Why were all the RV's left in the flood?
I understand that sometimes you can't move an RV when the water is coming up but it looks like there's a lot of RV's that were just left to flood. I mine were there I'd have moved it up the road and o...
Forum Discussion
kzspree320 wrote:
There is too much misinformation in this thread for me to comment much without writing a novel. I live right outside Baton Rouge and was evacuated during the August 2016 floods when about 75,000 homes flooded due to flooding that has been described as 500 and 1,000 year flooding. Here is a little insight from someone that has been there and done that. My house had 37" of water in it, and the costs to rebuild were about half the costs to construct a new house.
The Louisiana Commissioner of Insurance estimated that only 12 percent of houses flooded had flood insurance. Flood insurance is required to buy a house in a flood zone with a mortgage. What does that tell you? Most of these homes were not in a flood zone and the land they were sitting on had never seen flood water in over a hundred years.
Why are all the RVs unmoved. Mine was in storage about 2 miles from my house and was never moved. From the time we saw water in our street until we were rescued in a pontoon boat was about an hour. By the time we saw water, water was too deep on escape routes to safely leave and the police had them blocked. Were we warned this was likely in our area, or were we under an evacuation order? No and No. When we called 911 for a rescue did anyone answer, NO. The truth of the matter is that most rescues happened exactly like ours. We were trying 911 to no avail, looking out for boats and saw a pontoon boat coming our way. Just ordinary people with boats willing to take a risk to help others. As the wife and I got off the boat with only our little dog and one bag each, we did thank the people with the boat. I only wish I knew there name so I could thank them properly, but during our time on the boat there were over 20 people rescued and no time for talking. In a massive disaster, there is little time and an RV never crosses your mind when lives are at risk. In a happy note, my RV happened to be stored on what was a small island with water all the way around it and was not damaged. Pure luck.
Some selected inaccuracies in this thread:
1) You have to be in a flood zone to buy flood insurance. FALSE. I know many outside the flood zone that have flood insurance.
2) It will take years of wrangling with the flood insurance to get your money. FALSE. I and most of my neighbors had the check for flood insurance, made payable to both us/them and any mortgage company, within about 45 to 75 days. Getting your funds from the mortgage company was more of a challenge for most than the flood insurance.
3) Many people let the RVs flood for the insurance money. FALSE. We lost both of our vehicles located in our garage due to flooding. You only get fair market value (blue book value) from insurance. They could have probably sold for about the same. You will not get significantly more from insurance than selling. If you owe more than the RV is worth, which often happens, the bank ends up with the check (payable to owner and lender) and you still have a balance on the loan to deal with.
Life is starting to return to normal after a very hard year. It's real easy to sit in a chair and play Monday morning quarterback in retrospect, but disasters usually happen fast and with little warning. No one really thought a river that is normally only 30 YARDS wide, and was only 3-4 MILES wide during previous record flooding, would end up over 15 MILES wide. For information I am normally 8 miles from the river and no land within miles of me had ever been touched by this river until last year.
If all 300+ million Americans are only to locate on land which is not subject to any natural disasters, including floods, wildfires, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanos, etc, then we will all need to learn to live in high rises hundreds of miles from any coast.
Does not sound like much of a life to me. Sorry to be long winded.
You have provided some very good information. I am very sorry that you were faced with all that, but am happy that you are getting back on track.
I cannot for my life understand blaming the victims of such events. They've (you've) been through enough he!! without that.
