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CNN
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Crissy and Avi Eliashar bought their home in Jonestown, Texas, 13 years ago. They never had a problem with flooding until water washed away their home, car and all their possessions early Saturday morning.
Avi, a security guard, was at work when the water rapidly filled their mobile home. That left Crissy, a school teacher, barely any time to escape with their three children – sons Beni, age 12; Dov, age 10; and 7-year old daughter Mayaan – along with her son’s friend who was spending the night. Mayaan was saved from being swept away in the flood waters by her brother Dov grabbing onto her hair.
“We nearly died. We were very lucky,” said Crissy Eliashar.
But while Eliashar is grateful no one was lost or seriously injured, that doesn’t remove the pain of the losses the family did suffer. Like many of the victims of last week’s flooding in Texas, the Eliashars do not have flood insurance. And homeowners’ insurance very rarely covers damage from flood waters.
“It was our everything,” Crissy Eliashar said about the home. “It was our stability. We owned it outright. We raised my babies there, and it kind of gave us, you know, the kind of life we live. Now we have to reframe our entire life.”
FEMA estimates that only 4% of homes nationwide have flood insurance, and even high risk areas lack wide coverage. The nation’s insurance industry has essentially walked away from the business over cost and risk, ceding coverage to a government program that requires homeowners to pay extra for protection they might only need in the case of the most extreme storms.
“It was not an expense we thought of as necessary,” Crissy Eliashar said. “The house was 50 years old. We’ve been here 13 years. We’ve experienced some floods in the area but even when that happened, we never had more than some water in a corner of the yard. It never got anywhere near the house.”
Many mortgage lenders require that homeowners in a designated flood plain have flood insurance. The Eliashars, who had no mortgage, knew their home in a flood plain wasn’t covered.
However, many of the flood victims in Texas only discovered their lack of coverage after the disaster washed away their homes.
They’re not alone. Only 30% of homes in what FEMA classifies as a “special flood hazard area” had flood insurance as of 2018, according to analysis by the Wharton Climate Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The percentage is likely lower today.
Flood insurance coverage peaked in 2017, and has been declining steadily since then, said Rob Moore, director of the climate adaptation division of the National Resources Defense Council. He said that is partly because premiums for the policyholders most at risk have risen, but also because people are pulling back on spending due to overall inflation costs.
“If you haven’t used your flood insurance in the past, it seems like something people can get by without,” he said. “There’s an obvious fallacy to that logic.”
Only 2.2% of homes in Travis County, where the Eliashars live, have flood insurance, according to data from FEMA. And only 466 homes (also about 2.2%) in the hardest hit county – Kerr County – have policies. Statewide in Texas it’s about 7%, mostly along the Gulf Coast. But even in Galveston County, the costal area which boasts the highest percentage of coverage, less than half the homes are covered.
While many people may think they live in an area not prone to flooding, FEMA estimates that 99% of US counties have seen flooding during the last 30 years. And Moore said climate change is exposing people to more severe storms, more frequently, than occurred in the past.
“Precipitation is really changing a lot, not just in frequency, but also in intensity,” he said.
The insurance industry told CNN it’s important for people to know if they have coverage for floods, and that they are likely at risk of storm damage if not.
“Floods are the most common and costly natural disasters in the United States, yet flood insurance remains one of the most underutilized forms of protection,” said Loretta Worters, a spokesperson with the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group. “Too often, people discover they’re uninsured only after a devastating loss. The gap between what’s needed and what’s insured is dangerously wide.”
But critics of the insurance industry say it’s wrong that flood damage isn’t covered by most homeowner policies.
“This is an example of the widespread problem in the home insurance market, which is that over the years, the insurance industry has peeled off every type of coverage they can in order to boost profits,” said Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, a public interest group that focuses on the insurance industry. “So flood insurance, earthquake insurance, mold coverage, you name it, the insurance industry dumps its liability, which leaves consumers in a terrible position of having to seek out multiple policies to protect their home in case of loss.”
As extreme weather becomes more common, Balber said she doesn’t expect the situation to change.
“Realistically there is no political will in any legislature or Congress to require insurance companies to cover flood damage,” she said. “So consumers aren’t protected when they need it most.”
The Eliashar family is currently staying in the home of a friend who is away for a couple of weeks, and raising money on a GoFundMe page. They have been able to salvage a few items from the remains of their home, but mostly lost everything.
But while water damage to the family’s car will by covered by car insurance, home insurance does not cover the wreckage from the flood to their home, a fact that frustrates Crissy Eliashar.
“I haven’t even had time to get angry,” she said. “I mean, I feel grateful for my life, but I’m starting to get angry, yeah, of course I am.”
– CNN’s Mike Figliola contributed to this report
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