Selective Flood Insurance



Standard homeowner insurance policies for home damage do not cover flooding, so selective flood insurance can be obtained in addition to other policies that protect the home. The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is a federally sponsored program administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and offers flood insurance through a network of more than 90 property and casualty insurance companies. Communities where the insurance is offered must be a member of the program, as must the agent or agency through whom the policy is sold. This is because only through communities can adequate levels of flood control be insured, and the consequence of not following this formula can be a devastating loss for the underwriter who has to pay massive claims when a serious flood occurs. It's sort of like insurance for the insurance company.



Natural disasters, such as floods and hurricanes, can cause billions of dollars in damages and are excluded in standard home owner policies when it comes to repair or replacement of a home. When a hurricane rolls in to shore, not only do high winds cause enormous damage from the uprooting of trees, the blowing away of roofs, and the scouring effect of objects behind hurled at over a hundred miles an hour, but they also cause a tidal surge to rise up from the deep and cover shore and all the land immediately behind it. Since a hurricane consists of winds blowing in a large circular direction, the tidal surge occurs mostly on the windward side; the side of the winds coming toward the shore, not away. Damage is so widespread that insurance companies are unable to cope with the liability on their own and turn to the federal government for help through programs such as the NFIP.

The strongest hurricanes are usually the ones associated with the worst flooding. Flooding occurs as a result of various factors, including a vacuum effect, the Coriolis effect, the wind effect, the wave effect, and the rainfall effect. When a wind blows it lowers the pressure over the water. The pressure differential between the area of high pressure where the wind is not blowing and the area of the low pressure where is blowing raises the water level. With the Coriolis effect, the spinning nature of the Earth's rotation causes a bending effect on the winds, amplifying some of them under conditions of a hurricane. Blowing winds in themselves push the water and can create waves that are especially strong in the direction of the wind. When the windward side of a hurricane experiences the strongest tidal surge as the strong winds push the water up over the beach and and into land.