Hurricane Ida

[htwoopup]

The tipping point will be when the insurers stop writing policies for 30 year mortgages in south Florida. The lenders will follow suit, and the whole house of cards will collapse.
It may happen sooner in the wild land- urban interface in CA, but that’s small dollars relative to coastal prices in the southeast.

Along this line of thinking, I will throw in Federal Flood Insurance.

I admit that I have it on my beach house. Because I bought it back in about the Bronze Age, my premium is ridiculously low. And yes, it only covers 250,000 which is less than the house is worth but is about 5 times what I paid for it back when.

The stupidest part of this program is that not only do they encourage folks to live in areas they shouldn’t (and more and more areas will be shouldn’t), the premiums don’t cover all of the losses and are covered by the general populace who don’t live by the water, but they also allow you to rebuild, and then get insurance from the program again.

For the life of me, I don’t understand why this program even exists…or if it is going to continue to exist why it allows rebuilding and why it isn’t fully (they did make some adjustments for “newer” policyholders) self-funded without the backing of everyone else who is not a policyholder.

Edit to add: this article just came across my feed right after I posted which is also part of the problem....https://www.poynter.org/reporting-ed...-and-effects/?

[Matthew Strongin]

The tipping point will be when the insurers stop writing policies for 30 year mortgages in south Florida. The lenders will follow suit, and the whole house of cards will collapse.
It may happen sooner in the wild land- urban interface in CA, but that’s small dollars relative to coastal prices in the southeast.

It's already starting. Some insurers are dropping policies on homes older than 10 years. I had to scramble earlier this year to start over with a new insurance company. For the 4th time in 8 years.

[defspace]

The tipping point will be when the insurers stop writing policies for 30 year mortgages in south Florida. The lenders will follow suit, and the whole house of cards will collapse.
It may happen sooner in the wild land- urban interface in CA, but that’s small dollars relative to coastal prices in the southeast.

Along this line of thinking, I will throw in Federal Flood Insurance.

For the life of me, I don’t understand why this program even exists…or if it is going to continue to exist why it allows rebuilding and why it isn’t fully (they did make some adjustments for “newer” policyholders) self-funded without the backing of everyone else who is not a policyholder.

It's already starting. Some insurers are dropping policies on homes older than 10 years. I had to scramble earlier this year to start over with a new insurance company. For the 4th time in 8 years.

FEMA is about to roll out RiskRating2.0. It's a total overhaul of how insurance policies are rated. It's all pretty black box right now (or at least it was a few weeks ago). Gone is the concept of the 100-year floodplain in/out as being a major rating factor. The idea is that policies will be written based on data on the individual structure. This should help align rates and risk.

New NFIP policies are going to start with RR2.0 on Oct 1, renewals on April 1. There are about to be a LOT of unhappy policy holders.

[j44ke]

Before Katrina a friend worked for Swiss Re and spent a few years working with a team on insurance values and property values and actual damages versus projected damages to come up with new formulas for re-insurance calculations vis a vis big weather events - and the report that was the result basically got pitched into the trash as unsellable.

So file me under I'll believe it when I see it.

[giordana93]

STILL without power.

The federal flood insurance plan is complicated and in need of a major overhaul but contrary to popular belief it is less for beach front property than inland river areas

[j44ke]

My friend Ryan and his wife have an 1800's school house near Riegelsville PA. He got this photo from his neighbor yesterday. Creek comes down the hill on their side of the road until about 150' from their house where it crosses under the road and goes down to the Delaware River on the other side. Water is about 12 feet above its normal level in the creek bed, but it made the turn and went over to the other side of the road. Some under the road, some over the road but looks like it didn't go straight through their house. They are cautiously relieved.

imagejpeg_1.jpg

[Mabouya]

Creek comes down the hill on their side of the road until about 150' from their house where it crosses under the road and goes down to the Delaware River on the other side. Water is about 12 feet above its normal level in the creek bed, but it made the turn and went over to the other side of the road. Some under the road, some over the road but looks like it didn't go straight through their house. They are cautiously relieved.

I would be terrified if I lived anywhere near any sort of water feature, flowing or not, or significant drainage, and not sure if I could handle the anxiety it would induce any time the forecast called for heavy rain.

[johnmdesigner]

I’m just a poor man driving a 24 year old car but I was just wondering - I drove up the Sawmill Parkway today and saw several Mercedes and BMW’s on the side of the road drying our after total immersion. I’m assuming they are totaled. Does their car insurance actually cover a full replacement? And is there a penalty for demonstrating complete stupidity in the face of a tropical storm? Or do they just get shipped off to another country?

[J_B]

My friend Ryan and his wife have an 1800's school house near Riegelsville PA. He got this photo from his neighbor yesterday. Creek comes down the hill on their side of the road until about 150' from their house where it crosses under the road and goes down to the Delaware River on the other side. Water is about 12 feet above its normal level in the creek bed, but it made the turn and went over to the other side of the road. Some under the road, some over the road but looks like it didn't go straight through their house. They are cautiously relieved.

imagejpeg_1.jpg

Much of Lambertville (south of Reigelsville on NJ side of the Delaware) was under at least 3 feet of water. Many of the back roads featured on HoH ride through this area are completely destroyed. The river reached a level unseen since the mid-1940s, somebody told me.

[Matthew Strongin]

I’m just a poor man driving a 24 year old car but I was just wondering - I drove up the Sawmill Parkway today and saw several Mercedes and BMW’s on the side of the road drying our after total immersion. I’m assuming they are totaled. Does their car insurance actually cover a full replacement? And is there a penalty for demonstrating complete stupidity in the face of a tropical storm? Or do they just get shipped off to another country?

If you have good insurance they'll just total it and reimburse you based on whatever your policy determines. In our last house we had a flood that was about 4-5 feet of water in the neighborhood. The den in that house was a converted garage and it was only a foot or two above the ground. We got a foot or so of water in that room that came in from the baseboards. The rest of the house was elevated enough that the inside stayed dry. We had three cars at the time. A Wrangler Rubicon with a couple inch lift parked in the back that wasn't totaled thanks to the height of the vehicle and the higher elevation of the back yard. My daily driver mini cooper and my wife's ford focus were in the front driveway and they were filled up to the dashboard. She had USAA and they sent her a check as soon as she called them and explained what happened. I had State Farm and they sent an adjustor a couple days later. He looked at the car for a minute just to make sure I wasn't lying and wrote it off as a total loss. My wife got fair market value for her car. My mini was a lease with gap protection. They also gave me fair market value, which was actually more than the residual + remaining payments, so I got to pocket a little money from the deal. I reluctantly sold the Jeep a month or two later. I just wasn't confident that it would be electronically or mechanically sound after two days sitting in brackish water. It was a Rubicon from the first year when it was a special edition and not a trim level and from when Jeeps were still Jeeps. I digress. The answer is that it depends on your insurance. I would normally guess that anyone with a BMW or Mercedes has good insurance, but I live in Miami so I know that is a terrible assumption to make. I'd be surprised if there's any penalty for demonstrated stupidity unless you were also clearly trying to do something shady, though someone here who knows Insurance better than me can probably chime in.

The photos I'm seeing in the news are just shocking. I remember what it felt like to have water rushing into my house like it was yesterday, but that was nothing compared to this situation. I'll see if I can dig up a photo.

[j44ke]

I’m just a poor man driving a 24 year old car but I was just wondering - I drove up the Sawmill Parkway today and saw several Mercedes and BMW’s on the side of the road drying our after total immersion. I’m assuming they are totaled. Does their car insurance actually cover a full replacement? And is there a penalty for demonstrating complete stupidity in the face of a tropical storm? Or do they just get shipped off to another country?

I think there were very likely stupid people out there doing stupid things - it is New York after all - but I keep hearing how fast the water levels changed. That's pretty much the definition of a flash flood. One minute not so bad, but the next is water everywhere. A lot of those parkways especially were named after the streams they were built along as a scenic byway, so the surrounding land drains naturally into those areas. Put up some retaining walls and chisel some rock walls and you end up with sections that can be very similar to slot canyons in a big storm. That's why there are all those drains along the edge of the left hand lane - kabump...kabump...kabump...

[j44ke]

I would be terrified if I lived anywhere near any sort of water feature, flowing or not, or significant drainage, and not sure if I could handle the anxiety it would induce any time the forecast called for heavy rain.

I think they are at least somewhat protected by geology. The stream turns there not because of road engineering but because of a massive outcropping of bedrock. Some kind of granite or bluestone or whatever they have out there that is really hard. It comes out of the hill on the left well above the creek and makes the water turn and then forms the abutment on the downhill side of the bridge. The stream heads back downhill where the outcropping slants down into the hill on the right side.

Still, I don't know I would stand there to take the photo. Their neighbor is a pretty hardy sort though.

[Matthew Strongin]

but I keep hearing how fast the water levels changed. That's pretty much the definition of a flash flood. One minute not so bad, but the next is water everywhere.

This is definitely a thing. In the flood I described above that totaled our cars the water level rose so fast it left us all stranded. We lived on the mainland side of the intracoastal waterway, but only a few blocks from the water as the crow flies. A few minutes after my wife got home from work I received a call from a friend who lived about a half mile inland. He had heard the water levels were rising and recommended we move our cars and get to higher ground. So I walked out the front door and it was already too late. The water in the road was already 2-3 feet high, which took maybe 5-10 minutes from when my wife pulled into the driveway. Once the seawall was breached the water rose almost immediately. One of the things I remember most clearly is how every time a fire truck would drive down the street to go help someone in need (the can drive in 4 feet of water apparently) all the cars would get lifted by the wake and repositioned closer to the house. Pretty nerve wracking.

I've seen more than my share of damage from hurricanes and floods and I'm heartbroken every time I see photos or read the news about the damage a storm like Ida leaves in its path.

[htwoopup]

FEMA is about to roll out RiskRating2.0. It's a total overhaul of how insurance policies are rated. It's all pretty black box right now (or at least it was a few weeks ago). Gone is the concept of the 100-year floodplain in/out as being a major rating factor. The idea is that policies will be written based on data on the individual structure. This should help align rates and risk.

New NFIP policies are going to start with RR2.0 on Oct 1, renewals on April 1. There are about to be a LOT of unhappy policy holders.

It is a start. In the article I linked above they link an article in the Times that points out the problem with FEMA flood maps and how they aren’t updated enough, in fact aren’t even updated with the regularity as legally required already. It also talks about there were 3 times as many houses at risk in the Tennessee floods as what FEMA showed on their maps.

I remember back when I was first the Asst Chief in the volunteer Fire Department in our barrier beach community, the rule for hurricane evacuations was that everything south of Montauk Highway on the mainland (7 miles of Great South Bay between) had to be evacuated. By the time I resigned 12 years later, it was everything south of Southern State Parkway. That is only a 3 mile difference. But imagine the number of buildings in a 3 mile by 60 mile swath of quarter acre zoning in what is basically a bedroom community suburb of NY City. To my knowledge, there has been only insignificant change in insurance rates and codes.

The one change that I am aware of is that in a few of the towns they made the building code such that houses that had been damaged by flood events needed to be raised (which was paid for by everybody not just the homeowner affected) and nothing could be built new that the first floor was less than 10 feet above mean high water (which is still far less than storm surge) but only for homes within a quarter mile of the bay. And, I can not imagine how the hell you could evacuate Long Island which is bad enough during rush hour going west through the natural choke points going into the city.

[j44ke]

Much of Lambertville (south of Reigelsville on NJ side of the Delaware) was under at least 3 feet of water. Many of the back roads featured on HoH ride through this area are completely destroyed. The river reached a level unseen since the mid-1940s, somebody told me.

They said south of their house is definitely worse off - towards Stockton which is the area where Angry Scientist rode today. And while their house had water in the basement, as soon as the electricity came back on, the pump cleared it all.

[AngryScientist]

This hurricane/tropical storm caught a lot of people by surprise here in NJ. It's a real mess in a lot of places. Personally I made out OK with just a couple inches of water in my unfinished basement, but my neighbors who live physically lower on my street did not make out as well. One guy had his SUV parked on the street and it literally floated into the intersection. crazy times, and i know a lot of insurance policies are not going to cover flood damage, so there will be some real losses out there. it's sad and it's scary when a place you have lived your whole life that never flooded does. I think they will be redrawing the flood maps and re-considering the 100 and 500 etc year storms this year.

As Jorn mentioned, I rode in central jersey today to survey some of that damage first hand. Had the opportunity to talk to several folks who were happy to share local stories, a definite number of deaths and property damage beyond what anyone has seen. Very sad, my heart goes out to anyone who endures real loss during a natural catastrophe event. I just hope we get some breathing room before the next one...

[Mabouya]

re-considering the 100 and 500 etc year storms this year.

Agreed.

Given what we know about climate change, these terms can now be dropped as totally meaningless going forward.

[giordana93]

I’m just a poor man driving a 24 year old car but I was just wondering - I drove up the Sawmill Parkway today and saw several Mercedes and BMW’s on the side of the road drying our after total immersion. I’m assuming they are totaled. Does their car insurance actually cover a full replacement? And is there a penalty for demonstrating complete stupidity in the face of a tropical storm? Or do they just get shipped off to another country?

definitely do a title search if you buy a used car anytime soon

assisted living facility my parents live in New Orleans is still without power but many parts of the city coming back on line. Metairie suburb still has issues. Laplace, LA, is a complete disaster. Coastal towns wiped out. Of course the argument is that many of these places should be abandoned/no longer inhabited but besides the fact that the shrimping industry is still made up of these people, many are historic settlements that pre-date the nation. They have been devastated by coastal erosion, brought on in (large) part by the oil and gas industry's practices. There are old hardwood forests now completely wiped out by saltwater intrusion. nola.com has some photos of Pointe-aux-Chenes which is home to a splinter tribe of the Houma tribe:
https://www.nola.com/multimedia/phot...c687877.html#1

61350ddecd79f.image.jpg

[giordana93]

Staggering number of lines knocked out. Entergy said the damage in Louisiana and Mississippi at 9 p.m. Sept. 4 included 30,679 poles, 36,469 spans of wire and 5,959 transformers damaged or destroyed--reportedly more than Katrina, Ike, Delta, and Zeta combined.
By the way, that doesn't include my area, serviced by Cleco. We had over 2800 trees on lines, 4200 spans of conductor out.

[giordana93]

so obviously utility crews working hard. first few days some of the guys were working in Louisiana heat and humidity 20 hours then sleeping in their hot truck to get up and do it again the next day. Entergy has a flickr page with a few hundred pics

https://www.flickr.com/photos/enterg...52790822/page4