Are You Prepared for Flooding with Cleighton Smith

November 21, 2023

110. Are You Prepared for Flooding with Cleighton Smith

Did you know that flooding is the most common natural disaster worldwide? In today's episode, we unravel the hidden truths about flood-related damage and why homeowners’ insurance won't cover it. Water resources engineer Cleighton Smith has over 45 years of experience in floodplain management. He shares eye-opening insights and discusses the challenges homeowners face when buying a house, especially in flood-prone areas. 

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Some highlights from this episode:

@ 6:34 The challenges people have getting homeowners insurance

@ 9:47 Importance of Flood Insurance and Awareness

@ 17:31 Considering Flood Risks and Building Codes

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Transcript

George Siegal: 0:00

Thank you for joining me today on the Homeowners Be Aware podcast. Flooding is the most common type of natural disaster worldwide. About 40% of all natural disasters involve flooding. In case you weren't aware, homeowners insurance doesn't cover flood-related damage. In many instances, a homeowner fixes flood damage, passes the house off to an unknowing buyer and it becomes their problem. Hot potato is a fun game, unless you end up holding the potato at the end. My guest today is Cleighton Smith, a water resources engineer and floodplain manager in New Jersey. Cleighton has over 45 years of experience with flooding issues. He has eye-opening advice that we all need to hear about flooding. I'm George Siegel, and this is Homeowners Be Aware, the podcast that teaches you everything you need to know about being a homeowner. Cleighton, thank you so much for joining me today.

Cleighton Smith: 0:56

You're very welcome, George. I'm happy to be here.

George Siegal: 0:59

I appreciate your time Now. You and I met at the New Jersey Association of Floodplain Managers and what you were talking about with me resonates deeply with me because to me it's one of the most important things in people buying a house, their transaction and that's knowing really what you're buying. Tell us what it is that you're working on in this area, because you're doing some important work.

Cleighton Smith: 1:23

Well, I've been working in this community called Manville in Central New Jersey for a number of years, helping them with floodplain management issues and their community rig service, which I helped them improve their score in. But then, a few years ago, hurricane Ida hit and.

Cleighton Smith: 1:40

Manville was like round zero in the entire state of New Jersey. It was a very, very hard hit. So I've been working extensively there since then and many, many issues have come up, but one of them has been the lack of clarity when people go to buy a house I mean so many people I talked to after Ida had no clue. They were in a floodplain. The realtor didn't tell them, which isn't surprising. We're working to get a new flood disclosure law passed in New Jersey. It's actually passed in New Jersey, but we don't have any. I don't think the rule's been written yet. I'd like to have some input into that process. But furthermore, there's errors in the FEMA maps that are extremely old and misleading and in some places, just flat out wrong. And when people look at these areas and say this is not even in a 5-0-0 floodplain, yet these houses are three feet of war on the search floor. It's just some of that due to the fact that historically they were in a 500-year floodplain the old, old maps. When they created these countywide maps, it somehow got left off in the countywide process, so I'm working on getting that map corrected, but it's still.

Cleighton Smith: 3:02

It's an uphill battle to try to get people to be aware of what they when they buy a house. I get people calling me all the time. When somebody goes to buy a house, they contact. Some of them will contact Burrell Hall and ask about what restrictions they might have if they want to improve the house. And they always tell them to call me. And even if a house is not in the floodplain, we have satellite imagery from. We're very fortunate to have satellite imagery from IDAP. Apparently, the day after the flood, this Maxar satellite that sits above the earth was manned by the absolute right position with no clouds, and they got beautiful, beautiful, high-bred imagery of IDAP. I mean literally before the flood had receded, and it's very, very helpful to show people if they how do you know this house Well?

George Siegal: 3:53

I've taken a look at the pictures you can stick.

Cleighton Smith: 3:57

My PowerPoint that I gave the last day of the conference had some of these imagery in there.

George Siegal: 4:02

It's very powerful, so yeah, and people don't understand that. And it's interesting. I was on a podcast last night, the Toolman Tim podcast and one of the people listening asked me how accurate those FEMA maps were and I said, look, I would not use that as the gospel. If you're buying a house, it's a great way to go on FEMAgov and see the zone that you're in, but you still want to go another step after that and do some more research.

Cleighton Smith: 4:26

Yeah, what I tell people is that those Because I've spent a lot of my career making those maps, so I know what they're based on, I know the assumptions are based on and they're prepared as kind of as far as both a regulatory tool and a planning tool. It's not meant to be the end-all predictor of where the flood's going to go. One of my buddies, a FEMA, years ago, said rising water can't read a map, so you don't want to sit on the dry side of the line saying, oh well, I guess I'm going to okay here, could you not? Yeah?

George Siegal: 4:59

And then another thing people don't understand. I hope you can talk about. This is okay. Why should they care beyond just the house possibly flooding? It has a lot to do, if there's a record of that house flooding, whether you'll even be able to get insurance for it at all.

Cleighton Smith: 5:12

Right. So insurance is another issue that it's To me in a kind of state of flux. To me in Florida maybe is different than New Jersey, but from what I understand, fema can't. Fema insurance is different than private insurance. There's a lot of private insurance out there and I'm not really an insurance expert, so a lot of what I say should not be held as gospel. But if I'm not mistaken, fema can't FEMA. Fema insurance cannot deny someone's insurance, private insurance can't. But FEMA, as long as the community you live in participates in the National Flood Insurance Program, you may, they can charge you All they want for it, but they can't deny you insurance.

George Siegal: 5:55

From what I understand, Right, but it can sure. It can sure cost a lot of money for your regular insurance if they know that house is gonna flood. I mean, obviously regular homeowners insurance doesn't cover flooding. But I can't imagine State farm or one of those people saying, yeah, that house was under 10 feet of water, here's a reasonable policy to cover it but see they, there's not, it's not, they're underwriting, it's fit female, female.

Cleighton Smith: 6:15

I understand the NFIP underwrites that, not state farm.

George Siegal: 6:19

Just just for flooding, but I'm talking about like overall homeowners insurance.

Cleighton Smith: 6:22

Yes, you're right, you're right, yeah. Yeah but, but. But they don't cover the flood. For anything that the water touches they don't cover.

George Siegal: 6:29

Right, but if that house becomes uninhabitable because it floods, there's other issues that your insurance.

Cleighton Smith: 6:34

I know people in Florida have a nightmare getting insurance.

Cleighton Smith: 6:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in Manville I can't get enough people to buy it because the people that they're outside the map floodplain don't have to and a lot of them are Living there because that's about all they can afford and have had to buy insurance. They they are. You know that it would break the bank and that leads that's led to. I can't tell you how many foreclosures have been in Manville After I know that's another thing we don't talk about. If I'm these people who this is all they could afford. I have I have a database called property recordscom that Like that. I can look into this and I can I if I. I've made a list for some of the people the state of, because we're curious how many foreclosures that we know about in Manville and there's at least 20 or 30 since just in the last couple of months, I mean last couple years, it's it's it's very unfortunate and I think that More people had insurance. We could help maybe prevent some of these. But yeah, it's really sad. I was the lady.

Cleighton Smith: 7:39

There's a lady from Wells Fargo called me once who who deals before closes all across the country. She said two of them. She was working. I run the same street in Manville.

George Siegal: 7:49

So yeah, tom, tom, little of flood proofing. Comm was in our last film and he talked about how people don't understand If you're not in the flood zone. Having flood insurance is not that expensive and it may be the best investment you can make.

Cleighton Smith: 8:04

Yep, absolutely, and risk-growing 2.0 is changed that a little bit, but not that much. They don't have what's called preferred risk policy anymore. But I still think if you, if you're not, the flood zone really doesn't have a have an impact on the rate you pay anymore. It's more based upon proximity to the flooding source, and they've actually prayed a black box so that most people can't figure out what the premiums based on.

George Siegal: 8:33

Yes, I'll have to figure out where that water is coming from now. I know if you're right on the coast, you have to worry about storm surge, but a lot of people inland, a little further away from the water, could be getting water from other sources that end up flooding them. Yeah, and that's a big problem.

Cleighton Smith: 8:47

Well, that's another issue that the flood maps have don't cover this. It's kind of. I'm involved in a lot of different Conferences and committees and but one of the hot new topics is what's been called pluvial foot flooding. You know, river flooding is we call fluvial, but pluvial is when you get so much rain it just can't go anywhere and a lot of people in man and all across the state got flooded this way because the intensity of the rain is so strong that it'll, it'll just fill up all the low spots. In some of them, the houses on the low, the lowest house in the on the block, often got flooded by a foot or two and there were no near flood plain. We saw quite a bit of this in Manville and In other places in the state and there are played people trying to start trying to create Models, to try to create these pluvial maps, which is a kind of the next stage in in trying to predict where the floodwaters go.

George Siegal: 9:45

Now for people who don't think that flooding is a big issue. The most common type of natural disaster worldwide is flooding. 40% of all natural disasters involve flooding. 75% of all presidential disaster declarations are associated with flooding. That should get people's attention.

Cleighton Smith: 10:03

Doesn't surprise me in the least. I may have been doing this all my adult life, pretty much, and it's sad, but it's not. It doesn't surprise me in the least. The other thing is I think this number varies from time to time, but about 30% of FEMA's annual flood claims come from people who don't live in map floodplains.

Cleighton Smith: 10:25

And that number would be higher if more people outside the floodplain had flood insurance. The problem if you don't live in the floodplain, you don't have to get flood insurance. So people who are able to file these claims are people who are proactive and realize that maybe they should have flood insurance. And again, a lot of these claims come from people outside the flood insurance. And the other thing is, after presidential disaster, fema can offer what's called individual assistance. And if I would have, I can't show you that map because it's privately protected, but I've seen it and the maps of this industry. The IA map of Manville is like the blue, yellow dots all across the community Places nowhere near floodplain but get flooded enough to get the file for FEMA's individual assistance program, which is crazy.

George Siegal: 11:16

Well, I had an insurance agent tell somebody I know that lives in a high-rise condo here in Tampa where I live to get flood insurance, even though their unit wouldn't necessarily be disrupted by flooding but it covered other disruptions to the building if that was flooding. So you really wanna ask your insurance agent or have somebody explain to you when you're buying that policy and the policy is not gonna be written by that agent but they can. They sure help you get that and that's important to understand all the different coverages that you would have under it.

Cleighton Smith: 11:51

Yes, yes, that's absolutely right. I'm not really an insurance expert but, yes, when you think about insurance in a condo although I'm on the 20th floor, well, I suppose your elevator goes out for two or three days, you know your power goes out and you're stuck with rotten food in the fridge, you know I'm not sure how much flood insurance will cover, but some of it should be. You need to think. People need to think about it, because people will tell you look, why should I evacuate? Look how high I am. Well, suppose you have an medical emergency and the three feet of war in the streets and the ambulance can't get there. I mean, you gotta think about these things too.

George Siegal: 12:28

Yeah, and if you're above floors two or three and you have to imagine what it would be like going in, especially if you're an older person, what it would be like going in and out of that building on a regular basis with no elevator that could get pretty old.

Cleighton Smith: 12:40

Yep, yep. So yeah, these are things that people need to consider when they think about it, because the other thing with flooding is like well, it's always somebody else, it's not me, well, you know, that's again the wrong way to think too.

George Siegal: 12:56

So talk to me about human nature, because you have people contacting you all the time. Why do people have this attitude? I know, when I was talking at the conference, one of the things I kind of like to make fun of is well, maybe this will serve as a wake up call. Hello, we should already be awake. Why are we not awake already?

Cleighton Smith: 13:12

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think the individual homeowner doesn't have it's not their day in and day out job the way it is mine. So when I look at these conferences when you attended to me this is wonderful stuff, but it's really us preaching to the choir. What you're doing creating a podcast that's trying to grab the attention of the average homeowner I think is where our efforts should be focused. It is very challenging to try to get the individual homeowner to pay more attention to this stuff. Flood disclosure alerts would be really, really important so that people, when they go to buy a house, it's not just am I in a flood plain, but has this house flooded before? I tell people, if you really want to know, go look when you do your, when you're viewing the house, go into the base wherever the furnace is and look at the sticker on it and when it was installed and inspected. If it's right around the time of a flood, then you know that was that area get damaged.

George Siegal: 14:17

So these are little things you can do to help people be more aware Now although they don't have to tell you, in some states you can certainly ask and have that put in the contract that they say that the house is never flooded. I think we could solve at least part of this problem, right. The second You're saying look, everybody asked this question. I have a list of questions I think people should ask the people they're buying from. That's near the top.

Cleighton Smith: 14:43

Right. And the other thing that FEMA maintains the database that we can't share this repetitive loss database. We use it when we're in this community rating system to if we have above a certain number of repetitive loss structures, we have to have a plan on how we're going to reduce them. So we have to have that data but we can't share it. We can't say this particular house has had 10 claims or five claims. But what I can share is and people frequently ask me is, after Ida we did what's called substantial damage work where we went out and inspected the house.

Cleighton Smith: 15:22

All these houses get flooded and if the cost to repair is more than 50% of the market value of the house, then we put a tag on it that that house either has to take a voluntary buy or has to be elevated. And it's been a hard process to get compliance but we're slowly but surely working on it. But those letters are fully discloseable. So when a realtor lists the house that's been substantial damage, I said, well, maybe the homeowner didn't share this with you, but I'm sharing it with you. And they've had several of these buyers have come to me and said how high do I have to lift it? And we've gotten. That's how we're getting a lot of these lists through the realtor who, once they know they have to disclose it.

George Siegal: 16:09

Now, I'm not a cheerleader for the insurance industry by any stretch of the imagination, so I gotta ask you I know you don't work for them either, but why aren't they insisting on this? Why do they continue to allow or not just put their foot down and say if you don't fix it to a certain standard, we're not going to insure it?

Cleighton Smith: 16:28

Well, that's a good question. I don't know the answer to that question Right now. It's currently the FD process is actually in every single community's um mandatory ordinance that FEMA makes them adopt. So technically speaking, every community should be doing this. But I know it's not done universally in FEMA doesn't really hold community's feet to the fire, that don't do it. But it's strict. It's more right now it's a compliance issue between fee. It's FEMA's way to retrofit the old structures with the term pre-firm. The structures were built before the flood maps came out. No one knew where the flood maps were going to end up. In Manville most of our infrastructure was built in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s and some in the 60s. So these are older communities, older homes with basements that flood. So you know the insurance industry should be more invested in this than they are. I'm not quite sure how to make that happen, but you're right, it is something that should happen.

George Siegal: 17:31

You know, one of the things I met so many interesting people at that conference, and what a lot of them were talking to me about, is how complicated the behind-the-scenes issues are for building codes and getting things designated, that there's a lot that goes on that the consumer does not know about what. What I really want to Talk about, though, is, since we have to do everything we can to protect ourselves, what should the average person be thinking when they're looking at a property to buy a house, whether it's manville or anywhere else? Well, what should our process be?

Cleighton Smith: 18:08

I'm gonna answer that in two questions. Number one you should know the community you're buying it. I see the people who buy in mandrel aren't the people. Manville has a kind of a reputation in central New Jersey, so in communities around manville everybody knows it has this reputation of flooding. But what I'm saying is a lot it's we're in the metro New York area, so a lot of people looking that.

Cleighton Smith: 18:32

I have talked to a people who move there from Brooklyn or Staten Island who may not know that look, say they would. This is about 45 minutes from New York. It seems like a In an area that I can afford to buy a house. So this is the kind of the people that. So those individuals need to say well, wait a minute, this house is very affordable for a reason. So I should be asking questions of what, why it is you see. So I've looked also learned Somerset County. It's like the number one, the. This is got the highest, highest average income in the whole state of New Jersey, so it's a fairly wealthy County and manville is kind of like the more the one little tiny borough within Somerset County that's. That's affordable. So there's a reason for that and people should be asking that question you know,

Cleighton Smith: 19:21

why is it so affordable, you know, but but it's, it's so, yeah, yeah, that's one thing I should point out. It's it's because it's easy to check if you're in a flood plain. But you need to find out more and those sources can be talking to the people the borough hall, the construction, the office, if they've had any, If they've had the had the issue, any flood related permits for that building. I mean, that's easy information, whether communities in CRS or not. I mean, was there a recent flood and someone have to come in for permit to get a new sticker, a new, a new Furnace or hot water heater or that sort of thing?

George Siegal: 20:02

So now tell people who have been fortunate never to have experienced flooding how miserable it is when that occurs, because I've had a basement that flooded because the sump pump broke and we only had about a foot of water in there, but it was a nightmare for months. Imagine your whole house.

Cleighton Smith: 20:19

Let me tell you that's what. When I first went to manville after the flood this is, I think, they the Bible was there I Drove down just a basic street that was in the flood plain. If you can just picture Everybody's stuff. These are, these are small Cape houses. Well, everything that they own is on the Between the house and the curb, everything that they own is out there, and that's every single house both sides of the street for Six or eight blocks. You turn the corner, come back the other way. Exact same thing. It's just it's. It's just. It's hard to put into words, it's just really Depressing to see. This is like every single person, this is hundreds and hundreds of people affected this way, and just yeah, it's. Just imagine you live in a one-story house and just imagine one day four feet of war is it's, it's, it's just barges in and there's nothing to do about it.

George Siegal: 21:16

You, yeah people need to understand the amount of mold you have to deal with. The the floor has to go, the cabinets, anything that that comes in proximity to the ground. The water wicks up in the walls. So you're electrical, your insulation, it can be substantial.

Cleighton Smith: 21:30

Oh yeah, yeah, it's, yeah, I tell you. And that the smell like this, the smell from the mold, this is happening in the, you know, late summer. So, yeah, the mold was just Excruciating. Yeah, it's tough, it's, it's, it's really, it's an image you've. Once you've seen it, you'll never get out of your head. It's just, it's bad.

George Siegal: 21:51

Not, and not to keep kicking the insurance industry, but they don't sponsor anything that I'm doing, so it's okay. I saw a video recently, a mini documentary that an attorney made who has to sue them all the time, and it was interviews with his clients and the runaround and the treatment that they had to go through as they try to get their lives back. Right adjusters changing Denial, denial, denial, so eventually they wear a lot of people out. They just go away. I mean, it's not a clean process, even getting paid.

Cleighton Smith: 22:22

No, it's really I. There was one lady in particular, a very sad story who's um single mom, disabled daughter. She, fema, said to her her damages were, oh I don't know, 70, 80 thousand dollars. And she, her contract, said her damages were like 120,000 and she couldn't get FEMA to agree to To what the contractor said and the contractor wouldn't do it for what FEMA said and she took out a small business loan to try to cover the difference. And it was just this. It's very, very I'm still not sure what she where. She ended up. She's trying to get blue acres to buy the house blue acres. By the way, the state of New Jersey Program that facilitates the bio process. They kind of do the legwork that a lot of communities in other states have to do themselves. It's a pretty good process and and it works reasonably well, but it's extremely slow it's. It takes years for it to go from start to finish.

George Siegal: 23:19

Yeah, and who nobody has years, when something like that happens. It's painful, and so the people that were in this documentary that I saw, I mean these weren't actors, these were real people and you could see the pain on their face.

Cleighton Smith: 23:30

Oh yeah, I tell you what it's like.

George Siegal: 23:32

It's just horrible.

Cleighton Smith: 23:33

I believe it. I believe it, I've seen it obviously firsthand and in Many, many, many times yeah, it's, it's. It's tough to see, tough to. It's really not much you can say to a lot of people look, oven, here's the process, here's where you can go, here we can talk to, sometimes get help from FEMA, sometimes they don't, it's just. Yeah, I, fema brings a lot of reservists in when it's faster and then. So I'm not sure all of them are super well trained and how to handle things. But I know there's a lot of denial tonight I there were a couple people who came to me and I went to someone at FEMA and got their case to reopen and sometimes in a few times We've had them Actually changed the decision.

George Siegal: 24:16

So now, should we? Should we actually? I know it's not a popular thing to say, but should we not be able to live in dangerous areas, or we may be seeing more damage because we're encroaching on Dangerous areas more and more? And that just makes it worse.

Cleighton Smith: 24:30

Well, there's a lot to be said about that. In manville it's not again, it's a situation where the area has already been built. There's a discussion, one of the more. A recent decision has been made by the state that they don't want to see elevations in certain parts of manville because I think it's just too risky to lift the house. You're still in a dangerous area, you still have to Put first responders at risk. So you know, it's been kind of a controversial thing because we can have private lifts in these areas but we can't get the federal government to help some of these lifts. So where be? And again, the basis is is public safety, which you know. Yeah, you can't argue with that, but we've anyway. I don't want to go too further into that, but yeah, there are areas where people shouldn't be building and that the FEMA and their mapping program is originally supposed to help lead that charge. But I think what's happened is is that charge? But I think what happened is the ability to get flood insurance in a risky area has sort of upended that original effort.

Cleighton Smith: 25:45

I do a lot of training in floodplain management. I had to look into the history of the floodplain mapping program and the original intent was not to provide insurance for risky development. It was to provide a guideline for where we should be building where we should be building. The whole contract of floodplain management was a counter to flood control projects. The TVA did a lot of flood control projects in the 50s, but they also looked at floodplain management in areas in rural areas where they couldn't really justify building a project. Some of the early concepts of floodplain management came out of TVA's work in the 50s, and so the original intent was really to provide these maps of areas where we have to build. If we do build, we have to build to a certain standard, but we do make sure there are some areas that we shouldn't be building at all.

George Siegal: 26:47

If we changed our focus from being reactive to being more proactive, do you think it would make a difference?

Cleighton Smith: 26:54

Yeah, sure, but that can be an uphill fight. There's fewer and fewer places to build these days. Builders are being more and more creative to try to work around whatever proactive steps we want to take. So a lot of it involves partnerships, you know, based on common sense.

George Siegal: 27:19

So yeah, common sense. You know it's funny right right down the street from where I live there was one huge old house that was right on the water of Tampa Bay and they sold it, they tore it down and they're building eight or ten houses there that are going to be right on Tampa Bay. Now they're going to be expensive homes, so I'm hopeful they're going to be very well built, but it's still it's a risky spot.

Cleighton Smith: 27:40

Elevated and high and yeah. But then the other thing is like people don't think about it as dry land access. You know it's, I can be eight feet up in the air and protected in the vent, but if all the streets around me are underwater for days, you know that's not, doesn't really help me, unless they have a boat kayak.

George Siegal: 28:00

Yeah well, the people that live right on the water. Probably I'll have boats, they'll be doing okay as well, so did we miss anything? Clayton, is there something you wanted to mention that that I didn't ask you?

Cleighton Smith: 28:10

Um, I'm looking over my notes. Um, one of the things I I like to tell people is um, when, when you look at flood maps and things that are created for regulatory purposes, I'd love to do is I create Maps that are specific for getting permits and such. There's, there's the when you, when you work with the regulatory process, you really you're in the regulatory world and I try to tell people the regulatory world in the real world should never, should never be confused to be the same thing. Just because you don't have to get flooded, sure, it doesn't mean you're, you're at no risk of flooding.

Cleighton Smith: 28:42

The regulatory maps are there because the insurance industry needs to, needs to ask you to get flood insurance if you're getting a mortgage in that area, but that doesn't mean if you pay cash, you, you can, you don't have to get flood insurance. Um, I get, I've talked to many people in manville who who bought houses with cash and and where it stuck with with the damages because they just Didn't, they didn't stop this, consider the fact they were gonna get flooded. So you know it's, it's uh, the real world and regulatory world are two different places, and and I'd like to live in the real world, although I can help you in the regulatory world, the real world's, where we is, where we live.

George Siegal: 29:20

Well, you should tell people that they hope that if they meet you, it's in a bar having a beer or something, and not because they're calling you, because they're underwater exactly, exactly, yep. Hey, Cleighton, it was. It was so good to meet you. I appreciate the time when you were talking to me up in up in the city and I appreciate you coming on today. You had some great advice.

Cleighton Smith: 29:39

Great. Thanks very much, george. Good luck with this and let me know if you have Want to do this again sometime. On a different topic, Right, thanks.

George Siegal: 29:46

If you have a story about your experience as a homeowner, good or bad, I'd like to hear from you. There's a contact form in the show notes. Fill it out and you may be a guest on an upcoming episode. And if you like what you were listening to today, please become a subscriber so you don't miss an episode. A new one comes out every Tuesday morning. Thanks for listening. See you next time.