Pros And Cons Of Flood Insurance

Floods have the potential to cause catastrophic damage to property or loss of life. Therefore, it is important to have a thorough understanding of the National Flood Insurance Program for communities to be able to receive the necessary assistance to recover from floods. First, an overview of the National Flood Insurance Program will be provided. Next, we will discuss the pros of the program. Then, we will analyze the cons of the program. Overall, the National Flood Insurance Program provides emergency managers the means to identify flood prone areas for mitigation and enables communities to receive assistance to recover. First, let’s discuss the program overview. The National Flood Insurance Program in its simplest terms is an insurance policy.
First, the insurance program provides choice. Prior to the establishment of the National Flood Insurance Program very few people lived in flood prone areas because insurance did not provide adequate coverage. However, once the program became available increasingly people became willing to live in these areas due to low cost and maximum coverage that the National Flood Insurance Program (Islam & Ryan, 2016, p. 79). Therefore, the program may have created more risk by enabling coverage in these areas. In addition, the program does not provide regulation on the construction within the natural function. According to Wetmore et al. (2006), the program enables construction of natural function areas which may aid in flood mitigation by providing habitat, filtration, and groundwater recharge (p. 14). Lastly, the program does not provide regulation for the location of critical facilities. Critical facilities such as hospitals, chemical storage, water treatment plants, and communication networks can be located near flood plains though discouraged it is not regulated (Westmore et al., 2006, p. 14). Overall, the program does not account for all intricacies this is where State regulation and land use may be