PrepareRespondRecover.com
Title
PrepareRespondRecover.com Safety Planning, Disaster Response, Disaster Recovery Tools + Information
Description
Commercial grade water pumps and wet vacs worked as long as the power held. But once the electricity went dead, it was as if someone decided to turn the office into a swimming pool.
No one expected this; the building sat high up on a hill, a seemingly ideal spot if one wanted to avoid suffering through a flood. But in this case, because property owners uphill regraded their site without regard for storm runoff, the torrential rain that fell on higher ground flowed past our building on its way down to lower elevation. This left us sitting in the middle of a river. The water seeped down along the foundation and came into the office through the walls and floor; we could watch the water flowing in, but could do nothing to stop it. And even though the regrading set the stage for flooding, the property owners who had done the work and the local building officials claimed "Act of God" and took no responsibility.
Unfortunately, for all the money we had invested in business insurances, we didn't have flood insurance. Even if we had demanded it, by law our insurance agent couldn't have sold it to us — the building wasn't in a flood area.
