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It's flood season again.
Hurricane season started June 1, and coastal dwellers
are buying batteries and stocking up on bungee cords.
But don't dismiss the risk of flooding if your home
isn't near the shore. Witness recent events throughout the Northeast,
where thousands of people were forced to evacuate their homes due
to rising river waters. Normally high and dry parts of Maryland,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Washington, D.C., were
inundated.
Floods happen in all 50 states, according to the Federal
Insurance Administration. FIA says 25 percent of all flood insurance
claims occur in areas that have a low or moderate flood risk.
Standard homeowners insurance doesn't cover flooding,
but a survey, conducted for the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies
by Opinion Research Corp., found that only 14 percent of Americans
have purchased a flood insurance policy on their principal residence.
It's an oversight that could cost you big time. An
inland flash flood can bring a wall of water 10 feet high. Less
than an inch of water in the basement will ruin flooring and damage
vital home systems. Less than two feet in the driveway can carry
away your car.
The National Flood Insurance Program was set up in
1968 to help homeowners in flood-vulnerable areas get flood insurance
at a reasonable rate. It operates within the Federal Emergency Management
Agency but is sold and serviced by private insurers. Homeowners
with federally insured mortgages must purchase it. Others who live
in vulnerable areas can buy it.
Right now, the flood insurance program is under congressional
scrutiny. So far, it has $24 billion in claims from hurricanes Katrina
and Rita, with more expected to trickle in. That's more than the
total of all claims paid in the history of the program.
Congress is currently retooling flood insurance in
order to help keep it solvent. Versions have passed both the Senate
and the House, but a compromise is still in the making. The bill,
undoubtedly, will pass soon, because additional borrowing power
to pay the 2005 hurricane claims hinges on that.
But if flooding might be in your future, don't wait
around for Congress to act. A flood policy takes 30 days to go into
effect. Buy today and the policy will begin to cover your property
in a month.
Meanwhile, if you don't have a policy, there are some
things to consider.
Flood facts
Flood insurance isn't mandatory for very many people. Generally,
the only borrowers now required to buy flood insurance by their
mortgage companies are those living in high-risk, 1-in-100-year
flood zones whose loans are federally backed.
A misnomer of sorts, the "1-in-100-year flood
zone" simply means that a flood has a 1 percent chance of occurring
in any given year. But the chances of a loss occurring over a 10-
or 20-year period increase dramatically. For instance, the chance
of having a 1-in-100-year loss over a 10-year period is more than
9 percent. Over a 20-year period, that probability jumps to about
18 percent, according to AIR Worldwide Corp., a risk-modeling company
that helps clients manage the financial impact of catastrophes and
weather. Over the life of a 30-year mortgage, there's a 26 percent
chance of a flood occurring in such a zone.
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