Business Insider: “A Majority of North Carolina Homeowners Didn’t Have Flood Insurance. Then Helene Hit.”
RFF scholars Margaret Walls and Yanjun (Penny) Liao talk about understated flood risk in this article published in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
Margaret Walls, a senior fellow and director of the Climate Risks and Resilience Program at nonprofit research institute Resources for the Future, said that people also wrongly believe that if they're not in a high risk flood area, then they're not at risk... "And this is one of the biggest issues in the flood world is that the mapped areas where FEMA says you're supposed to have flood insurance policy are not the areas that are all risky. There are plenty of areas where you're at risk outside of those mapped areas."
...Yanjun Liao, an economist and fellow at Resources for the Future, added that people should be prepared for even unexpected flood events, like what happened in western North Carolina. "I definitely think that a lot more people need flood insurance," Liao said. "Oftentimes even people who are living outside of the flood zones, the 100-year flood zones and sometimes outside 500-year flood zones, can face these kind of unexpected flood damage."
Liao said that the cost of flood insurance can be burdensome, particularly for those who live in more disaster-prone areas. But the alternative may be even more costly: rebuilding after a devastating storm.
