Politico — Ian will 'financially ruin' homeowners and insurers

Flooded homes are shown in Port Charlotte after Hurricane Ian moved through the Gulf Coast of Florida. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

Oct 1, 2022

By Thomas Frank — The storm inundated the homes of thousands of Floridians who don't have flood insurance, exposing weaknesses in the nation's effort to address the rising costs of extreme weather.

Hurricane Ian is expected to financially ruin countless people in Florida whose homes were not covered by flood insurance when the storm inundated the region with powerful ocean surges and damaging downpours.

The personal financial losses are a reflection of Ian’s intensity and the fact that millions of Americans nationwide haven’t bought flood insurance. The federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program — the dominant source of flood coverage in the U.S. — protects only a tiny fraction of homeowners, almost all of them in coastal areas.

Ian’s web of damage was unusually widespread as the hurricane drove storm surge onto coastal areas and triggered river overflows and flash flooding across inland Florida, where almost nobody has flood insurance.

President Joe Biden declared nine counties disaster areas Thursday, making residents eligible for federal aid to pay for minor home repairs, short-term housing and other emergency costs.

But of the 1.8 million households in those nine counties, only 29 percent have federal flood insurance, according to an analysis of government records by POLITICO’s E&E News.

That leaves 1.3 million households at ground zero without federal flood coverage.

In Hardee County, only 100 households have federal flood insurance — out of 8,000 households in the county.

That’s a 1.3 percent coverage rate.

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