Flood question

I know this is not tractor related but appreciate so much your input. We own a restaurant (along with a farm) that was hit by a major flood last week here in Wi.. we could not afford flood insurance, so had no insurance. We have some major structure damage. Have any of you worked with FEMA? We are in a flood plain. We took a mortgage against the farm to buy the restaurant so we were not required to have flood insurance. Now this. Any advice? Thanks folks.

You have to work with your own insurance and hope with all that is going on in our state they will help you and the bank is prolly going to have some say.I AM NOT A LAWYER AND MY CLEANUP SKILLS ARE NOT FOR HIRE.Scott

Dealing with Fema during and after the great midwest flood in 1993. Be very carefull as to whether you believe what Fema tells you. If they ask you what you value your property at, go high

I have never dealt with FEMA personally even though I have been eligible to; I do know many that have.

I will just leave it at.....
I will pray for you.

Well you gambled that you where not going to ever be flooded. You have lost. I will not say much more on that as your worried enough.

Some general rules with FEMA can hit you even if you did not have flood insurance. The biggest is the 50% rule. IF your building suffered more damage than 50% of its pre flood value than you would have to bring it up to flood rules to be able to rebuild. Meaning make it to where it would not flood again.

Maybe you have not been to any towns that have rebuilt after floods. If you do you will see a lot of building just torn down because they can not be rebuilt economically to meet the flood rules. FEMA usually has a buy out offer. That may end up your best hope. FEMA money to rebuild is a harder battle and more of a long shot.

You see older homes setting on eight foot tall basements so the living area is above the flood plain.

The rules involve when dealing with FEMA defy common sense. They are convoluted and very involved. Meaning you will need legal help.

Ask the guys that live in hurricane alley and see what FEMA has done after major hurricanes in the past. It is not a good picture. Many months before much gets done and then what gets done really might not help much.

Can you stand to not have the restaurant not producing income for very long??? With structural damage and fall/winter just around the corner you could easily be closed until spring anyway. Do you have fall back plan incase the restaurant failed?? If you do that might be what you end up doing.

Your insurance company will not pay a dime if a flood did the damage and you did not have flood coverage.

Family at our church had flood damage. They lived half way up the hill side above the Miss. River. 50 foot above the flood plain. About 10-12 years ago we got that 10-15 inch rain in less than 24 hours. Their house set on the down hill side of the street. Right across from their house a side street intersected their street. With all the rain the storm drains could not handle all the water. A wall of water 4 foot high came down the side street and went right across an up their drive way. The weight of the water caved in their garage door. The water built up height in their garage until it blew out the door into the main floor of the house. The main floor had water 3-4 feet deep in it. That water eventually blew out the patio doors on the down hill side and the water flowed through their house and out the back. Their home insurance did not cover flood damage. I do not think they could have bought flood insurance as they are so high above the flood plain. They had around $50,000 damage to the house. Their home insurance paid maybe $10K of that for some water damage. The rest they had to pay themselves.

well the first thing that's going to happen after dust settles is fema is going to redraw flood maps in your county, then you will need flood insurance, if money is owed on your property. requirement from bank. IMO citizens of counties where flooding occurs would be better off if, officals met fema at county line and told them they didn't want to participate in femas program. if everyone in the county winds up buying flood insurance I personally don't see where you were given anything. this has happened where I live, eastern ky,southern wva . fllod insurance is where fema gets their money . best I remember they are 325 million in the hole. flood insurance used to be cheap, but not anymore. just my thinking. check your flood maps as to if you are in flood plain of flood way. this makes a big difference.

I have had some dealing with FEMA in my course of adjusting residential farm and commercial insurance losses over 40 plus years. FEMA can be of some help but give them all the facts. Unlikely your property insurance company will be able to do anything since flood is an excluded peril or a policy exclusion in itself. Be sure your insurance adjuster quotes policy language to you in the event of a denial so no provision that may apply will be missed. Your property insurance will cover wind related and other physical damage with some exclusions that may have occurred conincidentally with the flood. There may be some damage that is in the gray area as to whether caused by flood or wind and usually the insurance company will give you the benefit of the doubt if such exists. FEMA will probably want to know what if anything your property carrier paid. I am sure you have learned, unfortunately, the hard way that while you are not required to carry flood insurance if you live in a flood plain it is good to have and usually not cost prohibitive. Of course each state is different as to the exact wording of various policies and there are many different policies as no one size fits all. I am not sure if your state allows for public adjusters but you may want to check that out. Don't sign a contract until you are sure they can help you recover over and beyond what your company is willing to pay upfront. Otherwise they will want a percentage of all you collect even that not in dispute. Same with an attorney. Be sure all communication is preserved in writing and insist everything is reduced to writing and if phone calls be sure a confirmation letter or memo is presented to you. Be totally transparent with the company and FEMA.

Until the area is declared a deshater SP area FEMA will do nothing but once it is they can/will help and when I had flood problems they stepped in and helped and part of the help was flood insurance

Feel for you. Don?t have any useful advice.

So much heavy flooding this year, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Iowa again, might be up in Wisconsin again this week....

Rough year. I saw a 50 year old grove yesterday, couple rows were partially dead from flooding this summer, this was on high ground, but it rained so heavy the little bowl on the hill held water to kill the trees. Could see the water line 5-6 feet up the trees. This was not anywhere near a flood zone or body of water. Lot of downhill real close by. Just unbelievable the 4-17 inch downpours in a few hours, on ground that was already wet.

Paul

Sorry for your loss. I do not like to give my after tax income to insurance companies either, but I know I cannot afford to self insure on big ticket items. And that is why it is important to ? sell the risk? to an insurance company.
I hope you can pull through this set back.

MTC,
No advice on FEMA.
Talk to your CPA.
You may get a tax break to offset your loss.
There is capital gains and capital loss.
Also talk to your insurance company. Some insurance companies may cancel you after a flood because of mold unless you have a professional company come in and do mold remediation.

Sorry for your loss. The only silver lining will be capital loss off taxes.

Sorry for your loss but just like anything else that a person chooses not to insure (I don't insure my tractors and equipment) if a loss occurs I can't see how its the taxpayers
responsibility to pay for repairs or replacement.You rolled the dice and you lost.Also taking the loan out on the farm to buy a restaurant was a big gamble in the first place in my opinion.
And yes its none of my business EXCEPT now you want my tax money to help cover your loses so its become my business.

My dad built a pole barn back in the day permits weren't required.
Years later pole barn burns down. The insurance company wouldn't allow them to rebuild barn unless the ground was elevated 10 ft.

After we had a flood, some places faced the same dilemma of elevating. Some people were given an option to sell land to government and not rebuild, which makes a ton of sense.

You may face the same dilemma if you need a permit to rebuild.

It is pretty amazing to watch some of the things they will do to meet new flood standards.
Take a house on pilings driven in the ground and a slab pored.
They dig under the house and cut off all the pilings where they go into the slab.
Then they jack up the entire house with the slab and sit it on blocks.
The big problem I have seen is a house that had 6 feet of water in it that is raised 3 feet to meet the new standard.
So with a similar flood the house will only get 3 feet of water next time.
You think only educated people work for our goverment. Deal with FEMA; They will change your mind quick.

In the Missouri River flood plain you see houses raised by a full story.

I suspect it was the home owner that decided to only raise the house in the picture by the absolute minimum amount to preserve the resale value. They may have been looking to sell it rather than live in it, so the problem gets passed on to the next owner. Zoning laws protect the future buyers.

It was raised to the absolute minimum amount because that is all the government will help with.
Every inch above the minimum amount is 100% on the home owner.

If zoning laws and flood map elevations are to protect future buyers.....
Would it not be prudent to raise a house that has had 6 feet of water in it at least 6 feet off the ground???
That house in the picture is still below sea level even though it is raised.

John what is even more amazing is the homes on either side have not had anything done to them. Why would that be??? Did the water go around them and only flood the one pictured??? LOL

I worked for FEMA as a Disaster Assistance Employee for nearly 20 years. At that time, 1992 to 2011, almost all Femites working disasters were part-timers like me, people who traveled to disasters, worked long hard hours in terrible conditions, then went back to their homes when things slowed down. You may be eligible for a Small Business Administration loan. The SBA can declare a disaster whether FEMA does or not. Regardless, FEMA assistance is for your home, not your business. As others have said, you gambled, and you lost. Good luck.

JD
Every neighborhood is like that.
Some houses raised and others still at ground level.
It has been 13 years since Katrina and still some areas are not 100% complete.

The area that more reflects this post is the flood of Baton Rouge (Denham Springs) in 2016.
It was caused by a rain storm rather than a storm serge hurricane.
It is also a area above sea level and out of the flood plain so maybe 1% of people had flood insurance.
If it had not been for people lives being ruined; and watching the government throw around billions of dollars of our tax money; it would be comically funny to sit back and watch the process play out.

A certain person in DC did that and has not payed taxes for past 10 years.

John I often wonder how the area was recovering from Katrina. My brother worked in the Bay of St. Louis area for over a year just cleaning the destroyed houses up. I went down and helped him for a few weeks. I would have been there in early Nov.2005 IRC.

Several things stuck out to me.
1) The damage was hard to picture without seeing it first hand.
2) The local resort and gulf coarse was full restored already, while the rest of the town looked like a battle field yet.
3) The Amount of crookedness in the Southern MS government system.
4) The inept Government response at the Federal and state level. Actually the state was worse in that they just wanted to argue over the spoils with very little worry for the people effected.
5) The Mayor of New Orleans should be in prison for telling people to stay just because of worrying about truism dollars being lost if the storm was a false alarm. Then running around screaming racism because the rest of the nation did not bail his butt out of the mess he made. Until the day I die I refuse to spend a single dime in New Orleans. If they are dumb enough to allow leaders like this to rule than they deserve what they get.

Just venting. LOL

Ray Nagin was mayor at the time.
He is in a federal resort as we speak.
And he was only the tip of the fraud and corruption.


When a state hospital floods; You clean it out; And then find out you could have gotten a new building; So you flood it again.
Like I said I will just pray for anyone dealing with FEMA.
It is a hilarious joke in my mind.

Don't feel too bad about not buying flood insurance. Depending on which program was available to you, it might have been either unaffordable or insufficient to cover your loss.

Nothing wrong with taking a capital loss, Warren Buffett does it too. I did it in 2008 when the market tanked.