Latest Flood Headlines

All the headlines from our Flood Topic Page, ordered by recency.

Prospect General Expands Admitted Flood Product into Oregon

Dec 8 2017 // Prospect General Insurance Agency has expanded Flood Guard, its admitted residential flood insurance product, into Oregon. Flood Guard provides residential flood coverage and is an alternative to the National Flood...

Texas’ Harris County OKs Post-Harvey Flood Construction Rules

Dec 7 2017 // Officials in a Texas county devastated by Hurricane Harvey have approved new regulations on building construction in flood-prone locations, rules they touted as the nation’s toughest for a major metropolitan...

Republicans Eye Stopgap Funding to Avoid Government, Flood Insurance Shutdown

Dec 6 2017 // House Republicans are moving ahead with a plan to avoid a Saturday U.S. government shutdown by passing a two-week stopgap spending measure, overriding conservative GOP lawmakers who were pressing for a longer extension to...

29 Million Flood Risk Properties Lie Outside Official Flood Zones: CoreLogic

Dec 6 2017 // An estimated 23 percent of residential and commercial properties in the U.S. are at high or moderate risk of flooding but are outside of designated Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHA) as identified by the Federal Emergency...

U.S. Flood Program to Collect $1 Billion in Reinsurance for Hurricane Harvey Claims

Dec 6 2017 // The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is seeking to recover the full $1.042 billion of its reinsurance coverage to help pay the federal flood insurance program’s losses from Hurricane Harvey. Those paid...

Some in Congress Question Trump Flood Insurance, Disaster Aid Reforms

Dec 4 2017 // The Trump administration’s proposed $12 billion initiative to reduce future flood damage met with skepticism in Congress, as lawmakers warned against diverting emergency funding away from hurricane...

Harvey Flooding Put Some Texas Christmas Tree Farms Out of Business

Dec 1 2017 // For more than two decades, Deidra Marler and her family piled into pickup trucks after Thanksgiving lunch and headed over to the K&K Evergreen Farm to pick out their annual Christmas tree. The Beaumont Enterprise...

Day Laborers Being Exploited in Texas after Harvey, Advocates Say

Nov 28 2017 // Guillermo Miranda Vazquez starts his day in a parking lot near the Home Depot where he easily finds work alongside other day laborers who are cleaning up Houston after Hurricane Harvey. Some days, he clears rotted drywall...

Trump Disaster Aid Includes $12B for Cities Battling Climate Change Flooding

Nov 28 2017 // Hidden in the Trump administration’s $44 billion emergency budget request is a plan to expand an Obama-era effort to make cities and towns resilient to the more frequent storms tied to climate change. While President...

Houston Arts Groups Working to Recover from Hurricane Harvey

Nov 27 2017 // Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch looked flushed as he stood at the edge of the Hobby Center’s Sarofim Hall stage during a break in the company’s annual Jubilee of Dance performance. The Houston...

Some Businesses in Dickinson, Texas, Still Recovering from Harvey

Nov 22 2017 // Some Dickinson business owners are getting back on their feet — or trying — after flooding from Hurricane Harvey swamped more than 80 shops, restaurants and offices. The Galveston County Daily News reports Keith...

Experts See Expanding Role for Parametric Insurance, Including for U.S. Disasters

Nov 22 2017 // Catastrophic losses this year due to extreme weather events have led to a growing interest in parametric insurance in the U.S., according to industry experts. Parametric coverage is also gaining traction as hazard modeling...

RMS Comments: What’s Next If Flood Insurance Reform Passes? If It Fails?

Nov 20 2017 // Last week, the House of Representatives voted 237-189 to pass the 21st Century Flood Reform Act (H.R. 2874) – a package of seven bills that reauthorizes the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) until 2022 and...

Disaster Planning for Agencies: Minding Your Business

Nov 20 2017 // Northern California and specifically Sonoma and Napa Counties have experienced the worst wildfires in the history of California. Most of these fires began around Oct. 8, 2017, during night with extremely high winds, that...

House Passes Flood Insurance Program Extension with Reforms

Nov 15 2017 // The House of Representatives on Tuesday voted 237-189 to pass the 21st Century Flood Reform Act (H.R. 2874) – a package of seven bills that reauthorizes the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) until 2022 and...

Austin American-Statesman: Texas Has 100s of Substandard Dams in Populated Areas

Nov 14 2017 // The earthen dam on the outskirts of Georgetown in Texas’ Williamson County certainly does not look flimsy. The Austin American-Statesman reports at 35 feet high and nearly a third of a mile long, it has done a...

Congress Prepares to Address Flood Insurance Overhaul Again

Nov 8 2017 // The latest attempt to overhaul the U.S. federal flood insurance program hit a stumbling block, but a coalition of business and environmental groups renewed its push on Wednesday for lawmakers to enact an overhaul before...

Typhoon Damrey’s Vietnam Death Roll Rises; AIR Worldwide Comments

Nov 7 2017 // A powerful typhoon that rocked Vietnam has killed at least 44 people, left more than a dozen missing and caused extensive damage to the country’s south-central region ahead of a summit that will draw leaders from...

Flooded Texas Residents Sue over Water Releases During Harvey

Nov 6 2017 // More than 120 Southeast Texas residents have signed on to a federal lawsuit alleging that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers illegally took their property when it released water from a reservoir and a dam during Hurricane...

Insured Losses from Hurricane Nate Could Top $1B

Nov 6 2017 // Catastrophe modeling companies have estimated insured losses from Hurricane Nate will reach $500 million and could even top $1 billion. Hurricane Nate formed as a tropical depression on Oct. 4, 2017, and was upgraded to a...