Factoid: Who's Stupidly Not Getting Flood Insurance?

A lot of the commenters who seem indisposed to sympathize with the plight of New Orleans call the citizens of that community dumb or careless for living in such a location. Yet, a New York Times story on Monday reports that:

A...study by the RAND Corporation, a research group, concluded that only about half of homeowners living in high-risk flood zones throughout the nation had flood insurance policies.

Compare this with the figures in this New Yorker blog post by the splendid reporter Dan Baum:

According to an article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune from March 19, 2006, sixty-seven per cent of New Orleanians carried flood insurance on their houses, compared with a national rate of just five per cent

Comments

[PlayaDelReySurfer]

The topics of floods and destruction are also common in Southern California these days. I live, if you can call it that, close to the southernmost edge of the next disaster, Playa Vista, CA. I spend almost every free moment thinking and writing about this place. While I write, huddled in my own self-imposed sarcophagus: a little town most of you never heard of called Westchester, California, the bells from Sacred Heart Chapel, at Loyola Marymount University just struck the hour. The campus too, sits on the bluffs overlooking Playa Vista; which sits on an ever ticking time bomb. It sits you see, on one of the largest deposits of methane gas in the country. Other claims to its geographic and geologic fame include; being built on the former site of Hughes Aircraft (just imagine the toxic waste dumped by those guys), an underground river; formerly known as Centinella Springs, a former wetland; and we all know what those are; well--wet, the former estuary of the Los Angeles River and Centinella Springs (now called Ballona Creek), an earthquake fault, and just to make their story interesting, a former Native American burial ground. It is only a "former" burial ground, because Playa Vista Corporation, and their Bluff neighbors, the Cattelus Corporation, chose to dig up the graves, and tote the former residents off in plastic buckets. What these guys can't seem to get, is that this site should never have been built on. The native American Tongva tribe that lived here for 12,000 years knew it, as did anyone who has lived through a few of our El Nino winters, when the whole area becomes a lake. And being a "lake-bed," scientifically proven to be the most susceptible to liquefaction, in the event of a large earthquake, which another group of scientists have said, absolutely, positively and irrevocably; is coming. It's coming and it is going to be a big one.

[AnOddGirl]

Harry, thanks again for fighting for us!!

For the many topics:

I had flood insurance, I still do, they paid, my homeowners (even though I have no mortgage) shafted me. I thought the percentage was higher than 67%, but then anyone can make statistics look good or bad.

I did not vote for Mitch, because it was obvious to almost ALL of us that he was running because his sister told him to. Why would he give up the cushiest job in all of LA (not L.A.) to be mayor of a town that most think shouldn't be here. (Guessing that it's one of the oldest in the US, it has no significance to the rest of America)

Nagin would have been smarter to have just said "GUMBO"

Every state - even Ohio (let's talk blizzards and I do believe ya'll have rivers thus have floods) - can have natural disasters. If it had JUST been Katrina, I would have been home in a 7 days instead of 7 months.

Let's not even talk about the 8 (or was that 800) plus million that was donated to Katrina victims, yet our government had NO CLUE how to handle the money and disburse it, so they refused it, wtf? How do you return the pennies children around the world collected? I'm appalled that my government basically slapped the world in the face by doing this.

The people who sympathize are the ones who have BEEN in our shoes. People that have lost everything due to flood, fire, earthquake, etc. To those people, I'd like to say THANKS, you will never know how much your kind words and thoughts mean to the great people of New Orleans.
To the rest of ya, kiss my lily white ass, may you never have this kind of thing happen to the people or the city you love!

[backhandpath]

Hey Harry, you are so funny! You know it didn't matter to New Orleanians whether or not they had Insurance...no body paid up! People were told to their face that this wasn't 'flood' damage. Well, ain't that a cluster-flood?

Hey and Harry!
Can you lend your satirical free speech expertise to our friends at Levees.org? It turns out that they thumped ASCE with their itty-bitty wittle funny 1 minute You Tube satire video and got threatened with a lawsuit, excommunication and goodness knows what else.
So they took down the Video!
http://noladder.blogspot.com/

Really though, can you check in wit'da folks and 'splain to them how to protect one's self from Satire Blowback???

[dd39203]

You assume that because you buy flood insurance the insurance company will pay when you have a flood.

[retreadite]

I get flooded every 6-10 years along a river in central PA. I wanna think I pay $700 p/yr for every $100K in insurance. The problem is the gov't keeps paying me after every flood to fix stuff rather than paying me (or buying my house) to leave. John Stossel addressed this same system for his house in the Outer Banks in one of his books. Harry asks "where should people live?" in a previous post and I don't have an answer, but constantly paying to fix my house (when it could flood next week) isn't the answer either.

[OhPlease2007]

Harry, I have a special place in my heart for the flood victims in New Orleans for my home was destroyed in a flood in California in the late 90's. I insisted that we get FEMA flood insurance. And thank God we were able to get FEMA to help us rebuild do to the fact that we documented the flood waters coming from 'another property', on video; had flood waters damaged our home stemming from the overflow of creek waters alongside our property, it is to our understanding that FEMA would NOT have covered us because, in that instance, it would have been deemed, 'an act of God.' Can you believe that??? Unreal.

[tootrue]

Be careful when you read statistics. So only 5% of Americans have flood insurance? OK, what percentage of Americans live in flood zones? More than 5%? More than 10%?

I don't carry flood insurance, but then, my home is on top of an hill 80 feet above the surrounding terrain. Flood insurance doesn't cover mudslides or slippage, so why would I carry it? I suspect that a great many of us live in areas that are NOT flood-prone, so be wary of these statistics.

[Ginzaman]

Here's a Katrina-related question, Harry. Have your criticisms of the neocons over Katrina or other issues (Iraq, etc.) ever cost you jobs? It seems like there's a real double standard in Hollywood. The top names (ex. Mel Gibson), can literally do or say anything they want and get away with ONLY because they've made tons of money for their studio(s). If a lower level actor does the same thing it could destroy their career. How do you cope with working in that kind of system?
HARRY ANSWERS: I do so many things to lose me jobs, my critiques hardly enter into the picture. How do I cope with working in that kind of system? Why do you think I spend so much of my time in New Orleans?

[1will]

If I had to make a guess I would say that most people living in a flood plain without flood insurance probaly live in a 100 year flood plain. It's likely this area hasn't flooded in anyone's memory. Should the worst occur and these peoples homes get flooded is the government going to step in or are they liable for their own mistake?
Contrast living somewhere that might flood every 100 years with living in a city located below sea level on the hurricane prone gulf coast. The people that call those living without flood insurance in New Orleans stupid are correct.
HARRY NOTES: More than 50% of the populated area of New Orleans is above sea level.

[Yat1954]

Harry,

Keep it up, man! There are lots of people in New Orleans itself who still believe that claptrap that the system was poorly maintained. Of course, these are the people who elected, then re-elected Nagin and Jefferson, and believe it's fine that the junior senator from Louisiana should rail about others' "moral fitness to govern" in between calls to his whores.

Jesus wept.

[luziannagirl]

Oh, yeah, and if my memory serves me correctly, the 30-yr traditional mortgage on the home we bought in the Gentilly section of New Orleans (one of the worst flooded) did NOT require federal flood insurance. I remember asking why, and someone said it was considered adequately protected by levees.

That house was a couple blocks from one of the Katrina-breached levees, about 2.5 ft off the ground. The water mark was two or three feet up the walls. Protruding from a hole in the roof was a white rag tied to a stick.

The mortgage lender still may not have required flood insurance on that place; just hope our names weren't still on the assumable loan.

I do know that for the 20-something years since, the only folks routinely broaching the subject of the need to realistically plan for the effects of hurricanes on New Orleans and other LA coastal settlements has been the science community. Dr.Sherwood Gagliano sounded the alarm over coastal land loss as far back as 1980, when I attended one of his many free public presentations. Many other scientists since have talked and presented and lectured and slide-showed and field-tripped on the issue till blue in the face, across the state and to Washington and back, but as we all know, the response was way too little, and far too late.

Or, maybe, as some have said previously in this post, that's been the plan all along.

[Ginzaman]

I'm curious what Harry thinks about people like Greg Palast covering Katrina and the aftermath? If he's such a great reporter, then how come none of the progressive media will hire him? Just out of curiousity I did some research on him. He says he's done a lot of programs for the BBC's "Panorama" program. I checked back thru their old shows and found nothing on him. I contacted the BBC's Audience Relation Section. Again, nothing. As far as I know, the BBC's doesn't hire imcompetent reporters(or foreign ones, for that matter).

Am I missing something here? Please explain.
HARRY RESPONDS: I don't know much about Greg Palast, I've read a few of his NO pieces, and, though they have some factual errors, they seemed, though clearly political, less erroneous than most of the MSM coverage, which continues, two plus years later, to say that New Orleans got whacked by a big hurricane.

[Buckzollo]

Harry I was just in the Big Easy over the weekend for my neice's baby naming. I was talking to locals about your relentless posts on behalf of the city's troubles, making sure they knew who you are. Although some did not, it certainly was timely when you turned up on the front page of Sunday's Living section. It is obvious to me that you are not doing it for the notoriety, but yeah you right all the same bra'!

[Ino]

I've paid extra for the past 12 years to have earthquake insurance on my St. Louis house. Shortly after Katrina, Allstate informed me they were dropping all earthquake coverage. Furthermore, they said NO ONE would insure my brick house for earthquake damage except some little companies who would charge me a lot for it, with a high deductible, and go belly-up if an earthquake actually hit.

But I'm sure someone will accuse me of "stupidly not getting" earthquake insurance when the New Madrid faultline I live on finally breaks apart.

[leaglebob]

The critical error in your post is equating carrying insurance with "not being stupid" but carrying insurance is one decision, and where you live is another.

For instance==I have health insurance. Smart Yes? Now--should I smoke cigarettes regularly?

Live where you want, insure what you want. Totally independent decisions, with different factors to consider. I'm very surprised flood insurance is available in New Orleans. Hope it wasn't federally guaranteed? Feds have NO BUSINESS making it cheaper for people to live where they shouldn't be.
HARRY REPLIES: All flood insurance is federal at this point. But please enlighten all of us, where should people live? You seem to know.