SACRAMENTO, California — The damage from this weekend’s Pineapple Express could be on the order of billions of dollars, but California residents aren’t rushing to file insurance claims.
Given that less than 2 percent of California homes are insured against floods, homeowners faced with downed trees, mudslides and water damage will likely pay the cost of rebuilding out of pocket.
Weather-related catastrophes were de rigueur in California even before climate change started juicing wildfires and storms. But while homeowners clamor for fire insurance as insurers flee the state, flood insurance is fairly widely available. People just aren’t buying it.
Last winter’s atmospheric rivers did $4.6 billion in damages and wrecked thousands of homes, most of them without flood insurance. But in the months after, people didn’t sign up en masse for new policies. About 3,000 Californians enrolled in the National Flood Insurance Program, which insures the vast majority of homes in the state, between last January and July, but over the past few months enrollment dropped back down, from 194,625 policies to 191,622 policies in December.