It’s probably a case of closing the barn door after the horse escapes, but this week’s flooding in Ames has moved the idea of flood insurance to the fore.
State Farm Insurance Agent Pat Brown said most of her clients don’t carry flood insurance unless federal law requires it.
She said insurance companies act as brokers, selling coverage to the federal government, which then provides it for property owners.
Insurance companies typically offer additional “endorsements” to customers to cover damage for sewer backups or sump pump failures, but anything more than that requires flood insurance, Brown said.
“If water seeps through basement walls or breaks the basement windows, that’s flood damage, and it’s hard for people to get their arms around that,” Brown said.
In spite of the fact that flood insurance isn’t that popular, Brown said her agency was busy Wednesday.
Tom Alger, spokesman for the Iowa Insurance Division, said most residential policies exclude flood damage. Broken or frozen pipes are covered, he said, but not flooding. Banks require property owners to buy flood insurance if their buildings are located in flood plains, Alger said.
The state agency encourages people to buy flood coverage every year, whether or not they live in a flood plain, he said.
“We remind people annually that one out of every four ‘flood events,’ as we call them, happens outside flood plains,” Alger said.
Alger and Brown said people can calculate what they might expect to pay by visiting the federal government website www.floodsmart.gov.
They said the site lets users type in their address to receive information about whether their property is in a high-risk area and what they might expect to pay for residential and commercial coverage on buildings and contents.
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