Your California Home Owners Insurance Doesn't Include Flood Insurance
If you're shopping for a California home owner insurance quote, it's important to know that flood insurance is a separate entity overseen by FEMA and The National Flood Insurance Program, who ensure that all possible flooding emergencies in CA, or anywhere else, will be handled according to federal response and recovery initiatives. According to one of their postings, there are ten essential things you should know, which we'll summarize
1) Flood Zones 2) Flood Damage 3) Flood Risk
Everyone in California lives in a flood zone because floods can be caused by anything from storms, melting snow, and hurricanes to drainage overload or dam failure, just to name a few things. Flood damage is not covered by CA home insurance companies but by the National Flood Insurance Program. You can buy flood insurance no matter what your flood risk is as long as your community participates in the NFIP, and doing so is smart since "25 percent of all flood insurance claims come from low to moderate risk areas."
4) Low-Cost Preferred Risk Policies 5) Affordability 6) Ease of Purchase 7) Contents Coverage
Homeowners seeking California flood insurance in low to moderate risk areas qualify for discounted preferred-risk policies for as little as $180 a year. Even for houses within a floodplain, flood insurance is affordable compared to a disaster home loan. CA residents should be aware that flood insurance is easy to get from NFIP approved private home insurance companies. And remember that contents coverage is separate, so make sure to ask your flood insurance agents about that.
8) $1,000,000 Not for You 9) 30 Days of Waiting 10) Assistance You Can't Count on
Numbers 8, 9, and 10 of FEMA's posting are not exactly good news if you're seeking CA home owners insurance, but they count as useful information. As someone in California looking for residential flood insurance, you won't care that you can get $1,000,000 in non-residential building coverage. Nor will you be particularly overjoyed to know that there's usually a 30-day waiting period before coverage starts after you buy flood insurance (so don't call just before the big storm). And finally, it's not exactly happy news that you can't count on federal disaster assistance in most cases since only 10 percent of all disasters are declared as such (although you can still count on your flood insurance in these cases), but FEMA wants everyone to know these things.