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The search continues for people who are still missing after floods swept through parts of central Texas. The death toll now stands at at least 135, but people are beginning to think about rebuilding. Whether they can afford it may be a different story. Audrey McGlinchy with member station KUT says many face the reality of not having flood insurance.
AUDREY MCGLINCHY, BYLINE: Robin Bates stands in front of her house - well, what's left of it.
ROBIN BATES: I think what happened is these two houses hit my house and knocked it off its pillars, and that - and then the trees stopped it.
MCGLINCHY: Bates lives just outside of Austin. In the early hours of Saturday morning, the creek near her house rose to a level she'd never seen. Bates got to higher ground, but her home and her neighbors' homes were carried off their foundations by the rising waters.
BATES: Oh, it got about 8, 12 inches of water at the deepest.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHAINSAWS BUZZING)
MCGLINCHY: Bates' home is now wedged against two trees, with part of its roof caved in. As she and I talk, volunteers use chainsaws to cut up brush and trees. Two men haul a car tire out of the debris. There's a white SUV overturned on the banks of the creek. Soon, though, cleanup will end, and the process of rebuilding will begin. But Bates has no idea what that will look like. I ask her about flood insurance.
BATES: I did not have it. I should've, but I didn't.
MCGLINCHY: I asked two other neighbors. No flood insurance. This is not unusual. According to federal data, just 7% of homeowners in Texas have coverage, and that's through the National Flood Insurance Program, which issues most policies. But in Kerr County, just 2% of homeowners are insured against these kinds of disasters.
MARK FRIEDLANDER: It's, in our opinion, the largest insurance gap in the country. Time and time again, we're seeing catastrophic flooding events, whether it's the Hill Country, and virtually nobody has coverage.
MCGLINCHY: Mark Friedlander is the director of media relations for the Insurance Information Institute, which represents the industry. He says mortgage companies require homeowners who live in an area with a high risk of flooding to buy separate flood insurance, but many don't think they need it.
FRIEDLANDER: There are those who think that their home insurance covers flood because it covers all these other things. It covers wind and hail and other Mother Nature type events. It doesn't cover flood. It never has.
MCGLINCHY: In the last year, the number of homeowners with federal flood insurance in Texas dropped as tens of thousands of homeowners let their policies expire or canceled them. One industry voice calls this catastrophe amnesia. Without flood insurance, people like Bates will have to rely on private donations and money from government agencies like FEMA. But those funds are limited.
Maddie Sloan works on disaster recovery for Texas Appleseed, a public interest group based in Austin.
MADDIE SLOAN: FEMA isn't intended to make people whole. Even if folks get the maximum amount of FEMA assistance, that is not going to rebuild a house.
MCGLINCHY: People affected by disasters can get up to about $44,000 from FEMA to help with housing. This includes paying for hotels or repairing damaged homes. But in reality, people get much less. According to a recent report commissioned by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, since 2015, the average amount that FEMA handed out per approved claim was just under $5,000. Maddie Sloan worries that without the money to rebuild, some may end up abandoning their homes.
SLOAN: Displacement is one of the things we see long term. You know, the other thing we often see is that people live in damaged homes for years.
MCGLINCHY: Another person without insurance whose home was damaged in the recent floods is Yolanda Chavira. She was sitting in the shade outside a church that has become a meeting point for volunteers and survivors. Chavira wiped tears away as she talked about the flood.
YOLANDA CHAVIRA: My husband went out there in the middle of the night in the middle of the storm and started digging a trench on the side of the house because the water just kept gushing in.
MCGLINCHY: She's staying in a shed on the property with no running water. Her home, she says, is unlivable.
CHAVIRA: Stinks in there. I can't breathe. I don't know where all the rats came from, but we have rats. And we have mold.
MCGLINCHY: Chavira said they didn't have flood insurance because it was too expensive. I asked her if she had the money to rebuild. She shook her head no. And at nearly 70 years old, she said she wasn't quite sure how they would start over.
For NPR News, I'm Audrey McGlinchy in Austin. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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