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James Skelton: Picking up the pieces

18 inches of rain filled James Skelton’s home with 11 feet of water—even the upstairs was three feet under water. Because he had flood insurance, he’s able to begin the rebuilding process.

Picking Up The Pieces

We got 18 inches of rain in 18 hours, some incredible amount of water.

This was just a series of thunderstorms that happened to park for a day and brought half the Gulf of Mexico to Atlanta.

When we have that much rain, you just kind of watch the back yard and as the water came in, we hustled everything out or upstairs.

This is where the water came to. We were thinking that all this would be safe.

Now we can’t stay in the house, now the whole thing is going to have to be gutted.

The ceilings fell – you can see what it did to the fan when the sheetrock fell.

All this stuff, of course, was under water.

It had to come out. The ceilings again. All the ceilings fell.

Stuff floats everywhere, all the papers, tax records, bank statements, whatever you have in your house all gets wet.

You can see where the fridge floated.

It was upside down.

Everything had to come out of the house, of course, and it’s in piles to be sorted through and then I’ll sort through, wash, see what can be saved and what has to be discarded.

The water was just over the top of the gutter, maybe an inch or two over the gutter.

When you think about having 11 feet of water inside the house, that’s three feet upstairs, three feet even upstairs is too much water to risk doing that again.

I do have flood insurance. Flood insurance should not be confused with homeowners insurance.

The homeowners insurance does not cover flood, not a penny’s worth.

And most people probably don’t realize that. Even though your insurance agent handles flood insurance, it’s a separate policy.

I’ve been paying for flood insurance for 30 years.

For the price of flood insurance, it’s inconceivable not to have it.

In the grand scheme of things, $350 is not much money compared to this.

And as you can see, I’m really, really glad I got flood insurance. Back to top

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Last Updated: Tuesday, 27-Sep-2016, 1:47 PM (EDT)

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