They're trying to wash us away

25% of the people in St. Bernard Parish have flood insurance. The parish was filled with water not because of rain (what you would see if you lived in a federally-designated flood zone), but because of storm surge problems that occurred when the levees broke.

Insurance companies have hired adjusters to evaluate the damage in St. Bernard. They need to look at 26,000 houses, and they say they can each do two houses per day. Believe me, there aren't that many adjusters in the parish. There are plenty of state house inspecters, however, who are hard at work determining which houses can be re-built. But the insurance companies have refused to accept the state government's evaluations, and insist on sending their own adjusters.

The state of Mississippi has already sued the insurance industry to try to prevent them from denying homeowners insurance benefits to people whose houses were damaged by hurricane surge flooding. The denial, of course, would be because the damage was caused by "flooding." Louisiana's insurance commissioner has held back on filing suit, hoping to negotiate with insurance companies, but Louisiana's attorney general says he is considering filing a lawsuit like the one filed in Mississippi.