April 27, 2011
By: Carrie Van Brunt-Wiley
Effective June 16, many residents in Tucson, Arizona, will need to have purchased flood insurance, a mandate handed down by the state's legislature.
Those residents whose properties lie within the newly redrawn flood plain and have federally backed mortgages are now required to purchase this coverage. The Federal Emergency Management Agency updates its maps to illustrate where the high-water marks falls, and thus, which properties would be affected by the the new mandate.
While most property owners purchase homeowners insurance, flood insurance is not covered under standard home policies and needs to be purchased separately. Furthermore, policy prices for flood insurance will rise significantly after the FEMA's new maps go into effect, but lower preferred rate are available through mid-June.
These new maps replace the previous paper ones in use, and consolidate several digital maps as well. The maps detail potential of a 100-year flood, showing the areas that have a 1 percent chance of being affected in a given year.
With many Southern states being affected by natural disasters lately - Texas by wildfire and Missouri by tornadoes, for example - purchasing such insurance might prove to be worth it.
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