Dead rising 3 let's blow this town11/30/2022 It could cost upward of $125,000 to repair his home’s foundation, which buckled after floodwaters gushed into the basement. “I don’t know how I’ll fix this,” said Bhagwandin, a structural engineer, as he pointed to a thick fissure in his basement wall. They've been spending nights at a hotel, courtesy of the Red Cross, ever since the flooding. “You listen to the supplier and they say you don’t need it, so you don’t get it.”īack in Queens, Sahadeo Bhagwandin worries about how he will get his family back home. “When we were getting our insurance, they said, ‘You’re not in a flood area, there’s no need for that,’” she said. Their house suffered extensive water damage during Henri, forcing them to move in with her son’s family in another town. “The insurance company sent out some very nice, understanding people, they listened to everybody for an hour or so, then basically said, ‘You’re not getting anything.’ So that’s the way it is.”Īround the corner from the Kiernans, Joan Russo and her husband have lived in the same house for 16 years and moved in a few days before the flooding in 2005. Their existing policy “covered nothing,” said John Kiernan, a retired corrections officer. Now, the Kiernans estimate it will cost $100,000 to get their house back to a livable condition and replace their car. She died eight years ago, and they eventually let the insurance lapse. John Kiernan’s mother previously owned the house and had flood insurance that cost about $650 per year, he said. The Kiernans and others said they were told over the years that they didn’t need flood insurance because the area isn’t in a flood zone - even though the neighborhood flooded in 2005. John and Roseann Kiernan’s neighborhood in Rossmoor, a sprawling senior living development in Monroe Township in central New Jersey, is 20 miles from the coastline and not near any major rivers. “All you got to do is look at this particular storm,” he said, “and you’ll see that people who didn’t live in flood plains - and who have never been flooded before - all of a sudden they get inundated with 6 inches of rain an hour. “You never know, particularly with the way the world is acting right now, when that flood is going to occur in your neighborhood,” said Michael Wade, a FEMA spokesperson. Some see it as an unnecessary cost, even as severe weather now strikes with more frequency and greater intensity. In New York City's five boroughs, about $3 million has been disbursed for 2,600 flood insurance claims.įlood insurance, offered through the National Flood Insurance Program, is generally required for mortgages on properties considered to have a roughly 1 in 100 chance each year of flooding - but is optional for everyone else. Thus far, about $10 million in flood insurance claims has been paid out in New Jersey to 6,000 policy holders, according to FEMA. In New Jersey, assistance to some 39,000 families is still pending, while FEMA has paid out about $11 million to nearly 3,000 families. More than 38,000 households have applied for aid. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it has already disbursed at least $22 million to nearly 5,200 families in New York City. Fans continue to whir in dank basements and dump trucks still make the rounds to haul away mildewed couches, squishy mattresses and now-useless electronics. While officials are still calculating the losses - believed to be in the billions of dollars - residents wonder how they’ll come up with the money to repair homes and replace belongings. They may be able to get federal assistance, she said, including low-interest loans and grants for damage. People without a flood policy have few options for getting help paying for damage, according to Loretta Worters, a spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute. If it were in a flood zone, the family’s mortgage company would have likely required flood insurance.Īmong the roughly 10,000 homes in his neighborhood, just 16 were protected by flood insurance, according to a database compiled by the Association of State Floodplain Managers.įlood damage is not covered by homeowners or renters insurance policies. “This is not a flood zone, which is something I was shocked at,” said Shivprasad, whose family home lies 4 miles inland from the nearest flood plain. Residents in Shivprasad's neighborhood have long complained about inadequate drainage that makes flooding a frequent worry. It lashed the region less than two weeks after a drenching from Henri. The storm killed about 50 people across the Northeast, many of whom drowned in basement apartments or in cars. For weeks now, Shivprasad and his parents have been crammed into a relative’s apartment after New York City building inspectors declared their home uninhabitable.įloodwaters from Ida, exacerbated by overflowing storm and sewer drains, ripped through an exterior wall and drowned two of the family's tenants in a basement apartment.
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