A tree down on a home in Greenville Sept. 29, 2024, following Tropical Storm Helene. (Provided by the city of Greenville)
A few tarps and an old quilt are the only barriers sealing off what remains of Gary and Patricia Brinkley’s Pacolet home from the outside elements after Tropical Storm Helene toppled a 90-foot oak tree that crushed the roof above their bedroom and living room.
Meanwhile, cold weather is coming, with forecasted temperatures dipping into the low 40s next week.
The Brinkley’s homeowners’ insurance carrier declared their home in rural Spartanburg County a total loss.
But their coverage level is still $15,000 short of paying for repairs, and the elderly couple’s application for federal disaster aid has been twice denied.
They’re among South Carolinians learning the hard way this hurricane season that insurance won’t cover their needs. Yet, what insurers are paying for Helene damage is expected to be historic.
“Helene will go down as one of the costliest disasters in South Carolina history,” Bob Hartwig, director of the University of South Carolina’s Risk and Uncertainty Management Center, told legislators Tuesday.
The storm also appears likely to become one of the top 20 most costly disasters in U.S. history when it comes to damages covered by insurance, with current estimates totaling $11 billion, Hartwig said.
Total damages are even greater as nearly all of the losses due to Helene’s catastrophic flooding, which wiped out entire communities in western North Carolina, were uninsured.
The increased frequency of these major disasters, coupled with rising inflation and property values since 2020, means the cost of insurance has and will continue to rise.
Disasters that occurred in the last four years are blowing away record insured losses set in previous decades going back to the ‘80s, even when adjusted for inflation, Hartwig said.
When it comes to inflation, the cost of construction materials that insurers pay for when making repairs rose 40% from 2020 to 2024, Hartwig said. And the cost of construction crews has gone up 35%, far outpacing the overall national inflation rate.
Even as inflation has slowed, prices have not gone down, Hartwig added.
And because insurance companies are only able to adjust premiums annually, carriers really only started recuperating the price increases in 2023.
“Homeowners’ rates have been increasing steadily over the past few years, and we expect the increases to continue to some extent until the market stabilizes,” state Department of Insurance spokeswoman Diane Cooper told the SC Daily Gazette.
And residents can’t count on federal disaster aid to make up the difference in their coverage, as the Brinkleys are learning.
‘In limbo’
Gary Brinkley was lying on the living room couch watching television when that old oak came crashing down, limbs landing just above the 79-year-old Vietnam veteran’s head.
It destroyed the living room, half the bedroom and all the furnishings.
A Pacolet town ordinance does not allow residents to place any new mobile homes outside of certain designated areas, so the Brinkleys can’t replace their damaged home with a new one like it.
They lived through deadly Helene. Now families across western SC seek to rebuild, help others.
After filing an insurance claim, the couple was still $15,000 short of the cost to repair. They turned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in hopes of receiving federal aid to bridge the gap.
To date, FEMA has approved applications from more than 200,000 uninsured and under-insured South Carolinians for a total of $199 million in aid for Helene — $18 million of which has gone to assist with home repairs.
But the agency approved just $750 in aid for the Brinkleys to cover immediate needs, such as food or a hotel room. Two follow-up attempts for aid with home repairs that went beyond what the couple was insured for were denied, Gary Brinkley said. He did not know the agency’s reason for the denial.
The couple’s Social Security checks and the modest paycheck Patricia Brinkley receives from working a few weekly shifts at a nearby Dollar General are not enough. So, despite having paid off their property loans two decades ago, the Brinkleys may now have to sell.
“This was going to be our place to spend the rest of our years,” Gary Brinkley said. “We were counting on FEMA. Now we’re just in limbo.”
Coverage gaps
While South Carolina has a history of catastrophic natural disasters — a list that includes Hurricane Hugo in 1989, Hurricane Joaquin in 2015, Hurricane Matthew in 2016, Tropical Storm Irma in 2017, Hurricane Florence in 2018 and now tropical storms Debby and Helene — the state Department of Insurance says it does not have information on how often people turn to FEMA for coverage gaps.
Often the greatest gap in coverage is related to flood damage, which requires a separate policy from standard homeowners’ insurance.
When it comes to flood insurance, Hartwig said, South Carolina is greatly underinsured, particularly in the Upstate where less than 1% of homeowners have flood coverage.
Fewer South Carolinians are buying flood insurance. Some may not even realize they should.
In addition to distributing federal disaster aid, FEMA oversees the National Flood Insurance Program, serving as the primary underwriter of flood insurance nationwide since the late 1960s.
The program offers two types of coverage, one insuring buildings up to $250,000 — the actual structure — and a second insuring contents up to $100,000.
About 198,000 households in South Carolina carry national flood insurance policies. That represents just 8% of all residential properties statewide.
Still, South Carolina ranks fifth in the nation in terms of the number of those policies held, trailing Florida, Texas, Louisiana and New Jersey, said Maria Cox, state coordinator for the state Department of Natural Resources Flood Mitigation Program.
The cost of those annual policies depends on estimated rebuilding expenses. Almost half of South Carolina homeowners with federal insurance pay less than $1,000 annually, according to FEMA data for single-family homes as of August 2023.
However, regardless of the actual cost to rebuild, the FEMA program will not pay above that $250,000 policy limit.
That’s well below the median price of a home in South Carolina, which is almost $340,000 statewide. Median prices on the coast, where flooding typically happens, are well above that. The most expensive market in the state is Hilton Head Island, where the median price is $545,000, according to the latest report from South Carolina Realtors.
Insurance companies respond
The state insurance agency also has no way of measuring how soon insured residents can expect to receive a payout in Helene’s wake.
“We understand that everyone wants the process to be finished as quickly as possible so they can return to a normal life,” said Cooper, the agency’s spokeswoman.
Typically, if there is substantial damage to a home, an insurance claim will not be closed with a single payment, Cooper said. Instead, there will be multiple claim payments as the rebuilding process moves along.
Speaking from personal experience, Hartwig said he filed a claim for damage to the roof of his Lexington County home the day after the storm. An adjuster was there within a week and the check is now in the mail.
To help speed things along, the state Insurance Department hosted insurance-specific events in Greenville, Aiken, and Spartanburg with representatives from 80% of the state’s auto and home insurance carriers on site issuing payments and helping hundreds of customers file claims.
Insurance companies also have set up their own mobile claims centers and brought adjusters in from other states to help.
More than 3,400 emergency permits were issued to out-of-state adjusters, state insurance regulators said.