'We thought we were safe': Kentucky disaster shows how US is ill-prepared and under-insured for devastating floods

When Bob and Debbie Smith signed up for flood insurance years ago, they never expected the storm that transformed the little river next to their backyard into a raging, muddy torrent. They never imagined that they and their cat would need to be rescued from their front porch by a neighbor with a boat as the floodwater reached up to their chests. 

But after the historic floods that devastated Eastern Kentucky last month, that insurance is now a “game-changer,” Bob Smith said. While the more than $32,000 they’re set to receive won’t make up for the renovations the couple did on their now-ruined mobile home in Letcher County, “it’s enough to give me hope,” he said. “Other people, they don’t know what they’re going to do.”