Illogic Muddies Flood Insurance Program Some In Flood Plains Can Skip Coverage, Others In Little Danger Required To Have It

Owners of most Inland Northwest homes ravaged by overflowing rivers this month chose to live without flood insurance.

Yet owners of dozens of Spokane homes must buy the expensive coverage to protect them against a drainage ditch that barely got wet during the quick melt.

The ironies and inequities of the National Flood Insurance program are as clear as the water lines left behind on the region’s washed-out buildings.

Some people living alongside wild rivers don’t have to get flood insurance, but their neighbors often are required to spend more than $1,000 a year for the coverage.

The federal flood insurance costs the same for the same value of home whether it’s located next to the Palouse River, the mighty Mississippi or a ditch that drains Five Mile Prairie in north Spokane.

Flood maps, used to determine who needs the insurance, are often vague and sometimes misleading.

Many homebuyers don’t learn they are on a flood plain until their mortgage company asks for proof that the house is not in danger.

Then people as far away as Florida charge from $10 to $25 to glance at Inland Northwest flood maps and report back to the banks.

The results can be alarming.

Tammie Williams, who oversees flood plains for Spokane County, once visited harried homeowners who couldn’t believe they had to buy extra insurance for living near Little Deep Creek.

At the property, Williams looked down a 100-foot hill for the slender creek. “It was so far down there you couldn’t even see it,” she said.

National Flood Insurance is a self-sufficient program run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The insurance is available only through the federal government. The flood coverage isn’t required by law, but banks increasingly require it for their mortgage customers.

For the past 30 years, FEMA has mapped areas likely to be damaged by 100-year floods, as part of its effort to expand the pool of people paying into the flood insurance program.

“Taxpayers across the country are tired of paying for people to recover from floods,” said George Currin, a FEMA insurance specialist in Olympia. “Eight percent of the people in the country live in flood plains, but the other 92 percent are paying for it. It’s time they took responsibility.”

Despite increased efforts to get more people into the program, only about 15 percent of people living in flood plains actually buy coverage.

The insurance isn’t required of people who already paid off their loans, bought homes on private contracts or received loans before banks started demanding flood insurance.

Given a choice, most people gamble they can live without the coverage, because it’s expensive - up to $800 a year for a $100,000 home.

Clara Patterson bought a home in Cataldo, Idaho, in 1980, right behind the dike that holds the river back. “It was what we could afford,” she said from her flooded home earlier this month. “We had insurance, but we dropped it. It got too expensive.”

Joan Bagott, co-owner of Bagott Motors in Palouse, Wash., said she and most business owners along the washed-out Main Street flood plain have never bothered with flood insurance.

“The feeling is it’s never happened before so why worry about flood insurance,” she said. “Nobody ever thought there’d be any problem, so they didn’t do anything.”

In four of the hardest hit counties in North Idaho and southeast Washington, only 280 structures were insured against floods. Yet the number of requests for federal emergency aid are already twice that and rising.

Total flood damage estimates for the Inland Northwest this year range from $30 million to more than $100 million. Much of the expense will be paid by taxpayers in emergency relief.

There are 146 structures insured against flood damage in Spokane County. Nobody has applied for federal aid for floods this month.

John VanderBeek pays $480 a year - “money down a rathole” - to protect his north Spokane home against high water that he is certain will never arrive. About 50 of his neighbors pay too.

When the snow melted off Five Mile Prairie earlier this month, the water rushed into the Country Homes Boulevard drainage, but didn’t run through the five-foot deep ditch winding through the nearby suburban flood plain.

Ed Santa Rosa has lived in the neighborhood for 32 years. He doesn’t have to buy flood insurance because he’s paid off his house, but he’s still disgusted that the neighborhood was designated a flood plain in 1988.

“I think it’s crazy what they did out here,” he said, noting he hasn’t seen the ditch full in almost 30 years.

The county’s Williams said she recently received evidence that may show even a 100-year flood wouldn’t overflow the neighborhood ditch. Two elevation markings on the map indicate water from such a flood wouldn’t overflow the ditch.

“This is the first real piece of information we have showing there’s an error here,” she said. Williams said she has contacted FEMA and is awaiting its response.

Another controversial flood plain lies in the Spokane Valley alongside Chester Creek, near Argonne.

Almost 200 homes have been built there. The creek sometimes overflows near the Painted Hills Golf Course, but hasn’t threatened most of its neighbors, especially those residing several blocks from the creek.

The prime flooding conditions this month proved the Chester Creek flood plain is far bigger than it needs to be, said Dick Behm, who owns a business in the area.

“That was the weather scenario” that was supposed to cause a flood, he said. “There was no flood. There were floods all over the place, but not here. It didn’t happen.”

Williams is not convinced. “I haven’t seen anything to make me think this flood study is inaccurate,” she said.

FEMA’s Currin has a response for exasperated people who ask why they should pay flood insurance when their homes remain dry even in extreme flood conditions. “I’d tell them they were very fortunate this time.”

Part of the problem with determining flood plains is that river histories are sketchy. Much of the calculation is done with formulas using land elevations and other factors.

Dave Hoppens, a civil engineer in Ferry County, said he often gets asked where people can build along northeast Washington rivers.

“You actually have to almost start from scratch on everything you do,” he said. Many flood plains haven’t been mapped at all, or are impossible to determine by looking at maps where every inch equals 2,000 feet, he said.

“One guy was paying $2,500 a year for flood insurance up here for living on a dinky creek,” Hoppens said, adding that people often end up paying for flood insurance simply because banks get paranoid.

On the flip side, many homeowners who clearly should get flood insurance are willing to gamble they won’t need it.

“I don’t have flood insurance,” said Steve Huber, who scurried recently to get major items out of his auto body shop, next door to his home, next door to the Coeur d’Alene River in Cataldo. “I was going to get it, but I didn’t.”

In Palouse, only a few home owners bothered to insure themselves against the Palouse River, which people can walk across in the summertime without getting their socks wet.

Mary Johnson is glad she opted to pay $130 a year to cover $10,000 worth of flood damage to her home near the river. “We thought, well, it’s cheap,” she said. “Now it really seems cheap.”

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Jim Lynch Staff writer Staff writer Julie Titone contributed to this report.