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ONLY Flood Insurance Protects against the Risk of Damage from Floods!

Your business or home has a 26 percent chance of being damaged by a flood during the course of a 30-year loam, compared to a 9 percent chance of damage or loss due to fire. Floods can occur almost anywhere at anytime - not just near water. Flooding is the #1 natural disaster in the United States, and has caused nearly $1.6 million in damages in Alaska and $23.8 billion in the U.S. over the last 10 years. Flood coverage is sold separately from all other types of insurance coverage.

Protection from flood damage is available for protection from loss for commercial buildings, residential buildings/homes, and renters' personal belongings. Coverage is available up to $250,000 for single-family, multi-family and other residential buildings and up to $100,000 for contents coverage. Non-residential buildings, including small businesses, can acquire coverage up to $500,000 for the building and $500,000 for contents. Coverage for damage from flood is not covered in any other type of policy except a flood insurance policy.

Lender placed vs. Owner/Buyer placed Insurance

If you are applying for a building or home loan, the lender may take the initiative to place insurance coverage for you in order for you to meet the loan requirements. This is known as "Lender Placed" insurance coverage, and it often may be more geared to protecting the lender's interests rather than your interests. Additionally, lender placed coverage could cost you up to three to four times more than if you placed the insurance yourself through an insurance agency/agent. Lenders will notify borrowers if Flood Insurance is required as a condition of the loan (National Flood Insurance Reform Act of 1994). Additionally, there is no 30 day waiting period for flood insurance purchased in connection to a mortgage loan. Flood Insurance is mandatory if the lender is federally regulated and your property is located in a Special Hazard Area.

What is a Special Hazard Area?

This is a designated area with the highest risk of flooding. Flood Insurance Rate Maps show high risk areas as Zones A, AE or V. However, nearly 25 percent of all Flood claims come from medium or low-risk flood areas which are listed as Zones B, C and X. Anyone can purchase Flood Insurance whether or not they are in a Special Hazard Area. If you already have Flood Insurance, and are selling your business or home, you can assign your current Flood Insurance policy to the buyer at the time of closing.

How are Flood Insurance Premiums Calculated?

Flood Insurance premiums are based upon the elevation level of the building or home. A "Flood Elevation Certificate" is necessary before flood premiums can be determined. This certificate must be completed by a Licensed Land Surveyor or Professional Engineer who is authorized by law to certify elevation information. Flood Elevation Certificates cost between $200.00 and $1000.00 to complete. Completed Flood Elevation certificates should be kept on file with your local Community Planning Department as required by the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) regulation 44 CFR 60.3b1, FEMA 480 Publication, and the local flood reduction ordinance for the community.

New Construction Information

The participating community will require an owner or builder to obtain a "Floodplain Permit" before construction begins. This permit is issued by the Community Planning office and requires property owners to build above the base flood elevation. Check with the local Community Planning office to determine your flood zone. If your building site is located in a Special Hazard Area, it is be wise to have a Licensed Land Surveyor, Professional Engineer, or Registered Architect come and set a temporary benchmark before construction begins. This will allow the builder to refer to the benchmark and build above the base flood elevation (BFE). Additionally, it will help you determine how much fill material is needed to raise your structure above the BFE which will result in lower Flood Insurance costs. Remember: building above the BFE results in lower Flood Insurance premiums; building below the BFE results in higher premiums.

Lower Flood Insurance premiums are available to property owners who build above the base flood elevation and do not have a basement or crawlspace. Buildings that have a basement or crawlspace requires flood openings in the foundation. These are openings on all sides of the basement or crawlspace walls that allow flood waters to flow freely through the space without building up hydrostatic pressure.

How do I go about getting Flood Insurance?

Applying for Flood Insurance is easy! Flood Insurance is available through about 90 Insurance companies in more than 20,300 participating communities nationwide.

Your chosen Insurance Agent will require a Flood Elevation Certificate which will have the necessary information to rate the policy. The premium charged for an accurately rated NFIP policy will be the same, regardless of from whom you purchase the policy. For more information on rates, premiums or maps contact your local Independent Insurance Agent.

Flood Elevation certificates can be turn into your local city or borough office for safe keeping.

All information provided in this article was obtained from the following websites http://www.fema.gov or http://www.floodsmart.gov For more information call Micheline Patterson at 907-456-6646 micheline@kenmurray.com or State Division of Community and Regional Affairs for your state.

You probably remember about 10 years ago the famous flying castle at the Dandenong showgrounds in Victoria. There is the brave supervisor hanging off the side with a castle full of kids floating through the air like Alladin's magic carpet. I know at least one company that keeps the front page picture from the Sun newspaper on their wall as a reminder to all employees of the consequences of such an incident.

The reason the incident received so much media coverage is that the whole incident was shot on home video and finished up on the evening news. The chances of an incident being recorded are higher again now that mobile phones can take photos and the next step will be videos.

The fallout of the incident was that for about 12 months afterwards some customers would not hire an inflatable, and for the operator a legal tussle with his insurance company.

After the incident the it was reported that the castle was not tied down. This was not strictly true as the castle was tied to a down to a dodgem track and a game on the other side. The problem was that the castle was on a large black asphalt area that created thermal updrafts and secondly as we all know anything other than pegging down is a second best option. The outcome was that the force actually ripped the anchor points out of the body of the castle, hence flying castle.

Up to this point apart from the publicity this is not a particularly notable incident in world wide terms as there have been quite a few similar incidents. What is really more interesting for us is the insurers reaction. Funnily enough they didn't want to pay.in fact, Australia's biggest insurance company at the time absolutely refused to support their client. Now here is a family who had paid there insurance premiums for over 30 years to the same insurer and never before made a claim. Now whatever the rights or wrongs of the case, the family was under the misconception that because they had paid their premiums and had a good record the insurance company would come to their aid in their time of need. Well nothing could be further from the truth .In fact they had to stump up the money for a lawyer to fight off the claim while that same lawyer sued the insurance company. In the end the insurance company was forced to pay out on the claim but only after the fought it all the way through the courts. So I guess the moral of the story might b something like. Get your insurance so you can work but don't think this is necessarily going to protect you completely if you have an accident. Remember, insurance companies aren't charities. Their object is to collects the biggest amount of premiums and pay out the least amount of claims.

I put off starting a blog for a long time because I thought it would be hard. I thought it would be technical. I thought I'd have to install scripts and tear my hair out getting them to work. At that point, most of what I'd read about blogs and RSS was just so much geek-speak.

Was I ever wrong!

When I finally got the courage to give it a go, I went to blogger.com and signed up for an account. To my amazement, I had a blog set up in about 5 minutes. My first post was uploaded to my site about 10 minutes later.

The only thing even remotely technical I was required to do was enter the FTP settings for the website my blog would be published on. But even that wasn't a requirement. With Blogger, you can set up a blog on their site, Blogspot, and not even worry about FTP settings.

Since then, I've started 3 Blogger blogs on different sites. Blogger remains one of the most popular blog applications in the world simply because it is so simple to use and set up. If you're a technophobe or don't have the time to learn something completely new, I would urge you to drop by Blogger.com and take a look. You could be blogging - and enjoying the benefits - almost immediately.

Another very simple blogging tool is Wordpress. This blog is my first Wordpress blog, and I'm very impressed with how powerful it is - as well as simple.

Wordpress is installed on your own website, but don't let that stop you. Most hosts that have Cpanel already have Wordpress ready for you to install. Look in your Cpanel for the Fantastico application, click it open, and then choose Wordpress to install. It will automatically install it on your site for you, and you can start blogging right away.

If your host doesn't already include Wordpress in the scripts on your server, you can still pick it up at:

http://wordpress.org/

Then go to the Wordpress Wiki for instructions on how to install it in 5 minutes:

http://wiki.wordpress.org/?pagename=5MinuteInstallation

Wordpress is free, open-source software. It is very simple to install, even for technophobes, and has a lot of online documentation. There are also many sites with free Wordpress add-ons and templates. I'm using a template for this blog that I picked up at Alex King's site:

http://www.alexking.org/index.php?content=software/wordpress/styles.php

The Wordpress Wiki is a wealth of information on all things Wordpress, including installation instructions, help files, a long list of template sites, and all kinds of hacks and extras you can use to modify your blog and make it original.

If you're a Wordpress user, another place to visit is the Wordpress discussion forum:

http://wordpress.org/support/

If you're a new blogger, both Wordpress and Blogger are very user friendly. There isn't a long learning curve. And you won't have to learn any new technical tricks. Why not give one of them a try?

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else) http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com