The insurance comments are about right--there were huge losses from hurricanes and flooding all over the country a while back, and insurance companies had trouble covering their liabilities, so they stopped writing policies--for us, it turns out that our carrier simply discontinued its flood and water damage insurance--they didn't send a cancellation notice though, they simply took it out of our homeowners policy about a year ago, and we never realized it. Apparently, even the person who took our claims didn't realize that they no longer covered water damage--

The water has stopped for now--I will probably start making the list this pm--will post the essentials here as soon as I get a chance--