I'm sorry to hear that. There's no doubt that development/impervious surface coverage can contribute to damage. Was this part of the recent events in Texas?
Nationally, 25% of NFIP claims come from X-zone properties - areas with less than 0.2% annual chance of flooding (outside of 500-year floodplain). Lenders typically don't require flood insurance for X-zone properties. To make a claim, you already had to have your insurance policy in place before the damage occurred (obvious). I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of people who get hit and wish they could make claims but don't have a policy in place (I'm speaking generally here, not just about the recent events). I would guess that the 25% statistic significantly under-represents the risk of flooding in the X-zone.
IMO, floodplain designations are not particularly informative. They're just the regulatory framework we have to operate with.
If you want to get nerdy (and have access): Examining the 100-Year Floodplain as a Metric of Risk, Loss, and Household Adjustment - Highfield - 2012 - Risk Analysis - Wiley Online Library
Sorry to ramble, but Vsalon has actually hit on something I pretend to know about.
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