WASHINGTON, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) -- Many of the inundated houses and apartments in Houston are probably not covered by insurers, said Wall Street Journal Monday.
Hurricane Harvey has slammed Houston and other areas in Texas with heavy rain since last weekend. Shelters across the Greater Houston have homed about 5,000 people, and experts estimated there would be 30,000 in total evacuated to shelters.
The bill for insurers was expected to come to between 10 billion and 20 billion U.S. dollars, according to an estimate from JP Morgan Chase.
More losses, however, are not covered by private insurers, because flood damage is excluded from residential policies.
Bills for flooding are mainly covered by National Flood Insurance Program, a federal government program backed by taxpayer money. Homeowners generally use the federal flood map to determine whether they have to buy the expensive protection. Real estate outside the flood zone are not required to buy any protection.
More than half of the residential and commercial properties in Houston that are at high or moderate risk of flooding due to Harvey are not in federally designated flood zone, said the newspaper.
That means half of the inundated houses and apartments owners are unlikely to get any compensation from federal government.
