Flooding and Insurance.....

I heard a few days before the flood gates were opened above Baton Rouge and New Orleans to save the two towns from flooding it was determined to would be less of a loss if the farm ground was flooded instead. This is because has a lower value of loss per capita. Now the question that was asked but I hadn"t heard an answer: Is the insurance companies whether farm, crop, property, home owners, etc. going to pay anything out because the flooding was man made (opening the gates) and not act of god or mother nature? The Corp of Eng. for example have done this several places along the Missouri. And maybe it was determined by the federal gov. that it is mother nature and man is trying to control the losses. Just curious about how it was handled. Thanks funtwohunt

What they stated in SD was that the insurance had to have activated 30 days prior to the opening of the gates. Sure each company is different.
caseman-d

Actually lower loss per acre. Figure that the average cost of a home is 60K.....with 4 homes per acre......what farmer makes 240K per acre???? And if the insurance companies don't pay then the governemnt will more than likely step in a pay.

Rick

The answer is whatever the language precisely states in the Insurance Contract. It may state act of God or man made etc etc but what you or I believe or think is fair is of little consequence. About the only thing I recall way back in Law School about Insurance was that THE LANGUAGE CONTROLS and if something in particular is not mentioned as being covered THEN IT ISNT as a matter of strict interpretation. If the language simply covers floods and doesnt distinguish or care the cause of such, my "guess" would be one is covered REGARDLESS if man or God caused the same.

HAVE TO READ THE INSURANCE CONTRACT

John T

Depends on if the contract is "Inclusionary" or "Exclusionary".

On an inclusionary contract, something has to be specifically listed to be covered. An exclusionary is the opposite. If something isn't specifically listed as excluded from coverage, it's considered to be covered.

It all gets down to the fine print.

Say a tree falls over and lands on a car. If a storm blows it over, it's an act of God. If you sawed it down and it fell in the wrong direction, it's man made. It then gets down to the wording of the contract as to acts of God versus man made. I've even seen contracts that exclude acts of God and simply insure against man made screwups.

It can open a real can of worms, and sometimes come down to the insurance company's own interpretation of the contract. They'll even weigh the cost of the loss against the chances of the insured bearing the cost of a lawsuit against bearing the loss.

I was once in a parking lot fender bender. I had witnesses willing to state the other party was dialing a cell phone and drove into me. The other party had good old State Farm insurance. The State Farm adjuster told me with a straight face that since we couldn't prove who was actually at fault we'd each have to bear our own repairs. She knew darned well that I'd pay my $100 deductible and let my insurance company pay for the damage to my car instead of taking State Farm to court for $700.

As has been said, it all gets down to the wording of the contract.
There's no "one size fits all".

Common sense would dictate that.Any land, property, livestock and building located in a flood plane. Will sooner or later be covered with water.
Why should insurance companies even provide flood coverage on such unless the rates were exceedingly expensive?

That would be just like the people that build year after years in the hurricane areas. I would think after getting wiped out 3 out of 5 years it would be time to move but the Ins. must still pay and they still rebuild. Then again some of the owners probably have the cash on hand and could probably rebuild again and again whether they had insurance or not. Which is fine I guess. funtwohunt

Back when that dam was built and the "overflow" area was designed, all the landowners at that time were paid for their land to be flooded if it neede to be. One time disaster payment and they were told to leave as the govt might have to flood it.
They took the payments then turned around and stayed there.
I'm sure that about 50% or more are different owners who maybe never knew the details. That's what needs to be addressed.

EXACTLY,,,,,,The fine print and what the dern contract SAYS is what counts. Those insurance companty lawyers arent dummies lol and if theres a way to NOT pay a claim I bet they will find it grrrrrrrrrr

John T Country Lawyer

In Louisiana, if you have a lean against your house with the bank you can get flood insurance in 7 days. If not you are required to wait 30 days. The loop hole is (and 100's around here done it last month when the Miss was threatening), you go to the bank and quickly take out a small mortgage on your house and the bank will require flood insurance. So you run down to the insurance office and take it out and in seven days you have coverage. It"s a legal gray area. Some banks will do it and some won"t.

John,

Can't remember if it was Jerry Clower or Justin Wilson that told this one.

A fellow was in an accident and wound up in the hospital. His insurance agent visited him and said, "You know that group accident insurance policy I sold you? I hate to tell you this, but the entire group has to be in an accident before the policy pays off".

I understand the only flood insurance one can obtain is from a U.S. Government company set up just for insuring in flood plains. In the big scheme of things, I think, it became too expensive for commercial companies to cover so the Government set up this company to protect the banks. Just my thoughts but in the "nineties I lived near Austin and they had floods in something like three of five years. The ads ran all the time warning, "Your homeowners insurance will not cover Flooding." and to call this particular Agency.

To answer your question about crop insurance. Yes RMA the arm that oversees the crop insurance companies issued a bulletin just after the corp of destroyers blew up the birds point levee. The bulletin told the companies they were to treat any damage that happened due to the flood waters as a natural event. So crop loss due to flooding or inability to plant a crop with normal equipment during the normal time frame is covered if the farmer had crop insurance.

I am a manager at one of the largest companies and I have seen the bulletin and helped to develope our guidelines for handeling the mess.