The insurers agree that contact with the government caused “a lot of stress” for Limburg residents. Those who do not live behind a primary flood defense are also at risk. “Climate change continues, as the floods showed us. Why then do people have to be left with the misery afterward?” he said to the newspaper. Look, no one asked for such a natural disaster. Many people still do not know where they stand or are only partially reimbursed. “Instead of simply compensating for the damage, every claimant must prove that the flood caused the damage.
Due to the extent of the damage, insurers agreed to be lenient, and the government set up a special compensation scheme, which was not formally intended for a disaster of this type.īut according to mayor Daan Prevoo of Valkenburg aan de Geul, the compensation scheme did not provide the immediate relief it promised. That meant the government had no formal task to compensate for the damages. “What was insured, what was not? What did they have to go to the insurer for, what to the government for?”Īdded confusion is that the flood in Limburg wasn’t caused by a primary defense but by the Geul, a stream. “For people in Limburg, it was very unclear,” Geeke Feiter, director of the association, said to the newspaper. According to the Association of Insurers, the Limburg floods showed that the current system creates a lot of confusion and is not functioning properly. Insurers cover floods resulting from local precipitation, canals, streams, or small rivers. Therefore, the government became the party that had to compensate for the damage when the primary flood defenses - large river dikes and sea defenses, for example - failed. The dichotomy on who covers what type of flood damage stems from the 1953 flood disaster, which caused so much damage that insurers could never bear it. But the 2021 floods in Limburg have shown insufficient protection, the Association of Insurers said to AD. Currently, damage caused by large rivers overflowing dikes or sea wall collapses is covered by the government at its own discretion. Insurers want every Netherlands resident to be able to get coverage against major flooding from 2025.
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