New Orleans houses sit on low ground where the street can hold water and the rain arrives sideways on the wind. A raised shotgun, a camelback valley, and a Gentilly slab do not fail in the same room. Wind-driven rain can soak a gallery ceiling while the floor stays dry. Water at the pier is a different disaster from water at the ridge. Name which one you have.
Uptown, Carrollton, the Irish Channel, and the Garden District are full of raised houses, cypress or cement siding, galleries, and roofs broken by dormers and tie-ins. A double gallery acts like a scoop in a blow. Rain is driven under the eave, into the ceiling boards, and down the wall, and the plaster blisters on the high side before anyone sees a flood line. The pier skirt tells a separate story about water that stood in the yard.
Mid-City and Broadmoor sit lower and slower. Shotguns and bungalows there take the same wind-driven rain, plus streets that hold water against a low step. Gentilly, Lakeview, and New Orleans East are richer in slab ranches and brick veneer, where a wet yard becomes a wet slab edge and the plumbing is buried. Algiers Point keeps the old cottages. Later Algiers keeps the slabs. The river side of the house is not a personality.
Formosan termites work the wet wood these leaks create. Carton nests show up in gallery roofs and hollow trim. Cast iron stacks and yard lines with almost no fall back up when the system is full. Live oaks heave walks and sleeves. A coil that chills a shotgun parlor and leaves the closets damp is every summer, not a special one. None of those are solved by calling the whole house old.
Walk once before you call. Pier skirt or slab edge, gallery ceiling, meeting rail on the windward wall, and the gutter packed with oak litter. Note whether the bad water came from above, from the side, or up from the ground. If you are calling about the policy, bring the declarations page and keep wind damage in one sentence and flood in another. Then pick the trade and call with the neighborhood and the house form. Pick the trade and call.