USA: Alarming post-Sandy Factoid: The National Flood Insurance Program Administered By FEMA Is BROKE! I Also Included A List Of Floods In America Since 1913.

Oh and please ignore the Climate Change alarmist, massive floods caused by superstorms are an ANNUAL threat across AMERICA! Like I've written many many times before, the earth's climate has been changing since the beginning of time. Humans can't control natural disasters. We are foolish to believe that we could. All humanity can do when confronted with a "natural" disaster is PREPARE and RESPOND. Our ancient ancestors knew that to be true. But for unconscionable reasons, the Global Warming/Climate Change people want humanity to believe otherwise.

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Pacific Standard Magazine

Alarming post-Sandy Factoid: The National Flood Insurance Program is Still Broke

written by Marc Herman

Wednesday October 31, 2012

If you ever want to have a really strange conversation with a politician, ask about floods. Rising water messes up more American cities, more extensively, more often, than virtually any other kind of disaster. But we don’t talk about it.

From 1993, when the Mississippi nearly took out Saint Louis, and did take out chunks of Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota; to a less-heralded storm that did similar damage to Florida the same year; to the destruction of Grand Forks; to Katrina; to rivers that tore through much of the mid-Atlantic in 2005 and 2006; to Irene washing big parts of the Hudson valley away last year; to the submersion of large parts of New York City this week, floods are a real, annual threat. They’re the unsexy disaster, compared to earthquakes and twisters. But they are the one we face more often.

Most flood insurance is an extra, and it comes from a government program, the National Flood Insurance Program, which is administered by FEMA. This is because the free market doesn’t want to be in the flood business. Like earthquake insurance in the West, the market for flood insurance is an economist’s nightmare. Insuring against massive natural events wont to devour entire cities—supplemental Godzilla coverage—is not a great way to make money in the insurance game.

So you don’t. So the government has to do it, lest whole swaths of America go uninsured against one of the more common and costly natural threats.

Great. Except: again like earthquake insurance, not so many people buy the flood policies. The NFIP, which has to bear the billions in damage when the claims do come in, can’t make the arithmetic of low buy-in/high payout work. A prodigiously named 2010 study, Catastrophe Economics, by Wharton School economist Erwann Michel-Kerjan, found that the program can’t shoulder events like Sandy:

…Claims from Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, and other floods in 2005 pushed the operating budget of the program into a deep hole. Hurricane Katrina alone generated $16.1 billion in flood insurance payments. Between 2005 and 2008, the program had to borrow a total of $19.3 billion from the U.S. Treasury. It will be very difficult for the program to repay this debt: total annual premiums for the program are about $3.2 billion and interest payments alone on the debt are nearly $900 million. In some sense, the debt accumulated after the 2005 losses just confirms what was known since the inception of the National Flood Insurance Program: it is designed to be financially self-supporting, or close to it, most of the time, but cannot handle extreme financial catastrophes by itself.

So, it’s broke. Specifically, as Sandy headed north last weekend, the flood insurance system covered nearly $2 trillion in property, and on the other side of the ledger, was $18 billion in debt to the US Treasury. At which point, a few days ago, the rain began in New Jersey.

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List of Floods in America

[source: wikipedia]

• The Great Dayton Flood of 1913 killed 360 people and destroyed 20,000 homes in the United States. It also damaged historic photographic plates belonging to Wilbur and Orville Wright. It caused the end of canal transportation in Ohio.
• The Hatfield Flood of San Diego, United States, of 1916 destroyed the Sweetwater and Lower Otay Dams, and caused 22 deaths and $4.5 million in damages.
• The Vermont flood of 1927 is probably the worst flood in Vermont history doing $30 million in damages, which would be $270 million today, killed 84 people, and left 9,000 homeless.[citation needed]
• The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was one of the most destructive floods in United States history.
• The Ohio River flood of 1937 took place in late January and February 1937. With damage stretching from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Illinois, 1 million were left homeless, with 385 dead and property losses reaching $500 million.
• In 1957, storm surge flooding from Hurricane Audrey killed about 400 people in southwest Louisiana.
• In 1965 Hurricane Betsy flooded large areas of New Orleans (USA) for up to 10 days, drowning around 40 people.
• In 1972 the Black Hills flood killed 238 people and caused $160 million of damage in western South Dakota.
• In 1983 the Pacific Northwest saw one of their worst winter floods, And some of the Northwest states saw their wettest winter yet. The damage was estimated at 1.1 billion dollars.
• In Alaska from May to September 1992 unusually wet conditions, plus snow melt, caused the 100 year flood in areas of Alaska.
• The Great Flood of 1993 was one of the most destructive floods in United States history.
• On 8 May 1995, a flood hit Louisiana and caused extensive damage.
• The Red River Flood of 1997 occurred in April and May 1997 along the Red River of the North in North Dakota, Minnesota, and Manitoba (Canada). It was the most severe flooding of the river since 1826.
• In October 1998, San Marcos, Texas experienced flooding that had rain totals of 15" to 30" in a short period of time.
• In June 2001, floods from Tropical Storm Allison killed over 30 people in the Houston, Texas, area.
• 80% of New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. was flooded due to the failure of several floodwalls in August 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. 1,076 people also died because of the hurricane.
• The Mid-Atlantic States flood of 2006 in the eastern United States is considered to be the worst in that region since the flooding caused by Hurricane David in 1979.
• September 2009 Southern Flood: A major rain event from September 16–22 which brought over ten inches of rain to the Atlanta, Birmingham, Chattanooga, Athens areas as well as the states of Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina. As of September 22, 2009 in Atlanta, 9 people have been killed due to the floods.
• March 2010 Southern New England Flood. A major rainfall event which lasted from March 28–30 which brought twelve inches of rain and flooded the Pawtuxet River, Blackstone River and numerous other rivers, lakes, ponds and streams in Rhode Island. The flooding was the worst in Rhode Island history, as the Pawtuxet River crested over 20 feet—12 feet above flood stage, shattering the previous record by several feet. A seasonal high tide led to severe coastal flooding in Bristol, Rhode Island; four of Rhode Island's counties were declared emergency disaster zones. The Warwick Mall in Warwick was flooded with 20 inches of water, leaving hundreds of employees out of work.
• The May 2010 Tennessee floods were 1000-year floods in Middle Tennessee, West Tennessee, South Central and Western Kentucky and northern Mississippi as the result of torrential rains on May 1 and 2, 2010. The Cumberland River crested at 51.86 feet in Nashville, a level not seen since 1937.
• September 2010 Minnesota/Wisconsin Flood: Flash floods put towns underwater and forced evacuations in Minnesota and Wisconsin. A strong system caused the heavy rain and flash flooding in the Upper Midwest. Some of the worse flooding came a week after the flood. Near record stage on the Minnesota river in New Ulm, Mankato, St Peter, Jordan, Shakopee, Savage, and breaking records in Henderson. Records were also broken on the Cannon River and the Zumbro River.
• Spring 2011 Mississippi River Floods: Two of the most deadly tornado breakouts in U.S. history combined with spring snowmelt cause the Mississippi to swell to record levels. Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana were affected, and the western counties of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi were declared federal disaster areas. The Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway was put into use for the first time since 1937. Nine floodgates of the Morganza Spillway were opened, marking the first use of the gates since the 1973 flood. 330 of the Bonnet Carré Spillway's gates were opened to save the levees protecting New Orleans. There was concern that if the Old River Control Structure, the Morganza Spillway, or the Bonnet Carré Spillway failed, the Mississippi River could change its course, flowing either into the Atchafalaya Basin or Lake Pontchartrain.
• September 2011 Mid-Atlantic Flooding: Tropical Storm Lee was the twelfth named storm and thirteenth system overall of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season, developing from a broad tropical disturbance over the Gulf on September 1. It was designated as Tropical Storm Lee the next day. Due to the large size, as well as the slow forward movement of the storm, heavy rainfall occurred in southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle. Flooding associated with the rains caused significant property damage in the areas, with one drowning death reported in Mississippi. Elsewhere, the storm helped spread wildfires that destroyed homes and killed two people in Texas, and a traffic accident in Alabama resulted in one death. Rough surf offshore drowned one person in each of these states. Lee spawned 30 confirmed tornadoes in the United States.