First Bismarck. Then Minot. Then much of America's east coast, including such far-away-from-the-ocean places as upstate New York and southern Vermont.
In city after city and region after region, residents have learned the hard way one of the central truths about flooding:
Being at "low risk" is not the same as being at "no risk."
In fact, almost a quarter of flood insurance claims come from areas of minimal risk.
In other words, you may not think your house is at risk for flooding -- but it almost certainly is.
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And as America reforms its flood insurance program, that fact must be foremost in lawmakers and taxpayers' minds.
As Sunday's editorial noted, the National Flood Insurance Program expires at the end of this month. The House has started the reform process, passing a bill that gradually will let flood-insurance premiums rise to market rates.
That'll help with half of the program's problem, which is the $17 billion debt it has incurred. Market rates should bring the premiums more in line with the payouts.
But of course, the higher rates likely will make the other set of problems worse, especially the fact that far too few people buy flood insurance. And by "far too few," we're talking about most of the households in America, some huge number of which should have flood insurance.
As tens of thousands of Americans have learned in just this year alone, the fact that a flood hasn't occurred recently or even within recorded history doesn't mean the area always will stay dry. Minot and Bismarck homeowners thought they were protected, and for decades, they were. But then they weren't. And throughout Vermont and upstate New York, mayor after mayor and homeowner after homeowner expressed disbelief.
"A flood? Here? But we've never been flooded before," they said.
And now they have.
Somehow or other, Americans must recognize that flooding is by far the most common natural disaster -- and that while some homes are at higher risk than others, almost all homes are at some risk. In fact, "your chances of being flooded are much greater than some other risks you face daily," the federal government's floodsmart.gov website reports.
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That very much includes the risk of losing your home to fire. But while 96 percent of homeowners have homeowners insurance (almost all of which cover fire damage), only 14 percent have flood insurance.
Why? And how can the country bring the flood-insurance percentage up?
That's the key question that dogs America's flood-preparation and -recovery efforts. FEMA and Congress should set themselves to finding out.
-- Tom Dennis for the Herald
