The Case of the Defining Deluge

I bowl. I buy an absurd amount of DVDs at Best Buy. Now that my manliness is no longer in question, it’s safe to say that I also like to go antiquing.

I was driving in a one-stoplight town called Podunkton, looking for Civil War-era maps. The maps aren’t for me—they’re for my grandpa who’s still bitter about the Dakotas splitting apart.

I was surprised to find Main Street clogged up more than Crystal Gayle’s shower drain. A line of pick-ups were aggressively honking, their drivers pointing to the sky with a well-chosen finger. Joining the cacophony would have been pointless—the horn on my Prius sounded more like a castrated goose than a charging bull elephant— so I pulled over to investigate.

The traffic jam was not caused by an overturned beer truck, as I had hoped. It was just a single man—medium height, neat brown hair, tan suit in need of an iron—standing in the middle of the intersection, ankle deep in a mud puddle. I approached the man like one would approach a chicken pot pie—cautiously, but hopeful I could handle it. “Wow, you’re strong,” I said.

“What?” he replied without looking at me.

“I said you’re strong. Just look at the way you’re holding up traffic.”

He didn’t laugh, he just looked down into the puddle and asked, “Is this a flood?”

“I’m no meteorologist, but I’d say that’s just a mud puddle.”

“I’m no meteorologist either,” he said, looking around wide-eyed as if noticing the commotion he was causing for the first time. “I’m just an insurance agent who used to know what a flood was, but now I’m not so sure.”

I reached out and took his hand (in a manly way…don’t make me restate my manly credentials). “Come on, friend. Let’s sit on this bench here and talk.”

We walked over to the sidewalk, sat on a bus stop bench and watched trucks roar down Main Street.

“My client has a flood insurance policy,” he started without any prompting. “With all the rain recently, he had water coming in from the outside into his basement. The flood insurer denied the claim, stating that since two contiguous homes were not affected and less than two acres of land were submerged, this was not a flood as defined in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) policy. Can they do that?”

“Before we flood your adjuster with accusations,” I said, looking around for antique shops, “I’ll need to know more about your client’s situation.”

What information did Ace need? click here.

Jonathan Hermann (hermannism@gmail.com) is an IA contributing editor.