Associated Press

Associated Press

POOLER, Ga.

Waist-deep floodwaters from Hurricane Matthew coursed down the street and seeped under Lori Galemore’s doors, swamping the carpets and furniture as she and her three sons retreated upstairs, where they stayed until firefighters arrived by boat.

Galemore and her neighbors in Pooler, a community about 35 miles inland from the evacuated Georgia coast, were deluged not by seawater driven ashore by the hurricane, but by rain and runoff that overwhelmed a drainage ditch at the end of their cul-de-sac.

“Everybody said, ‘You’re not in a flood plain. You don’t need flood insurance,”’ Galemore recalled as her husband and sons threw out soggy furniture, waterlogged books, towels and blankets and wet chunks of drywall. “And flood insurance is expensive. Who wants to pay that?”

Galemore’s story is all too common. Many Americans don’t have flood insurance, some because they don’t want to pay for it, some because they don’t see the need for it.

As of August, only 19 percent of homeowners in Florida had flood insurance, 2 percent in Georgia, 9 percent in South Carolina and 5 percent in North Carolina, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Even in high-risk flood zones, the rate in those states ranged from just 25 percent to 65 percent.

Industry officials say it is a troubling situation, especially since the risk of flooding appears to be on the rise.

“We seem to be having more and more flooding events, be it climate change or other things. We’re seeing areas that are experiencing flooding events that may not have experienced them in the past,” said Cynthia DiVincenti, a vice president at Aon National Flood Services.

Ordinary homeowner insurance typically covers wind damage – torn-off roofs, fallen trees – but not flooding.

While homeowners in the high-risk zones must get flood insurance if they have a federally backed mortgage, lots of flooding takes place outside those designated hazard areas.

That was the case when heavy storms flooded parts of South Carolina last year and an unnamed storm recently inundated the Baton Rouge, La., area.

Flood claims have averaged more than $1.9 billion per year since 2006, according to federal officials.

Flood insurance in low- to moderate-risk areas averages $400 to $600 a year, according to FEMA.