Who will pay?

Disaster: With Midwest flooding affecting hundreds of towns across 10 states, homeowners may find themselves left with the cost of cleaning up | Lynn Vincent

Across the Midwest, people are still digging out of the diluvian disaster that, over the past two months, submerged homes, businesses, and whole towns in new lakes formed by torrential rains. Take Chad Kuntz, a farmer, and his wife Natalie, for example. The Kuntzes moved their family into three different houses in two weeks after rising floodwaters threatened their heirloom farmhouse in Oakville, Iowa.

The Kuntzes had more notice than most residents that the Iowa River was about to blow through the levee near their home. So, on June 10, they started packing.

On June 13, the police announced a mandatory evacuation and the Kuntzes moved their belongings and three kids—ages 6, 4, and 2—into Mrs. Kuntz's parents' home on the other side of a divided levee a mile and a half away.