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Insurance Officials Talk About Flooding This Year
An official with the Illinois Department of Insurance says most of the damage from storms this year has happened in a way that might sound unusual, but happens a lot.

Dick Allender is a supervisor in Property, Casualty, and Consumer Services for the state insurance agency. He says all the flooding that's happened this year, despite some threats along the Mississippi River, has happened in subdivisions and inner cities -- nowhere near creeks, river, or lakes.

Allender tells WGIL you might be able to guess why most of that is.

"The reason for that is asphalt and concrete. You build strip malls, you build parking lots, you take away the ground that soaks up water. So now that rain comes, 2 or 3 inches of rain comes, where does it go? It's going to seek a low area and you're going to find that subdivision that's got 2 or 3 streets at the bottom of a hill as an example, and that's where the water goes and it forms its own lake and destroys property."

Allender says problem is, most of that flooding can't be covered by something like homeowners insurance, simply by the definition of "flood."

But, he says if you live in an area not in a flood plain, flooding insurance is relatively inexpensive.
09 22 10 by Newsroom
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