Its Raining Its Pouring

It isn't raining today but it sure made up for all the dry days we had last week while it was so beastly hot with a nasty thunderstorm in the wee hours of Saturday morning. The rain fell at a 5 inch per hour rate for 20 minutes here. Basement flooding was everywhere including both my home (minor flooding, just a couple of inches) and my oldest son's home (major flooding, about 2 feet of water) in a neighboring city. My son's city is actually trying to get federal disaster status, 5000 of the 6000 homes in that city had some type of basement flooding due to the storm. So far FEMA is denying them funds. My son also found out that his homeowner's policy denies claims of water damage due to drain back up (which is what happened).
He is currently shopping for new insurance since his neighbors all have policies where this is standard coverage (as do I). I feel so badly for him since half the basement was a family room; carpeted with a built in bar and had furniture, tv, xbox, & wii. Only the bar, bar stools, glassware, and tv survived. They were fortunate in that items they had stored in the unfinished section were in plastic bins and only one bin filled with water and the washer and dryer were on raised platforms. They'd never had flooding in this house before (GF lived there for 17 years before selling to son 3 years ago) so this was totally unexpected.
Here we were lucky I guess. We've had some minor flooding  due to heavy rains before. My basement is just that, a basement, cement floor, basement walls. The deep freezer is on a platform Middle son J built from treated lumber and he also built shelving on three walls of the basement where we keep items in plastic bins (like holiday decorations) or on the shelves up high (like big kettles, small appliances). My pantry shelves are part of this system. Not much gets kept on the floor. The washer and dryer are on the floor but washer works fine and dryer seems to be ok (it still needs a new belt so barrel doesn't spin but motor came on when we checked). J says his next project is to build platforms for both of these. Fourth side of the basement is a large work table and we do have a small bathroom that is in the midst of remodeling so no worries with that. We did lose a couple of throw rugs that were waiting to be washed ( I ran them through the washer but they still smelled nasty and the backing was sketchy), some paper lawn bags, and an Aldi bag containing some boxed goods that didn't fit on the pantry shelves. Everything else that we tossed was mostly boxes of stuff we'd intended to get rid of anyhow. Five contractor bags filled and ready for the trash collection today. I spent $6 on bleach and have washed down the floors with bleach water twice. Another round is going to be done this morning before I go back to son's house and help daughterinlaw M wash down about 20 metal chairs they had stored for holiday dinners.  I need to stop at Aldi and buy more cat litter as well since the kitty box got washed out and that was the last of our litter.
I guess the moral of the story is to thoroughly check your insurance policies and make what preparations you can to avoid losing too many things.