The White River crested above 24 feet in Anderson and Noblesville this weekend, breaking a flood record that had stood since 1913. In Indianapolis, Mayor Joe Hogsett called it the city’s most severe flooding in more than 30 years. By Saturday, hundreds of homes between the river and its parallel canals had been evacuated, and Indianapolis Fire Department crews had pulled 95 people and 45 pets out of rising water.
At least five people have died since the storms began Aug. 11, according to Indiana officials. More than 300,000 residents lost power at the peak of the outages, and over a dozen counties have issued local disaster declarations. Jacob Spence, director of Marion County Emergency Management, told the Associated Press it was “an unprecedented event,” adding that the region was “setting some new records.”
For homeowners now facing the cleanup, the more urgent number may be a different one: fewer than 1% of Indiana households have flood insurance. The state’s own data, tracked through the Indiana Department of Homeland Security, puts the count at 15,781 active National Flood Insurance Program policies statewide, out of more than 2.5 million households. In Marion County, which includes Indianapolis, roughly 2,900 properties carry active NFIP coverage, according to FEMA policy data…