Here is our 3^rd and final installment of questions we are fielding from the flooding in the Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina.  Hopefully we can help others seeking similar answers with flood insurance claims issues.

Q.  How much drywall damage will my flood insurance pay for? 
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Here is our 2^nd installment of questions we are fielding from the flooding in the Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina.  Hopefully we can help others seeking similar answers with flood insurance claims issues.

Q.  My lower cabinets were damaged by the flood waters.  Does my flood insurance pay to match them and pay for my upper cabinets? 

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Whenever there is a severe storm like the flooding in the Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina area our inbox gets inundated with questions from policyholders who are entering the insurance claims world for the first time and are seeking answers on how to recover from their damage. Over the next week we’ll publish some of the more popular questions with hopes that we can help others seeking similar answers. 

Q.  What does the NFIP flood policy require me to do after I report my claim.
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While some media outlets are reporting that water is starting to subside in some of the hard hit areas of Columbia and Charleston, others are reporting on the dam failures that could compound matters and make things much worse.  If some of the media reports are correct, many of the good folks in South Carolina may be in for nasty surprises when they call their insurance agent or 800 numbers listed on their property insurance policies to file an insurance claim. As an example, Ben Berkowitz a reporter from CNBC posted South Carolina flood losses $1 billion and rising, about the damages and lack of homeowner flood insurance. 

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Some of the news reports and photographs from South Carolina support the claims that this flooding event was indeed unprecedented and historic. The only thing close to this magnitude was the flooding in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The flooding from Katrina was in large part a result of the levies being beached. The flood event in South Carolina is a result of record amounts of rain. 
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When involved with complex insurance claims (believe me, nowadays with all these new forms and restrictions, they are all complex and controversial), the policy language and the facts of the loss all must be taken into account to apply them to the coverage in order to get the correct payment to the policyholder.  But this may only be the beginning of what you need to know. Other issues face the adjuster which may be outside of your typical daily sphere of experience and knowledge.
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I read with a great deal of interest comments that were made by the big chiefs at a hearing held by the Office of Insurance Regulation in Tallahassee concerning the rate request Citizens Insurance Company was asking for in the South Florida market. In my view the back-and-forth discussion that took place on August 25 is newsworthy as are some of the back-story items not covered or published. Here is a link from the Insurance Journal that reported on the August 25^th hearing. 

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As often happens in the adjusting business, you think you have seen or know most of the issues. But then a surprise comes along and you realize there is always something new in the business of property insurance adjusting.  To put it another way, you don’t know what you don’t know.  So here is what I didn’t know that I needed to know. This new revelation came this week when meeting with my client in his gulf front estate in Siesta Key, Florida.
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Well, maybe not new, but things are changing and we have seen this coming for some time. In our last blog Tampa Bay Residents Wait on FEMA we noted that staff from FEMA were in the area to inspect the flooding that resulted from three weeks of intense rain. Attempting not to jinx the process, I held off offering my opinion on the likely outcome of the FEMA inspection. But now we know FEMA has turned down requests from State and local officials to provide financial assistance to homeowners and businesses damaged due to the flooding.

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An excellent Tampa Bay Times article, Did the National Hurricane Center Flub Erika? aired some of the discord between the National Hurricane Center folks and others, some of whom are well-respected meteorologists.  The chief complaint seems to be that the reported track of the storm varied considerably as Erika moved up from the Caribbean. As a result, this may have eroded the public’s confidence in future NHC modeling and predictions not to mention set in motion a lot of costly emergency plans. When the Governor declares a state of emergency, things happen, costs are incurred and people’s lives are disrupted.  I suspect we may hear about the actual economic cost businesses and governments, state and local, incur when a state of emergency is declared.  If not published, I hope some enterprising reporter will dig this information out as it is news the public needs to know and should be out in the public domain. 

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