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News 12 Staff

CTPP831B_2024-08-31-16-52-49

I'm Mark Sudal. Welcome back to power and politics. A local business is now back on its feet after major flooding. Earlier this month, Dave Cuban who owns this planet Pizza in Norwalk says the Norwalk river flooded and came up into his store. He says he lost pretty much everything in the storage room but no one got hurt. Not only was the clean up of process, but he says the water got into some of his fridges and appliances. One of his managers, James Clifford helped get the store back open. This past week, we had ma like major flooding in the basement. Uh Unfortunately, we had about $5000 worth of damage. We lost two coolers, two refrigerators, a ton of our boxes, cutlery kits. Um pretty devastating. I mean it's a big loss. Unfortunately, it is mother nature. There's not much we can do about it. Clifford and Cuban say they got help from family and some of the vendors they use. Cuban says he didn't have flood insurance and has to pay damages uh in the thousands of dollars. Now he says he has flood insurance. Andrew Mace, commissioner of the Connecticut Insurance Department. Joins us now to talk more about this. Welcome. Thank you for having me here. Well, now most people, of course, wouldn't think they needed flood insurance in some areas of our state, but that sure changed this week. A typical insurance policy of course, does not cover flooding, right. You're absolutely correct. There are some things that your typical homeowners policy will not cover. That includes earth movement, that includes flooding, which is why there are separate policies for earthquakes, for instance. And there are policies for flooding. Uh, the most affordable ones are through the National Flood insurance program, but there are also policies that you can get on the private market. And I will tell you personally, I'm glad that Planet Pizza is back. It's always horrible, especially after the kind of flood that we've had to hear that people don't have flood insurance. I, I live on top of a hill, very low likelihood of anything happening, but I have flood insurance. Yeah. So what else do people know need to know about this? There is a misconception about flooding and the need for flood insurance. And I think what we've seen so far is if you don't have a mortgage and if you don't live in a flood zone, you don't need flood insurance. And that is unfortunate because it's not till too late. The traditional when, uh, prop when there's a flooding and property owners find out that their, their home isn't covered or their business isn't covered if it rains, it can flood. 90% of all natural disasters involve flooding, as we could tell in Connecticut the last couple of weeks, that's become more common and it's become the costliest disaster in the US. And one inch of water is estimated to cost about $27,000 in damage to your home. 20 25% a quarter of all the flood losses in the US occur outside of a designated flood zone. So protect yourselves for the cost of a flood insurance policy. And those are some startling numbers. You just said, how much do you expect? Now, insurance rates to rise this year because of these recent storms, insurance rates are going to be rising for a number of reasons not necessarily related to the storm. It depends on the kind of coverage that we've uh that home that homeowners or business owners have because as I said, many don't have flood insurance. So that's not covered by, by the insurance company itself. We've seen over the past years, we've seen increases, significant inflationary increases. We've seen significant increases in the cost of labor that have contributed to some increases in the cost of homeowners insurance. But if you be, if you measure it as a percentage of the actual cost of a house, it really has not gone up that much. Surprisingly. Now you introduced the first ever national climate resiliency strategy for insurance back in April. Tell us all about that, what we think and we and I speak of we as insurance regulators throughout this country. We work together through the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and I am the president of that this year and we think it is crucial that consumers are protected and by consumers. I mean, both individuals and businesses and as things proceed right now with the increasing risk of uh severe weather events, you can take a look at the, the NOA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. See how many of these events, there are, how much more painful there are the way to address it is not just afterwards, it's easier to address beforehand. Every dollar invest in mitigation will give us a return of somewhere between four and $13 depending on what we do. Some of this stuff is relatively inexpensive, make sure you use hurricane, be keeping your roof all the stuff that will reduce your cover your exposure should something happen. And sadly, these days, severe weather events are happening ever more often and affecting ever more people. Now, would you say that climate change is putting us at greater risk of property damage each year? And how else can we prepare for it significantly? Uh Climate change has the climate risk has dramatically increased? And as I mentioned, I take a look at the uh Federal National Oceanic and admin and Atmospheric Administration, the website looking at the number of what they call billion dollar plus natural disaster. But you see a tremendous increase in that and we expect that to continue to increase. So you prepare for that in a number of ways. One is you make your property resilient. You do about minor repairs that will help, but you also just as with any disaster, there are other issues that you need to do. Get yourself an inventory. If you go to the Connecticut Insurance Department website, you will see you'll be able to download an app at spree. You can take inventory of everything that's in your home just in case anything happens. You can share that with the insurance company. Have a go bag ready, have a plan ready. It is hard to consider that we can have such damaging uh atmospheric, you know, to such damaging floods as we had to over the past two weeks, but they happen and we have to be prepared. Andrew. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me, Mark. I appreciate you have the chance to be here. Our state's rising electric rates could be forcing a special session in Hartford. Stay with us.

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CTPP831C_2024-08-31-16-58-12

At the State Capitol. This week, Republicans launching a petition to force a special legislative session to address rising electric rates. Bring us in this special session. Address these proposals provide short term relief. Long term relief to the ratepayers of this state. The public benefit portion of electric bills went up significantly last month. But most of that increase is due to a deal to buy power from the Millstone nuclear plant, which lawmakers have no control over. Governor LaMotte is pushing to keep mobile phones out of the classroom. This week, he stopped by the first day at Berlin High School where students have to check their phones in at the beginning of the day. They have cell phone towers, the kids leave their cell phone in the tower, go into the classroom focus and study. Last week, the State Department of Education issued new guidance to school districts. They're recommending that elementary and middle schools collect phones at the beginning of the day. High schoolers could keep their phones but must turn them off in class. Governor Lamont makes his pick to be Connecticut's next chief justice to the State Supreme Court. Lamont is nominating Raheem Mullins Mullins has served on the court since 2017. If approved, Mullins would become Connecticut's second black chief justice. I'm well aware of the gravity and such a responsibility carries and is with great respect for the people of Connecticut, the state judiciary and the judicial branch that I approach this new challenge. Should I be confirmed? Current chief justice Richard Robinson from Stanford is retiring next month. State lawmakers must still approve Mullins. Well, that's all our time. I'm Mark Sudal. Thanks for watching.

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More help is on the way for Connecticut businesses that were impacted by last week's deadly flooding.

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