US water damage statistics
Water damage & flood statistics
US water damage by the numbers — federal flood-insurance (NFIP) claims by year and state, plus homeowners water-claim rates. Free public data (FEMA, Insurance Information Institute), refreshed monthly. Data as of .
NFIP flood insurance · since 1978
2.7M
Federal flood-insurance claims filed since 1978 — $88.7B paid out in building and contents losses. Flood is the water peril that private homeowners policies exclude.
Source: FEMA OpenFEMA — NFIP Redacted Claims · 1978–2025
NFIP flood-insurance claims per year
Claims by year of loss (1978–2025). Counts spike in catastrophic flood years — 2005 (Hurricane Katrina) alone drove 277,027 claims. The in-progress 2026 is excluded.
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Average paid flood claim per year
Average payout per paid claim (claims that paid $0 are excluded from the average). The long climb reflects rising rebuild costs and larger, more concentrated flood losses — far above the $15,400 average homeowners water claim, because flood damage is typically whole-structure. The in-progress 2026 is excluded.
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Flood claims by state
Most flood claims since 1978
Gulf and Atlantic coasts dominate — Louisiana leads with 484,979 claims. Sort the full table below by claims, dollars paid or average.
| State ▾ | Claims ▾ | Paid claims | Total paid ▾ | Avg paid ▾ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Louisiana | 484,979 | 387,738 | $20.7B | $53,405 |
| Florida | 448,425 | 313,494 | $19.3B | $61,510 |
| Texas | 393,669 | 315,376 | $17.3B | $54,990 |
| New Jersey | 202,156 | 169,095 | $6.3B | $37,013 |
| New York | 175,253 | 144,502 | $5.7B | $39,386 |
| North Carolina | 109,539 | 82,907 | $2.3B | $27,359 |
| Pennsylvania | 76,907 | 62,924 | $1.4B | $22,671 |
| Mississippi | 64,278 | 53,597 | $3.1B | $57,215 |
| California | 53,545 | 35,502 | $758.1M | $21,354 |
| Illinois | 52,736 | 41,196 | $577.9M | $14,029 |
| Missouri | 51,261 | 43,341 | $963.4M | $22,228 |
| Virginia | 50,566 | 39,702 | $748.7M | $18,857 |
| South Carolina | 49,606 | 34,810 | $1B | $29,735 |
| Alabama | 44,875 | 35,343 | $1.2B | $33,470 |
| Massachusetts | 35,366 | 27,700 | $439.9M | $15,882 |
| Connecticut | 29,425 | 23,179 | $545M | $23,511 |
| Ohio | 28,179 | 21,953 | $366.4M | $16,689 |
| Kentucky | 27,849 | 23,530 | $521.9M | $22,180 |
| West Virginia | 27,832 | 23,336 | $381.8M | $16,361 |
| Puerto Rico | 25,386 | 18,590 | $161.1M | $8,665 |
| Maryland | 25,355 | 15,008 | $325.4M | $21,681 |
| Georgia | 24,418 | 18,180 | $516.4M | $28,408 |
| Indiana | 19,283 | 15,335 | $295.4M | $19,266 |
| Tennessee | 17,649 | 14,441 | $476.6M | $33,000 |
| Washington | 16,061 | 12,812 | $361.2M | $28,189 |
| Michigan | 14,921 | 10,213 | $145.6M | $14,258 |
| Iowa | 14,748 | 11,868 | $344.7M | $29,044 |
| North Dakota | 13,307 | 10,842 | $259.2M | $23,907 |
| Oklahoma | 12,973 | 10,654 | $259.3M | $24,342 |
| Minnesota | 12,470 | 10,099 | $156.3M | $15,480 |
| Arkansas | 10,250 | 8,219 | $217.8M | $26,496 |
| Wisconsin | 9,498 | 7,137 | $136.7M | $19,153 |
| Kansas | 7,857 | 5,973 | $113.9M | $19,075 |
| Rhode Island | 7,023 | 5,063 | $138.7M | $27,402 |
| Delaware | 6,334 | 4,730 | $89.5M | $18,929 |
| Hawaii | 6,250 | 3,911 | $157.5M | $40,279 |
| Oregon | 6,095 | 4,553 | $106.2M | $23,326 |
| Nebraska | 6,067 | 4,494 | $97.3M | $21,658 |
| Colorado | 5,778 | 3,628 | $90.3M | $24,902 |
| Maine | 5,671 | 4,154 | $86.7M | $20,883 |
| Arizona | 5,323 | 3,543 | $62.8M | $17,712 |
| New Hampshire | 4,422 | 3,298 | $65.6M | $19,880 |
| South Dakota | 4,017 | 3,004 | $62M | $20,648 |
| Vermont | 3,726 | 2,939 | $117.6M | $40,025 |
| U.S. Virgin Islands | 3,504 | 2,125 | $78.5M | $36,952 |
| Montana | 2,217 | 1,636 | $19M | $11,599 |
| Nevada | 1,960 | 1,284 | $47.4M | $36,945 |
| New Mexico | 1,927 | 1,142 | $41.4M | $36,239 |
| Utah | 1,204 | 690 | $8.1M | $11,697 |
| Idaho | 1,113 | 764 | $10.4M | $13,638 |
| Alaska | 805 | 549 | $16.4M | $29,861 |
| Wyoming | 561 | 314 | $3.8M | $11,985 |
| District of Columbia | 494 | 269 | $5.5M | $20,581 |
| Guam | 192 | 127 | $2.4M | $19,081 |
| American Samoa | 29 | 11 | $68k | $6,142 |
| Northern Mariana Islands | 5 | 3 | $9.6k | $3,208 |
Methodology & reuse
The flood figures come from the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) — the federal flood-insurance program run by FEMA. Each row is one flood claim. This is flood-policy data only, not all residential water damage: burst pipes, failed water heaters and appliance leaks are covered by ordinary homeowners policies (the Insurance Information Institute figures above), because standard homeowners insurance excludes flood.
Counting: "claims" counts every NFIP record; "paid claims" are the records where building + contents paid more than $0; the average paid claim is the mean over paid claims only (claims that paid nothing are excluded, so the average isn't diluted by closed-with-no-payment files). Charts are by year of loss and drop the in-progress 2026.
The NFIP source refreshes roughly monthly, and our aggregates refresh on a monthly cron; the homeowners-claim figures are periodic III/ISO-Verisk industry averages. The underlying FEMA data is US-government public domain; our charts and tables are licensed CC BY 4.0 — reuse them with attribution to DisasterStatus.
Cite this page
DisasterStatus, “US water damage & flood statistics” (2025). https://disasterstatus.com/statistics/water-damage
Download the data: by year · by state (CSV). Source: OpenFEMA FimaNfipClaims v2.
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