Prepare for Hurricane Season: Buy Flood Insurance
Take steps now to protect your financial well-being before a hurricane strikes. Buying flood insurance is the best way to protect yourself financially from flood damage. Call your agent now so that you are covered this hurricane season.
Anyone - property owners, renters and business owners, can purchase flood insurance if your community participates in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). FEMA administers the NFIP, which Congress established in 1968 with the goals to reduce future flood damage through floodplain management and to provide people with flood insurance.
To buy a flood insurance policy, contact your local insurance agent or find an agent.
If you are a homeowner, you can insure your home for up to $250,000 and its contents for up to $100,000. Renters can cover belongings for up to $100,000. Nonresidential property owners can insure a building and its contents for up to $500,000 each.
The cost of a policy depends on a number of variables, most important of which is whether you live in a low-, moderate- or high-risk flood area. Those flood risk areas are identified on Flood Insurance Rate Maps, which show flood hazard areas and are used to determine the flood insurance rate for a given property.
If you live in a high-risk area (Special Flood Hazard Area) and you have a mortgage from a federally regulated lender, you are required to purchase flood insurance. You must carry the insurance for the life of the mortgage. If you live outside a Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA), you still are at risk for flooding. In fact, 20 to 25 percent of all flood claims are filed in low to moderate flood-risk areas.
Contact your local floodplain management officials to view current local flood maps, or go to FEMA's Map Service Center online at www.msc.fema.gov to see the latest flood map for your community.
Other helpful measures that will better prepare you for a flood or other disaster include:
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Create a personal plan for evacuation;
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Move important objects and papers to a safe place where they can't get damaged;
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Conduct a thorough home inventory - documenting your belongings will help you file an insurance claim;
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Build an emergency supply kit; see how to at www.ready.gov.
Last Modified: Thursday, 04-Jun-2009 13:07:17 EDT