Flood water vs. wind-driven waterand insurance

[FormerFlatlander]

In watching the immense rain and flooding from T/S Fay, my wife and I were discussing that this event will ignite new complaints from consumers about insurance claiming damage came from floods and not a hurricane.

What if you collected a jar of water from inside your flooded home?

Fresh water=rainfall flooding

Salt water=storm surge.

Yes, most insurance companies might be hesitant to accept this as proof on an individual basis, but what if whole neighborhoods provided evidence of flooding from storm surge? How could they argue that salt water fell from the sky?

[NC George]

Both are floods, and would be covered under flood insurance, not homeowners. Basically storm surge would be a short term flood, and fresh water flooding can be short term (flash flood, as it was at my house after Floyd, my house had water to the floorboards before Floyd made actual landfall, and I'm about 80 miles inland) or long term (the water from my house went downstream, met up with a bunch of other water, and cause the massive flooding in Eastern NC a couple of days after landfall.)

All Fay proves is you need flood insurance if you own a home, because excessive rainfall within a short period of time can cause localized flooding anywhere. If you don't live in a flood zone, then it's not really that expensive.