After Hurricane Sandy struck this fall, many home and business owners who had not previously gauged their flood risks turned to the government-run Web site FloodSmart. Run by the National Flood Insurance Program, which is overseen by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FloodSmart offers users information about flooding, helps them estimate what their costs might amount to after a flood and points them to 88 agents that are accredited by the insurance program.
Now a third-party management organization for insurance companies, National Flood Services, has introduced Flood Tools, an interactive site where homeowners can type in their addresses and see what level of flooding they can potentially expect on their properties. At the end of the process, it offers up an insurance quote. Roughly 56 of the nation?s 88 private flood insurance providers accredited by the National Flood Insurance Program are members of the group.
As Keith Brown, chief innovation and business development officer for National Flood Services, sees it, ?everybody has some risk of flooding.? That?s easier to grasp when one considers that floods result not just from superstorms like Sandy but also heavy rains, a rupture in a dam, rapid snow melt or, in the case of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, broken levees.
Mr. Brown said the site?s user-friendly mapping tool makes it easier for homeowners to determine their risks. After a user enters an address in the mapping section, a gradated colored map shows the highest-risk areas in dark red. The map fades to pink as it fans out to sections that face a lower risk. You can turn various features on and off, including those that show where the floodplain lies, where floods have historically occurred, whether nearby levees and dams could pose a threat and the path of previous hurricanes.
A loss calculator factoring in your home?s square footage, the number of stories, the value of your possessions and the potential water height in feet yields estimates of the potential costs of damages, depending on varying degrees of flooding. That tool was developed by drawing on existing claims data from actual floods, Mr. Brown said. It is designed simply ?to give you an idea? of the potential damage, he added.
The site, which went live last week, had been in the making for over a year. National Flood Services had not expected to release it so soon, but once Sandy hit, Mr. Brown said, ?we pushed to get it out there.?
Beyond directing business to its members, he said, the organization saw the need to help consumers and agents better understand the complexities of flooding and the difference it can make to be prepared regardless of whether they have insurance, Mr. Brown said. ?This is something many people are being reminded of with Sandy,? he said.
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