STORY: Few of the North Carolina victims of Hurricane Helene will have help from federal insurance to rebuild.

A Reuters analysis of government data shows only around 1 in 200 people in the state’s flood-stricken west are covered by the National Flood Insurance Program.

That’s a far lower rate than the coastal or riverside areas it’s meant to serve.

The Brosseaus, living near Asheville, weren’t among the insured.

"It came up to here. I'm surprised it didn't come through the windows. I mean it was pretty close, and the water was coming up from that way, which nobody would have expected that."

Pamela Brousseau and her husband were beginning a long clean-up job on Thursday.

"I cried. I still cry. You walk into a place that you know what it looks like and then it's not there. It's pretty hard, but thankful that we had, you know, ourselves here to take care of things, to assess it, and I don't know, it was pretty hard."

When they first moved in, the two were required to have flood insurance.

But after three years, Libre, Pamela’s husband, said the flood maps were redrawn and their home was no longer required to have it.

“…we were no longer included in the flood plain, the 100-year flood plain. There was mention of a thousand-year flood plain. But at any rate, the requirement of the bank was no longer mandatory to have the flood insurance. We're not wealthy people, so we opted out of that coverage."

The insurance wasn't required because the federal program is mostly focused on the flood risks posed by rising seas and swelling rivers.

It doesn’t anticipate the threat posed by the sort of extreme rainfall brought on by Helene.

Asheville is the largest city in the area.

It had actually gotten a reputation as a climate refuge in recent years – with people moving there from storm-prone areas.

The federal government even moved its national data center for environment records there.

And private insurance companies see the area as relatively safe.

The industry asked state regulators earlier this year to approve a 99% rate increase for coastal areas, but only asked for a 4% hike for some of the mountain counties that Helene went on to hit.

Yet as the storm approached, insurance was very much on the Brosseaus’ minds.

"Yeah, it is. It was probably one of the first things we discussed as the storm was coming. Like holy crap. But if it's $600 a month and you have a mortgage on top of that, it's just really hard to do.”

Heavy rainfall events like Helene are likely to be even more damaging with climate change, since warmer air can hold more moisture.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, since 1900 precipitation in the U.S. has increased as temperatures rise, and rain and snow are increasingly falling in intense bursts.