Wind vs. Flood: How Carriers Split a Hurricane Loss in South Carolina

Here’s the trap most Lowcountry homeowners walk into: they think their homeowners policy covers “the hurricane.” It doesn’t. It covers wind. The flood policy — if they even have one — covers rising water. And every hurricane delivers both, simultaneously, to the same wall.

The carrier’s adjuster walks the property after the storm and starts assigning damage to one bucket or the other. Whatever lands in “flood” is excluded from the homeowners policy. Whatever lands in “wind” is covered. This is where claims get cut in half.

The covered-vs-excluded line

FEMA’s own guidance is the clearest summary of how the line gets drawn:

Damage type	Where it falls
Wind tore shingles off your roof — rain then entered through the opening	Wind damage (covered by homeowners)
Storm surge pushed water into your first floor from the ground up	Flood damage (excluded from homeowners; needs NFIP or private flood)
Wind broke a window — horizontal rain blew in for hours	Wind damage (covered by homeowners)
Tidal water entered through the front door at ground level	Flood damage (excluded)
Tree fell through the roof; rain then entered the attic and saturated insulation	Wind damage (covered)
Marsh-side dock pushed into the rear wall by a wave	Flood/surge damage (excluded) — though the dock itself may be sub-limited under HO

FEMA puts it simply: “If rain is propelled into a covered structure by wind, that is considered wind-driven rain and is not covered under your flood insurance policy.” Translation: the homeowners policy owns it.

The South Carolina trap: anti-concurrent causation

This is where the fight gets serious. Most modern homeowners policies in South Carolina include a clause that sounds like legal boilerplate but has destroyed thousands of hurricane claims:

“We will not pay for loss or damage caused directly or indirectly by [flood]. Such loss is excluded regardless of any other cause or event that contributes concurrently or in any sequence to the loss.”

That’s the Anti-Concurrent Causation (ACC) clause. In plain English: if wind and flood combined to cause the same damage, the carrier gets to deny the entire loss — even the wind portion — because flood “contributed.”

And here’s the bad news for South Carolina policyholders: the SC Supreme Court has enforced these clauses. In S.C. Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Co. v. Durham, 380 S.C. 506, 671 S.E.2d 610 (2009), the court upheld an ACC clause that defeated coverage. Both North and South Carolina courts have generally recognized and enforced these clauses since.

The fight: divisibility

The ACC clause has one critical limit. Courts have repeatedly held it only applies when wind and flood combined to cause indivisible damage — meaning damage that can’t be separated into a wind portion and a flood portion. When you can prove the damage is divisible, the wind portion stays covered.

The Fifth Circuit’s framing is the cleanest summary: “The only species covered under a policy with anti-concurrent-causation clause is damage caused exclusively by wind. But when wind and water synergistically cause the same damage, such damage is excluded.”

So the entire claim turns on one question: can you prove which damage came from wind and which came from water?

Who has the burden

The Fifth Circuit (controlling for many Gulf and South Atlantic hurricane cases) put it this way in Broussard v. State Farm: the carrier bears the burden of proving the loss was caused by the excluded peril. If their adjuster cannot reliably distinguish wind damage from flood damage — and they often can’t — the wind coverage holds.

That means the carrier’s engineer needs to either:

• Identify a watermark line and prove everything above it was wind-only (which usually helps the policyholder — first-floor walls above the surge line stay covered),
• Or prove wind alone could not have caused the damage at issue.

When their report contains hedge language like “could not determine,” “unable to distinguish,” or “both perils may have contributed,” that’s leverage. That’s the policyholder’s opening.

How to win the divisibility fight

The case is built before, during, and immediately after the storm. Three things matter most:

1. Pre-storm documentation

A dated video walkthrough of every elevation, every room, every ceiling, the roof from each side — saved to two clouds before evacuation. This proves the pre-storm condition. Without it, the carrier’s default position is “the damage was pre-existing.” (The full pre-storm checklist is in the Hilton Head Hurricane Prep & Claim Playbook.)

2. Watermark line photographs

Photograph every wall at the exact line where the water stopped. That single horizontal line is the legal divider between flood damage (below) and wind/wind-driven rain damage (above). Walls above the line are wind-only by definition — covered.

3. Roof and attic evidence first

Damage in the attic and upper-floor ceilings is almost always wind-driven (flood doesn’t rise to the attic). Document missing shingles, exposed decking, lifted ridge caps, and ceiling water staining before the carrier’s adjuster arrives. If they show up to a pre-cleaned attic, they’ll attribute everything to flood by default.

The flood policy gap nobody mentions

One more thing carriers count on: most coastal South Carolina homeowners don’t have a separate flood policy. The NFIP take-up rate in coastal Beaufort County is below 50% outside the federally mapped high-risk zones. If you don’t have flood coverage, every dollar of damage the carrier can call “flood” is a dollar you eat.

If you have NFIP coverage, the rules are different: flood insurance covers physical damage directly caused by a flood — ground-up water from surge, river overflow, or heavy rainfall ponding. It does not cover wind-driven rain or roof-leak water. Same storm. Two policies. Two adjusters. Two claim numbers. Don’t let either one disappear.

What a public adjuster actually does here

The carrier’s adjuster wants the line drawn low. The independent engineer they hired works for them. A public adjuster works for the policyholder — licensed to read the same evidence and argue the line higher.

SC §38-48-070: A public insurance adjuster is an independent insurance adjuster who works on behalf of the policyholder. Public adjusters are paid as a percentage of what you actually recover — meaning their incentive is aligned with yours, not the carrier’s.

If the carrier’s offer feels like the line was drawn too low, get the policy, the engineer’s report, and any photos to a public adjuster before signing a release. A divisibility argument made in writing in week two of the claim is far more valuable than one made in court three years later.