Many communities on the Long Island Sound and up the Hudson River were devastated by flooding during the April nor”™easter that ravaged the Northeast.
And many business and homeowners found that their insurance did not cover flooding or they did not have flood insurance at all.
President Bush declared Westchester, Rockland and Orange counties disaster areas, which made federal emergency funding available.
Yet the low-interest federal loans for which small businesses in the disaster area are eligible covered little of the damage, business owners said at the time.
“It was probably the closest to a catastrophe that we have seen,” said JoAnne Murray, president of the Allan Block Insurance Agency in Tarrytown. “What we saw is we”™re not prepared. Not just the insurance companies or the customers not having disaster plans, but the villages not having plans.”
One problem insurance companies and customers encountered was a lack of “cleanup crews” in the area, she said.
Cleanup crews are companies that insurance companies rely on to do the initial cleanup on a residence or business after a flood. They can also act as on-the-spot claims adjusters.
“We needed a much broader base than the companies we normally use,” said Murray. “We need comprehensive disaster plans (for this area) to deal with this kind of flooding.”
Murray said that many homeowners in Westchester also did not have flood insurance, believing that it would not be a serious problem in this region.
“The amount of people who had flood insurance was minimal,” she said. “When I try and sell flood insurance to coastal communities, I want them to know how important it is.”
Even people who did have flood insurance may have run into some problems, as most policies don”™t cover “finished basements,” that is: basements that are completely underground.
While most policies will cover cleanup of such basements, they will not cover things like replacing carpeting.
“Flood insurance can be good and bad,” said Murray. “But it is relatively inexpensive if you”™re in a sea zone, and it will at least cover the cost of cleanup of a finished basement.”
Most insurance companies offer a flood-insurance product modeled on Federal Emergency Management Agency guidelines, but some, such as Chubb, offer their own type of flood insurance.
That”™s why Murray said it is important for homeowners and business owners to be aware of what their policy does and doesn”™t cover.
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Many insurance policies do not cover what is termed “an act of God.”
Some business owners in Hartsdale sued the village after the flooding, claiming a faulty sewer system and other infrastructure problems in the village led to the flooding.
Collectively, the eight suing business owners seek payment for property damage and business losses they attribute to acts neither of nature nor God, but to negligent public officials, landlords and even a local golf club.
A group of co-op owners on East Hartsdale Avenue has filed a similar, separate claim against the town, claiming a faulty sewer system resulted in flooding that forced co-op owners to evacuate their apartments in April and damaged the buildings and personal property.
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