The cyclonic tempest of Hurricane Helene has finally come to a close, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. Now, as the dust settles and resident in North Carolina take stock of the damage caused by the storm, Reuters reports few will be covered by the National Flood Insurance Program. Veuer’s Tony Spitz has the details.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00The cyclonic tempest of Hurricane Helene has finally come to a close,
00:04leaving a path of destruction in its wake. Now as the dust settles and residents in North Carolina
00:09take stock of the damage caused by the storm, Reuters reports few will be covered by the
00:13National Flood Insurance Program. Their analysis outlines that only one in every 200 residents who
00:19are affected by the storm in the coastal state will be covered by the program. That's because
00:23it's meant to help those who are living in particularly close proximity to coastal areas
00:27and areas near rivers, with the maps recently being updated to exclude insurance requirements
00:32for Asheville and other counties. However, with storms like Helene, flooding is moving
00:37further and further inland. It came up to here. I'm surprised it didn't come through the windows
00:42because that was, I mean, it's pretty close and the water was coming up that way which nobody
00:50would have expected that. Asheville has been a mecca for those wishing to remain on the coast
00:54but get away from more storm-prone areas as it was seen as a climate refuge. Even insurance
00:59companies didn't see the area as threatened as they asked state regulators to approve a 99%
01:05insurance premium rise for many coastal areas, meanwhile only requesting a 4% increase in many
01:10of the mountain counties like the one where Asheville resides. Experts predict storms like
01:15Helene with more extreme rainfall will become the norm as the planet gets warmer and our climate
01:19becomes more extreme as well.