Debby Damage: $10B Now Occurred In Areas
As Hurricane Debby made its way across the Southeast last week, it left behind billions of dollars’ worth of damage; these losses were all the more tragic because it’s possible that a large number of them were insurance.
According to a new research from nonprofit First Street Foundation, more than three-quarters of the homes damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Debby were located in areas where flood insurance is not needed.
This is because an estimated $12.3 billion in damage from the slow-moving storm occurred in areas outside of the Flood Zones designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), accounting for approximately $10 billion of that total.
Where homeowners are legally obligated to buy flood insurance is determined by FEMA’s flood maps; this financial safeguard is becoming more and more important to protect families from catastrophic losses as the nation’s flood risk increases.
However, FEMA’s maps have changed more slowly than the area at danger of catastrophic flooding as a result of climate change brought on by the combustion of fossil fuels.
More than 25% of government flood maps are from the 1970s or 1980s, and more than 75% are older than five years.
This is mostly because Congress has been dreading the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which is the country’s flood insurer of last resort, for 27 years in a row.
The program has only been renewed for brief, one-year intervals since the 1990s, as opposed to the five years specified by statute, which also mandates that the maps be updated every five years.
Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), a fervent supporter of the program, denounced “a pattern that has put the NFIP repeatedly at risk of lapse throughout the years” when the most recent short-term extension passed in 2023.
In 2019, Waters was successful in getting legislation out of the House Financial Services Committee that would have extended the program’s five-year authorization; however, the proposal was not approved by the House or the Senate.
The failure’s causes are multifaceted. But, an analysis published in the Journal of Public and International Affairs discovered that the main cause of it is opposition from municipalities in floodplains and real estate developers who are unwilling to see premiums increase.
Debby Damage: $10B Now Occurred In Areas
According to a 2014 Cambridge University survey of the program, this resistance has resulted from a federally subsidized population boom along the coast that has “created wealth” but also “placed vastly more people and more property in previously undeveloped floodplains and hurricane zones and into harm’s way.”
For instance, a 2020 First Street analysis discovered that 6 million Americans were probably living in the “hundred year flood zone” without ever realizing it.
This is a region where people had a 1% annual probability of having at least one foot of water in their homes.
According to a 2023 Congressional Budget Office assessment, by the middle of the next century, flood damage to residences with mortgages that are partially or fully backed by the federal government will surpass $250 billion.
The discrepancy between the official maps and the perceived risk in some flood-prone areas caused officials to essentially discard the federal flood maps.
Debby Damage: $10B Now Occurred In Areas
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