Although it is internationally known for its catastrophic wildfires and earthquakes, California is no stranger to flooding—especially during the heavy rains that accompany its winters. In fact, 7 million Californians live in flood-prone areas. Despite this, only one in four Golden State homes in what the federal government considers a flood hazard zone is covered by flood insurance. That gap spells trouble for thousands of Southern California homeowners who were battered by a series of storms over the past week.
The torrential rain and wind are the result of what is called an atmospheric river, a channel of moisture that can be up to 375 miles wide and carries the equivalent of two Amazon rivers’ water. Downed trees and mudslides from the downpour killed nine people, and half a million homes and businesses went without power across the state in recent weeks.
San Diego and Los Angeles, where the river stopped and dumped more than 10 inches of rain, were the worst hit. Thousands of homeowners trying to repair water damage are now in for a rude surprise when they discover that their standard-issue home insurance does not cover floods. The lack of protection stems not only from misperceptions about the likelihood of flooding in sunny California and general misunderstandings of what basic home insurance covers, but also regulatory deficiencies by the federal government, which is supposed to ensure that all of the nation’s high-risk homes insured in case of floods. As climate change is intensifying the state’s atmospheric river stormsthe problem is only ready to grow.
“[Flood insurance] uptake in California is half the national average,” said Jeffrey Mount, a geomorphologist and a senior fellow at the nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California. “We’re really bad when it comes down to it.”
In the eight counties in Southern California where the governor has declared a state of emergency, approximately 52,000 homes and businesses are covered through flood insurance. This is less than 1 percent of the total number of houses in the region. One reason is cost: An annual flood policy can cost between $500 and $1,000. In a state with a housing crisis and high cost of living, purchasing flood insurance may be out of reach for many residents who already struggle with the required costs of home ownership, including standard home insurance. Mount added that serious flooding events are quickly forgotten, even by those who lived through them, especially in a state where so many other ecological crises are constantly in the news.
“Disaster fatigue is a real thing,” Mount said. “People get tired of hearing that they’re going to die from earthquakes, fires and floods, and they become numb, and they don’t take actions to protect themselves.”
Such concerns are only likely to increase in a warming world. A warmer atmosphere and ocean means that an atmospheric river can pick up more water as it crosses the ocean before dumping water on land. The presence of a strong El NiñoA weather pattern characterized by warmer Pacific Ocean temperatures also supercharged the atmospheric river that hit California this month.
“The combination of a warm atmosphere and co-occurrence of the El Niño event both conspired to generate the conditions we’ve seen now along with a healthy dose of random luck,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, said. Los Angeles. Although attribution studies have not yet been conducted on the atmospheric river that flooded California this past week, Swain estimated that absent climate change, precipitation levels would have been 5 to 15 percent lower.
“That’s not a small number,” says Swain. “We’re talking about a few extra inches of rain, and two inches of rain in Los Angeles would be a pretty big storm on its own in a typical year.”
Flood coverage is mandatory for those who obtain a federally backed mortgage in a part of the state that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, has deemed a “special hazard flood area.” The policy is supposed to protect both homeowners who incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and the federal government, which ultimately bears the risk when a borrower defaults. However, FEMA, which manages the National Flood Insurance Program, does not keep track of compliance with the rule. Neither do lenders. As a result, a homeowner may purchase a flood policy when they secure a mortgage, but fail to renew it in subsequent years. A 2006 FEMA study found that compliance with the requirement varied between 43 percent in the Midwest and 88 percent in western states.
However, California may be the exception in the latter region. Mount, the water policy expert, found that only a quarter of homes in parts of the state at high flood risk meet the federal rule.
“No one polices it,” says Mount. “There’s no mechanism to go in and threaten people and say, ‘If you don’t get flood insurance, we’re going to take your mortgage away from you.’
Mount added that the floods California has seen in the past month “are not floods of the wealthy.” People with low economic resilience are often hit hardest by floods because they tend not to be able to afford insurance and have limited resources to get back on their feet. For example, in San Diego, which last month experienced its rainiest day since 1850, low-income communities and communities of color among the worst affected by floods.
“This is a social justice issue,” Mount said. “The people who can least afford it are the ones who are usually screwed, and those same communities can’t come up with the money to try to fix their infrastructure.”
