I live in the Catskill Mountains for example. Many hours from the nearest ocean. Hurrican Irene caused a lot of flooding throughout upstate NY, PA, NJ, CT, VT and elsewhere. Virtually none of it was beach front property, and even then those were lakeside beaches.
Where my home is situated we didn't come close to flooding during Irene, though waters rose and flooded roads nearby. It depended on whether one lived at the lowest point near a stream. We were fine even though we went through what was being called a 100 year flood event. Even so the new flood zone maps that came out has our street and our home and those of all of our neighbors on it. Virtually our entire town is on it now. That will trigger flood insurance hikes for virtually everyone in our village including many dozens of homes that never have had flood waters reach our streets. And those rate increases can be four fold or more under current law - unaffordable for many people in our not well off area who barely are making do as it is. We still have a mortgage so we don't have the option of going without flood insurance, our mortgage holder will demand it. Many poorer people could lose their not luxurious homes even though they built on what has always been deemed safe land.
So this is not just a beach front property issue. It is the equivalent of millions of people now being forced to have expensive insurance against earthquakes because fault lines exist in their region even if there has not been a major quake on one of them for over 200 years. Almost every region has risks of some form of disaster, where we live the risk of forest fires is very low because we gets plenty of precipitation. Tornadoes too are extremely rare.
But yes it is true, in a true worst case scenario we might get partially flooded (it is virtually inconceivable that we would get swept away like happens on the gulf coast during a hurricane - we don't face storm surges, just steadily rising waters when streams swell from extremely high runoffs.) That is why we have F.E.M.A. - to deal with rare events. And that is why it makes sense for homeowners like me to have flood insurance even though we have never been threatened by an actual flood event. But the drastic rate hikes to insure a home like ours would have become more than we could pay with our current income under current legislation. It isn't just rich people who insist on building next to the ocean in Florida who are effected.
In short the legislation that may now be changed not only raised flood insurance rates, it did so drastically. And the flood maps being used to determine who must carry flood insurance are newly and completely revised and greatly expanded - it no longer is just an issue for people who choose to build vulnerable houses in the direct path of reoccurring hurricanes.
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