By the time many homeowners realize they need flood insurance, it’s too late. And for tens of thousands in North Carolina and across the Southeast, it’s too late.
Only about 2% of residences in the 100 counties hit hardest by Hurricane Helene-related power outages were protected by flood insurance, according to an NBC News analysis of Census Bureau data, PowerOutage.us data and National Flood Insurance Program policy data that the insurance company Neptune Flood collected.
While many coastal counties have larger shares of residences with flood insurance, coverage in inland counties is rare. Less than 1% of the North Carolina counties hardest hit by Helene were covered — and in South Carolina, it was even less, 0.3%.
The NFIP, managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is the country’s leading provider of flood insurance, accounting for more than 95% of the flood insurance policies nationwide.
“The horror stories I hear are the people whose houses were flooded out. [They] don’t have an NFIP policy, don’t have a Neptune policy, and their homeowners insurance will not cover the risk of flooding,” said Trevor Burgess, the CEO of Neptune Flood, who lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. “These people are just left with a complete loss.”
And with losses like that, “it creates this sort of spiral of economic hardship that is very difficult for all but the wealthy to recover from,” Burgess said. “It lays bare the haves and have-nots.”
FEMA does provide some assistance to those affected by floods who don’t have flood insurance, but payments are a small fraction of the average claim payment for those with federal flood insurance.
Across the Southeastern states of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, about 5% of residences have flood insurance, mainly along the coast.
Most homeowners insurance policies don’t cover floods, but many homeowners don’t know that, Burgess said.
“The No. 1 reason [people don’t buy flood insurance] is that people mistakenly think that they’re not in a high-risk flood zone, that they don’t need it,” Burgess said. “No. 2 is confusion, that they believe that their homeowners insurance covers the risk of flooding when it does not. And No. 3 is the cost.”
