Be prepared for floods

Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2007 | 10 p.m.

For many residents living near Desert Inn and Cimarron roads in western Las Vegas, the thunderstorm early Monday caused more than a sudden wake-up. About 3 inches of rain -- 75 percent of what the Las Vegas Valley normally receives in a year -- fell in a three-hour period in that area, causing major flood damage to more than a dozen homes.

Few storms in memory compare with that intensity. The July 1999 valleywide storm comes to mind, as does the August 2003 storm that affected several neighborhoods in the northwest.

As homeowners assess the damage to their homes and come to the realization that repair bills will be in the tens of thousands of dollars, a familiar and understandable lament is always heard.

Invariably, their frustration focuses on the fact that they do not live in an officially designated flood zone and because of that, they believed their real estate agent or lender when told that buying flood insurance was not necessary.

We fully understand the homeowners' plight. Flood insurance, although not prohibitively priced for homes not considered a high risk, is an expense most people would avoid if they thought it wasn't essential.

In our view, however, given the nature of our desert valley, homeowners make a mistake when they allow themselves to think their homes are impervious to rain damage just because they do not live in a flood zone. Given the erratic behavior of storms, major flooding can occur anywhere in Southern Nevada at any given time.

Flood insurance, sold by private agents but provided at government-subsidized rates by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, should be strongly considered by all homeowners, no matter where they live.