The task force that has been assigned to the Superstorm in the United States has released a report.
According to a report that was just released by the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, there are 69 recommended actions that coastal areas should take as a lesson from the superstorm, including making flood insurance a more affordable form of coverage for home and property owners.
The American task force identified these various recommendations to help to prevent the recurrence of similar devastation.
At the start of this year, the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013 was passed by Congress, providing approximately $50 billion in funding for the rebuilding of the areas that were damaged by Sandy in October 2012. That superstorm blasted its way through much of the eastern coastline of the United States and damaged or destroyed well over 650,000 homes as well as thousands of businesses, creating a sudden wave of business, homeowners, auto, and flood insurance claims.
Among the top recommendations made in the report is the affordability of flood insurance for homeowners.
The report was released this week and was 200 pages long. It laid out a number of policy recommendations, among which some have already been implemented. The majority of those recommendations have to do with the proper use of funds for establishing more resilient infrastructure in areas such as New York and New Jersey, which were among the states that experienced the greatest catastrophe from the storm.
The task force behind the report stated that one of the primary goals that it maintained for making its recommendations was to “coordinate the efforts of the Federal, State, and local governments, with a region-wide approach to rebuilding.” It focused on using the information and data from that storm in order to help to decrease the risk associated with future events.
The task force and the group placed a considerable focus on the importance of flood insurance coverage and making it affordable by homeowners so that there would be fewer left uninsured against the damage that the waters from these storms can leave behind. This would mean that fewer homeowners would be reliant on government emergency programs.