Should you have flood insurance in Northern California?
The return of rainy weather has now sparked an interest in flood insurance but it's still probably not enough to reverse the trend in california's dropping flood insurance and coverage. David bienick has been looking into the numbers and joins us now live in sacramento. Good evening. A light rain falls here in old sacramento tonight and it's important to remember that your homeowners' insurance typically will not cover flooding damage.
You need a separate policy for that. In recent years, tens of thousands of californians have decided to run the risk of going without. The sacramento river is still well within its levees but has come up more than 10 feet since last week's storm and is now full of mud and floating debris. I'm shocked. I didn't think it was going to be this high.
The high rivers and recent street and stream flooding mean megan mckinnon, who sells flood insurance policies in sacramento, is spending a lot more time on the telephone. Maybe three, five calls a day. She says it's a huge increase from recent years when flood insurance was a hard sell. Statewide, the number of policies has fallen more than 13%. For more than 273,000 policies in 2009, to about 237,000 policies this fall.
Millions in levee improvements have meant the federal government no longer requires flood insurance in some neighborhoods and agents say the tough economy made it harder for some families to afford flood insurance. There is no worry of flood but now they want it.
New and renewing policy holders may be in for a bit of sticker shock. A new law takes effect next spring that will drastically cut federal flood insurance subsidies. Some policy holders will see premium hikes of up to 18% per year. So californians' interest in flood insurance seems to be driven mostly by what they see in our rivers and our sky.
