Florida – Membrane.com

If you purchase real estate in a flood plain and obtain a mortgage, you will be required to purchase flood insurance.

Roy Wright oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) National Flood Insurance Program. In a presentation to the Insurance-& Risk-Linked Securities Conference, Wright said to forget about checking the flood plain maps and check your drivers license. “If it says Florida, you need flood insurance.” FEMA is examining properties on coasts and in flood plains that have been repeatedly rebuilt “that we probably shouldn’t be providing coverage on.”

The Miami Herald reported:

The national flood insurance program is now $20 billion in debt, largely because of Irma and other catastrophic storms like Harvey. Wright, during a break in the insurance conference, sat down with the Miami Herald to outline a plan to stabilize a troubled federal program vital to Florida’s real estate industry. It includes ambitious goals to double enrollment over the next five years amid a major makeover that will include more aggressive purchases of re-insurance and catastrophe bonds.

By law, only homes with federally-backed mortgages in high-risk zones are required to have insurance.

The National Flood Insurance Program provides nearly three times the number of policies in Florida as any other state.

National Flood Insurance Program

In the lead-up to Irma, an Associated Press analysis found that the number of Florida homes covered in high-risk areas had dropped by 15 percent in the previous five years. Fewer than half in hazard zones were protected from flood damage.

Wright blamed the problem partly on flood maps that, like hurricane tracking maps, can mislead homeowners on actual risks.

“We really gotta help people move beyond and quit focusing just on the lines,” he said. “Because nature, the day it rains, pays no attention to the lines.”

By contrast, when Harvey slammed the Texas coast, the national flood program insured 70 percent of the homes in moderate flood zones in Harris County. After the storm passed, 60 percent of the claims came from those moderate zones, proof that storms don’t always follow the contours of a flood map, Wright said.

“That’s true in areas of Florida as well,” he said.

The BBC reports, a British aid charity is warning that by 2060 more than a billion people worldwide will live in cities at risk of catastrophic flooding as a result of climate change. A study by Christian Aid says the US, China and India are among the countries most threatened. It says the Indian cities of Kolkata and Mumbai will be most at risk.

The eight most vulnerable cities on the list are all in Asia, followed by Miami in the US. The report urges governments to take action to reduce global warming and invest in disaster reduction programs.

Dr Alison Doig, the report’s author, told the BBC World Service that people living in large coastal cities were particularly at risk.

“I think it’s cities like Kolkata, Dakar, the big mega-cities of the south and the emerging economies where the people are most vulnerable to exposure to sea-level rises and to higher rain events,” she said.

“Flooding in these cities can cause massive damage, but can also threaten life.”

“The whole of Florida is totally vulnerable,” she said.

“It is so low-lying, it is virtually swampland reclaimed. So significant climate change… raising water half to a full metre this century, will take out an awful lot of Florida and a significant amount of Miami.”

The study says that the priority should be to rapidly reduce carbon emissions and limit temperature increase by switching from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy.

It says vulnerable communities must be helped by better protecting homes and livelihoods.

The study also calls for international systems to help communities recover from devastating storms and floods.

Dr Doig warned that Florida was likely to suffer extensive flooding.

Tag: Florida

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