Insurance not required, FEMA told flooded town

[underpants]

Source: CNN International

But none of this was supposed to happen -- at least that is what residents believed.

Gulfport was protected by a levee rated to withstand a 100-year flood. Although it wasn't designed to protect the town from a flood on the scale of last week's, it was enough protection that the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not require business or homeowners to purchase flood insurance.

FEMA says its risk assessment of Gulfport was accurate and the agency is currently spending $1 billion to upgrade outdated maps and reevaluate flood dangers.

"We do our best to advertise the availability of flood insurance and encourage people to purchase it," says Terry Reuss Fell, regional chief of FEMA's floodplain management. "We implement the laws that are given to us and the laws right now deal with the flood plains management within that 100-year flood plain and the insurance purchase requirements in that area also."



Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/06/24/mattingly.flood.insurance/

[dbackjon]

1. So since FEMA said insurance wasn't required

That excuses people that live behind a LEVEE from not buying insurance on your own?

NEWS FLASH: If you live in a place that needs a LEVEE to protect you from flooding, and you don't buy flood insurance, required or not, you are an idiot.

Note - Only 28 of the town's 200 residents had federal flood insurance. The rest trusted the levees would hold. Residents Rick and Gina Gerstel, who lost everything, say no one from their bank to the municipal or federal governments ever told them they were at risk and ought to buy flood insurance.

So it was available to buy, and two dozen did buy.

[EFerrari]

2. The thing is FEMA administers the insurance program

so if some idiot at FEMA told these people they didn't need it, that would tend to weigh more heavily than, say, if some independent insurance broker gave the same bad advice. It is the homeowners' responsibility ultimately, but when nearly 90% of people make the same bad decision you know that there was a pretty strong influence there besides wanting to save a buck.

[tuckessee]

3. What sort of effing moron would believe what FEMA said?

Anyone who trusts FEMA is a Darwin Award candidate in the making.

Are people really that stupid? Don't they remember Katrina?

[Trillo]

5. Then why do they teach kids in early K-12 school to "trust" the "authorities"?

Let me rephrase that: Then why do they indoctrinate kids in early K-12 school to "trust" the "authorities"? To trust the school authorities, to trust the police, to trust the government, etc.

We the people have been well trained by our masters. A few of us try to rise above that early-age training, only to find out that the very news media we were trained to read in elementary school is infested with corporatist agents.

Ultimately, all anyone knows is their own experience, everything else is hearsay, no matter how many times it was allegedly repeated in scientific study.

If FEMA told people they didn't need insurance, then it seems FEMA has some culpability. But FEMA and their budget was absorbed into Homeland Security under Republican leadership, and there's a War on Terror for Homeland Security to fund, dont'cha know?

[madrchsod]

4. their insurance companies did`t recommend

that they have flood insurance or more to the point the lending institutions? a lot of blame to go around on this one....

[sutz12]

6. Insurance-speak for "Your risk is too high"

Home owners version of "pre-existing condition."

"You live in a flood plain, behind a levee. We're not touching that."

:shrug:

[truthisfreedom]

7. A billion dollars to upgrade maps? Why not just buy all of their people GPS systems?

We've got the entire earth mapped out already, guys. You can buy it at Target.

[underpants]

8. What's to say they didn't buy it at Target?

Not the Feds mind you but the contract purchaser then THEY sold it to the Feds...for a BIIIIIIILLION dollars