Millions of California Flood Victims Not Covered by Insurance

Many of the residents whose homes were damaged by the deadly storms now battering Southern California aren’t covered by insurance, according to the latest data on coverage in the Golden State.

Standard homeowners’ policies in California do not cover losses due to flood damage. And in a state traditionally prone to devastating wildfires rather than heavy rains and where many are struggling to find private insurers willing to cover their homes, most residents aren’t willing to spend more on flood insurance when the risk seems so low.

The storm that hit Southern California on Monday left 710,000 people temporarily without power on the evening of the same day, according to the Associated Press, and dumped a record level of rain in the area. Officials have so far reported three deaths in Northern California that they attributed to the storms.

The latest numbers from the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), a part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that covers flood damage, show only 52,820 homes and businesses in the eight Southern California counties where a state of emergency has been proclaimed are covered by flood insurance, writes the Los Angeles Times. These include Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

That means that less than 1 percent of the 7.7 million households in these counties would be able to make damage claims for the storms of the past few days, writes CNN Business.

Those who will be able to make a claim, on the other hand, might not have all their losses covered; the NFIP policy has a limit of covering only $250,000 in damage to the building and $100,000 to personal property inside the home. Mudslides—if the wet ground is moving under a home’s foundations—and landslides are also not covered by flood insurance.

Videos from Southern California shared on social media show cars buried under the mud, while people work to remove the debris.

One clip shared by Tanner Charles, who describes himself as a “storm chaser from Minnesota,” shows a house that was destroyed by a mudslide in the early hours of Monday in Beverly Glen, Los Angeles.

The situation is very similar at the state-level. There are only 190,000 flood policies in California, writes the LA Times, out of the more than 4.6 million in the entire country, which is about 4 percent. Newsweek contacted NFIP for comment by email on Tuesday morning.

While the risk of extreme weather events like flooding becoming more frequent and more severe has increased with climate change, NFIP remains expensive—with an average policy of about $866 annually, according to POLITICO—and, crucially, it’s not required for any federally backed mortgage in California.

Californians are already struggling with home insurance hikes due to the increased risk of wildfires. It has led several private insurers to announce they will stop offering new policies in the state. Many who have found themselves unable to find coverage through the traditional market have taken policies with the California FAIR Plan, the state’s fire insurer of last resort.