ORANGE, Texas — With hurricane season beginning this weekend, Southeast Texas residents may be looking into their home insurance options.
Orange resident April Sellers reminisced about where her home used to be on Bob Hall Road. Her two-bedroom home is now gone.
"The humongous tree that I had, you can see the root over there, fell right in the middle of my house and made it collapse," Sellers said.
She moved into a FEMA trailer around February 2018. It was a short-lived stay, which led to her current home, a tiny house.
"It's a lot smaller. It's a lot of combine space. Even though I started out with nothing, I have accumulated a couple of little items," she said.
Sellers said she didn't lose her home to flooding, but she does fear what could come this flood season.
12News talked to a representative with a Beaumont insurance agency who said it's best to be prepared ahead of time.
"Flood covers rising water," J.S. Edwards & Sherlock personal lines producer Tanya Westfall said. "It covers storm surge, seepage from the ground up. That's what flood is. It's not if your water heater bursts in your home or a big pipe bursts."
Westfall said when hurricanes hit, many residents rush to insurance companies, but she said it's essentially a waste of time.
"If there is a storm brewing and it comes into the Gulf, it crosses over into the Cayman Islands, the 80-20 marker, then all insurance companies shut down," Westfall said.
Homeowners like Sellers said they just want their lives back to normal.
"If it hits like Harvey did, definitely, I would lose everything again," Sellers said.
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