LETTER: FEMA flood insurance is all but worthless

FEMA flood insurance

is all but worthless

Editor:

My wife and I have been Florida residents for more than 23 years.

Although we owned our house outright we still paid for flood insurance from FEMA every one of those 23 years. Our house, like those of many of our neighbors, suffered severe storm-surge related damage from Hurricane Ian on September 28, 2022. The initial flood damage estimate for my house was over $130,000. This did not include substantial house contents loss owing to flooding.

In October 2022 we applied for and received a FEMA advance of $20,000 in order to get repairs going. It turned out that as long as we provided our contractor with funds repairs moved along. Repairs then slowed down until we provided the contractor with additional funds to get things moving again.

After two months we moved back into our house in the middle of December when flood damage repairs were sufficiently completed.

We put well over $100,000 of our own savings and investments into getting our house repaired. And, because of cash-flow problems, we haven't been able to start repairs on substantial wind damages to our house. In the meantime we have received not one additional U.S. dollar from FEMA to compensate us for our flood-related expenses. It's almost as if we had no flood insurance at all.

Jose Sanchez

Englewood