In Western NC, a lack of flood insurance deepens the damage | Opinion

For western North Carolina, Hurricane Helene brought a flooding disaster

Next comes an insurance disaster.

Residents in North Carolina’s mountains have felt secure from the flooding that increasingly swamps the state’s low-lying coastal plain. But when Hurricane Helene – along with a rainstorm that preceded it – dropped more than 40 trillion gallons of water on the region, that security was washed away.

Now, homeowners in the state’s mountain counties are learning that their homeowner’s insurance doesn’t cover flooding, landslides or anything else caused by moving water. Many will wish they had paid for policies through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).

State Sen. Natasha Marcus, the Democratic nominee for state insurance commissioner, said there are less than 6,000 NFIP policies in the western North Carolina disaster area. In Buncombe County, home of hard-hit Asheville, she said, less than 1% of the county’s 137,000 housing units have flood insurance.

Marcus said the hurricane’s destruction “really drives home what is happening with the changes in our climate. It’s just a startling reminder that it is real and how exposed we are. Of course, now it’s too late to get flood insurance. So I’m very worried about how we are going to rebuild western North Carolina.”

It’s understandable that homeowners in high elevations didn’t regard massive flooding as a likely threat. The last event to approach Helene’s magnitude in western North Carolina was more than 100 years ago – the great flood of 1916.

But climate change is making flooding more frequent as storms developing over warming seas carry more moisture inland. The North Carolina State Climate Office blog said the rainfall during Helene and a preceding storm dwarfed historic standards: “In Asheville, the three-day total of almost 14 inches goes well beyond the 1-in-1,000 year total for a 72-hour period. … Likewise, the 24.41 inches over three days at Mount Mitchell is off the charts compared to the 1-in-1,000 year amount of 16.5 inches.”

Lack of flood insurance is a problem even where floods are common. State Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey told me that when Hurricane Florence engulfed parts of eastern North Carolina in 2018, only 2 percent of the damaged homes were covered by flood insurance.

“It is a huge problem,” Causey said. “We had flood education classes around the state in 2019. That education effort increased the number of flood policies by 25 percent, but we are still just scratching the surface.”

Hurricane Helene has added intensity to the contest between Causey, a Republican, and Marcus in the insurance commissioner’s race.

Causey supports adopting a statewide version of a coastal program that serves as a market of last resort for vulnerable properties. He also wants to increase participation in the state fortified roof program

Marcus says North Carolina’s insurance commissioner should be a stronger advocate for adopting building code and infrastructure changes and making people more aware when they are buying in flood-prone areas by updating flood maps.

“Unfortunately, efforts to modernize these maps have been stalled by political gridlock, leaving communities unprepared for the realities of our changing climate,” she said.

Days before Hurricane Helene made landfall, three beachfront houses fell into the ocean in Rodanthe. It’s a far different place than Asheville, but it’s the same phenomenon. The climate is changing. So are the risks.

Yet at a time when climate hazards are rising, more people are moving into areas vulnerable to floods, winds and wildfires. That development drives up the cost – both in human life and in property – of natural disasters.

It’s time for sane development and construction laws that acknowledge the threat of climate change. It’s past time to reduce the risks by barring development in flood-prone areas, improving building codes to better withstand storms and encouraging the purchase of flood insurance across the state.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com