At least seven people have died in Indiana after days of severe storms and flooding, with the White River shattering a flood record that had stood since 1913. The river crested at nearly 25 feet in Anderson and Noblesville on Friday and Saturday, surpassing the previous record by more than a foot. State officials have described the event as unprecedented in the modern era.
Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett said the flooding was the worst the city had experienced in more than 30 years. Floodwaters peaked early Sunday before beginning to recede. More than 350 evacuations occurred in Delaware County alone, with hundreds of additional homes evacuated along the White River corridor through Indianapolis, Noblesville, Anderson, Ravenswood and Nora. Nearly 130,000 utility customers remained without power statewide as of Sunday evening, down from a peak of roughly 300,000.
Governor Mike Braun declared a statewide disaster emergency, and President Trump approved a presidential emergency declaration for Indiana on Saturday.
For homeowners and businesses assessing damage, the type of federal declaration in place matters more than it might appear. The declaration approved so far is an emergency declaration - which primarily funds public assistance activities including water rescues, sandbagging, evacuations, emergency shelters and first-responder costs. A major disaster declaration is what typically activates FEMA's Individual Assistance program, under which homeowners can apply for direct federal grants toward uninsured property losses. Indiana's request for that broader designation was reportedly still pending at time of publication.
Even when Individual Assistance is activated, its scope is limited. FEMA's IA grants are capped - for 2026, the ceiling for housing and other needs assistance combined is approximately $43,900. That figure covers a fraction of a full structural loss for a homeowner whose home has been swept from its foundation or flooded to the ceiling. Federal disaster assistance is not a substitute for flood insurance. It is a supplement, and a limited one.
The more significant problem for many affected homeowners is one they will only discover in the coming days: their standard homeowners policy does not cover flood damage at all, regardless of how severe the flooding was or whether it was caused by a river overflowing its banks or by intense rainfall accumulating faster than drainage can handle it.
Flood coverage in the US requires a separate policy - either through FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program or, increasingly, through private flood carriers operating in the surplus lines market. Whether a homeowner has that coverage depends almost entirely on whether they chose to purchase it, and in many cases on whether their property was located within a FEMA-designated Special Flood Hazard Area that made flood insurance a condition of their federally backed mortgage.
FEMA's flood maps have historically been built around river overflow and coastal storm surge risk rather than the kind of intense, fast-moving rainfall that drove this event. Climate risk modeler First Street has found that more than twice as many American properties sit in meaningfully flood-prone areas than FEMA's current maps reflect. Many of the homes damaged along the White River corridor this week may well sit outside any FEMA high-risk designation - which means their owners were never required to carry flood insurance, and many likely never did.
That pattern is not unique to Indiana. When Hurricane Helene struck western North Carolina in 2024, roughly 98% of the homes ultimately damaged sat outside FEMA's mapped floodplains - a finding that confirmed how significantly rainfall-driven inland flooding has outpaced the mapping frameworks used to generate insurance requirements.
The flooding has also hit commercial structures and small businesses directly. Cyndee Gillmore, who owns the Cornerstone Campground and Retreat Center in New Castle, described roughly five feet of water sweeping across the property, flooding the kitchen, banquet hall, youth centre and mobile campers. "I'm standing in my house right now and it smells to high heaven, but it's just stuff," Gillmore said. Commercial property losses - covering structures, contents, equipment and business interruption - run through an entirely separate set of policies from residential coverage, with flood coverage again dependent on whether specific flood endorsements were in place before the event.
For adjusters working Indiana claims, the gap between FEMA's mapped zones and the areas actually flooded is likely to be the central complication. A significant share of affected homeowners may discover they were never required to carry flood coverage and therefore never purchased it. The conversation about what is and is not covered will need to be handled carefully and repeatedly.
For brokers serving clients along Midwest waterways - not just recognised floodplain communities - Indiana is a direct prompt to revisit flood coverage conversations with clients who have assumed their location was low risk based on a FEMA map that may not reflect their actual rainfall and runoff exposure. Private flood products through surplus lines carriers are available in Indiana alongside NFIP policies, often with higher limits and broader coverage terms than the federal programme can provide. The NFIP's maximum coverage of $250,000 for a building and $100,000 for contents is frequently insufficient for the commercial and higher-value residential losses this event is generating. For clients who have not reviewed their flood coverage position since the last major Midwest flood event, this week's White River record is the prompt to do so.
