If Hurricane Katrina — not to mention the eight other hurricanes that hit Florida and other parts of the country in 2004 and 2005 — showed America just how vulnerable and ill-prepared it was, it equally exposed the country's blind eye to the devastating effects of flood damage. At a recent exhibit in New York's Museum of Modern Art, a collection of photos taken in New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward exposed just how ravaging a rising tide of water can be. The pictures showed house after house with layers of mud caked on the floor, sagging covers of waterlogged furniture, warped and disfigured pictures, and that brown line along the walls that marked just how high the water reached. For all visual purposes, it might as well have been a war zone.

It was only after the storms that many homeowners discovered that their homeowners' insurance policies didn't cover flood damage. Those with the money to retain high-priced lawyers found out the hard way that suing private insurers for losses due to flood was an exercise in futility. After all, the only entity selling flood insurance is the federal government, and participation in the National Flood Insurance Program is strictly voluntary. This fact is the Achilles' heel of the entire financial structure put in place to protect policyholders from damage due to hurricanes and any associated flood damage.

Given Katrina, and the numerous other storms that have caused millions of dollars in losses due to storm surge and rising water, a question of whether there should be a state or federal mandate calling for homeowners in flood zones to purchase flood coverage has been raised.