Flood Insurance: Understanding the Importance through Historical Events

Floods, sometimes called "acts of God," can cause widespread damage. A hurricane or tornado can wipe out neighborhoods and communities, while floods can knock out entire regions, causing vast amounts of damage that can be hard to comprehend. Standard home insurance often won’t cover flood damage, and you may need to take out specialized insurance plans. If you need help selecting flood insurance, come work with VAC Insurance Agency, which serves Brooklyn, NY, and other communities. Let’s look at some of the biggest floods in American history better to understand the scope and scale of such events.

Major Floods in American History

Floods are relatively rare, but the damage can be profound when they strike. Consider the Galveston Island Storm of 1900. This flood caused over a billion dollars in damage and, more importantly, cost an estimated 8,000 lives. This is an abnormally high loss of life, even for a flood. For example, the earlier Sea Islands Hurricane of 1893 cost 2,000 lives.

More recently, Hurricane Katrina was found to have cost more than 1,800 lives and incurred over $100 billion in damages. While the hurricane itself was a powerful storm, the most significant cause of damage was actually the flooding that came alongside the storm.

Other major floods include The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927, the Lake Okeechobee Flood of 1928, and the St. Francis Dam failure in 1926. These major floods all occurred in short order, claiming hundreds of lives and causing billions in damage. Authorities have since responded by taking more steps to prevent floods, but they remain a grave risk. If you need assistance with selecting a flood insurance policy in Brooklyn, NY, come work with VAC Insurance Agency.