Iowa officials say recent flooding proves that all Iowans should consider buying flood insurance. “Earlier in the year the lieutenant governor and I were in Clarion to look at flood damage there and the important part that stood out about Clarion is there was not a river nearby,” David Miller, administrator to the Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management division, told Radio Iowa. “It wasn’t river flooding. It was flash flooding and runoff.” Miller told all Iowans– regardless of whether they live near a river or not– that they need to be concerned with possible flooding. “What we’re seeing is almost anybody can be affected by flooding and it’s why we’ve been really promoting involvement and joining in the National Flood Insurance Program,” he told Radio Iowa.

Recent flooding has struck the city of Ames severely. Two rivers meet there, but other cities and towns experiencing flooding aren’t near bodies of water. Governor Culver told Radio Iowa the “new normal” in the state appears to be “unprecedented” flooding. “In Ames, this is worse than ’93 and so anything that we can do in terms of flood mitigation, flood prevention — we need to make that a priority here at the capitol,” Culver told Radio Iowa.

Local insurance agents say most of their clients don’t carry flood insurance. State Farm Insurance Agent Pat Brown told the Ames Tribune that her customers only carry it if federal law requires them to. “If water seeps through basement walls or breaks the basement windows, that’s flood damage, and it’s hard for people to get their arms around that,” Brown said. Officials with the Iowa Insurance Division told the Ames Tribune that most homeowners’ policies don’t cover flood damage. “We remind people annually that one out of every four ‘flood events,’ as we call them, happens outside flood plains,” Tom Alger of the Iowa Insurance Division told the Ames Tribune.

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