumulation of rainfall, snowmelt, and broken water mains can all result in flood. Properties on a hillside can be damaged by mudflow, a covered peril under the Standard Flood Insurance Policy. Structures located in high-risk flood areas have a significant chance (26 percent) of suffering flood damage during the term of a 30-year mortgage. In a high-risk area, your home is more than twice as likely to be damaged by a flood than by fire. For these reasons, flood insurance is required by law for buildings in high-risk flood areas as a condition of receiving a mortgage from a federally regulated or insured lender.

(Please include the hyperlinks as indicated below as copied from the Big I’s website)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has released a 3-minute video to help the public better understand the basics of the National Flood Insurance Program.

The video covers several topics, including mitigation, flood insurance rate maps, floodplain management and how flood insurance works in conjunction with the NFIP. There is also mention of some important mitigation tools like flood vents and building above the base flood elevation (BFE).

Building above the BFE is an important topic, especially with the rebuilding efforts following Superstorm Sandy and use of advisory base flood elevations (ABFE) shown on new maps. 

Building above the BFE or with ABFE may seem like a difficult process, but the benefits cannot be ignored.

Consider the O’Grady family. As they began building in Atlantic Beach, N.Y., they were told that they could not build the main floor of their home because of new local building codes that would require them to elevate their home at least to the BFE. Thomas O’Grady begrudgingly complied with the local and state regulations, but after Sandy hit, he said he was thankful that he had done so. In a FEMA video, he notes his neighbors had some four feet of water in their basements after Sandy, while his “house escaped, basically.”