If your house was flooded during the heavy storms this week, you were not alone.
Baltimore, Anne Arundel, Dorchester and Queen Anne?s counties and Baltimore City and Ocean City are most prone to flooding this hurricane season, officials said.
Some of those areas received five or more inches of rain Monday.
As a result, local governments encouraged evacuation of homes in low-lying areas and closed rain-covered roads.
“I think that this experience for the last few days is wake-up call for a lot of people,” Maryland Commissioner R. Steven Orr said. “We encourage people to invest in flood insurance due to flooding to homes. We have been very aggressively talking about the need for flood insurance; the rates are fairly low right now.”
State records show that only 59,848 of more than 1 million homes in the state have flood insurance.
State residents can purchase flood insurance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency through their insurance representative.
“We?re stretched thin. We?re starting to put people on lists and we?re taking them in order,” said Greg Everhart, president of Sand Piper Cleaning Services Inc. in Baltimore County. The company has received 25 phone calls this week.
Removing water-damaged carpet, furniture and lower portions of finished basement walls can take from a few hours to days, depending on the size and the amount of stuff stored in the room, Everhart said. Dehumidifiers and fans are used to dry soaked materials and to prevent mold and mildew.
Everhart said he recommends investing in flood insurance to avoid the costly repairs.
The maximum coverage a household can receive for water damage is $250,000 for the building and $100,000 on items in the structure.
