JOHN YANG: Tonight on PBS News Weekend.

Air strikes town Beirut, as Israel expands its bombardment of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

MAN: It was a night of terror.

There is no solution except for the aggression to stop as quickly as possible.

JOHN YANG: Then, one year after the October 7 attacks on Israel, a mother pleads for the return of her son, who's being held captive by Hamas, and how Hurricane Helene's destruction is putting a spotlight on insurance gaps in America.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Good evening.

I'm John Yang.

Overnight, Israel carried out the heaviest bombardment of Beirut in its air campaign against Hezbollah.

Massive explosions lit up the skies, and plumes of thick smoke covered the city.

Civilians had been warned to evacuate their homes.

They returned to ash and rubble.

DENISE MATRA, Displaced Resident (through translator): Let all the countries talk to them and put pressure on them to stop the war and negotiate with each other.

Let them deal with it.

What is the fault of the people and those children who died?

They left us with nothing, and we have become nothing.

JOHN YANG: Nearly a quarter of the Lebanese population has been displaced in Beirut.

Some live out of their cars or tents.

Special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen is in Beirut tonight.

Leila, the Israelis have intensified both the scope and the intensity of their bombardment of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Where is a sense of the, where this goes from here?

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: They have.

And what's really been clear over the last few days is just how much that bombardment has intensified.

A week ago, we were looking at certainly in and around Beirut, a few strikes a day, and there were regularly warnings for those.

That's really changed now.

Last night was by far the most intense bombardment we've experienced here, at least 25 to 30 strikes throughout the night, incredibly intense strikes, shaking the whole city and flattening buildings across the suburbs of Beirut, but also further as well.

Many, many people now packing up and running for their lives.

Now in the south of Lebanon, where they've been hitting harder and harder, initially what were hearing was there was going to be bombardment of those southern villages south of the Litani River, which is where the IDF wants Hezbollah to withdraw to.

We initially saw that and those ground raids as well.

But that zone has spread significantly.

We're now seeing evacuation orders for cities all the way up the south of Lebanon, major population zones, people streaming up the border to try and get out of those areas.

And really a lot of those southern towns have now been flattened with seeing quite incredible destruction of those buildings.

What's also happening, of course, in this fight is that the IDF is sending troops into the south of Lebanon to fight with Hezbollah troops on the border.

They say, the IDF, that they managed to clear 250 meters of subterranean tunnels used for transporting weapons over the last couple of days.

They've managed to seal those with concrete.

And there's also heavy fighting happening on the ground.

At least eight IDF soldiers have been killed.

Hezbollah says they have killed many more.

The IDF hasn't confirmed those yet, but we're certainly seeing heavy fighting down there.

JOHN YANG: You talk about people packing up and running for their lives.

The head of the U.N. refugee agency has said that there is a major displacement crisis in Lebanon.

Now talk about that.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Well, as you said, John, at least 1.2 million people have been displaced.

That is a quarter of the population of Lebanon.

And what we're seeing with this displacement, of course, we know that at least 60,000 residents from the north of Israel have been displaced for nearly a year now because of those Hezbollah rocket attacks.

But on the other side of the border, there isn't the capacity to house these people.

Here in Lebanon, there's been a major financial crisis, which I've, of course, reported on for the NewsHour for five years here.

The government is in complete disarray.

There's no president.

There's been no prime minister.

There's been no government for two and a half years.

So they're not in a position to handle this.

Every morning you see more and more people spread out across the streets of the Capitol, across the streets of the central southern towns.

They are sleeping on mattresses.

They're sleeping on blankets, small children in the baking heat.

It's pouring rain at night.

They've escaped with really just plastic bags full of whatever they could carry.

There have been some shelters that have been opened, some by the municipalities and a lot by local charities, but they just don't have the capacity.

People are finding many of those shelters closed, and of course, all that money is just coming from local charities.

We're seeing an enormous scale of human misery here.

And when these Israeli evacuation orders come out, people say, well, of course, why don't they just clear leave to save their lives?

They really have nowhere to go.

They have short notice, but they really also just have nowhere safe where they believe they can be.

They don't have the money for this.

They don't have food.

They don't have medicine.

They don't have proper shelter.

So we're seeing an incredible crisis spreading out across the streets of Lebanon here.

And just a reminder that, firstly, there are no air raid sirens or bomb shelters in Lebanon.

So when people are running from these bombs, they are running out in the streets and taking shelter wherever they can.

And secondly, most people in Lebanon who are left here who have not managed to evacuate yet don't have foreign passports, don't have visas, they can't get out of the country.

They are stuck here.

JOHN YANG: And in cases like this, there's also governments, foreign governments trying to get their citizens out of the country.

How is that going?

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: So for many months now, western governments and particularly the United States government and the U.K. government have been warning citizens, you should leave.

Please get out while you still can.

Please get out while there are commercial options.

There have been warnings that this crisis was going to escalate.

Now the United States says that they have managed to evacuate, help and assist 500 us citizens in the last couple of weeks.

They ran a flight on October 4 where they managed to get 150 further people out.

That was a flight that they ran themselves and they say they've assisted nearly 2000 people over the last few weeks with sea on commercial flights.

Now we are reaching a point where those evacuation options are becoming much more difficult.

There have been military flights for multiple western countries that are flying people out.

But the issue here is that right now the only airline flying in and out of Beirut airport is the national carrier, Middle East Airlines.

All other airlines have ceased to fly and they are flying through smoke.

They're flying through shards of bomb fragments when they land at that airport.

Because just to give you a sense of how close we are to these explosions, Beirut is only about 13 miles square, the center of the city and about 40 miles squared, the whole of the wider city, including the suburbs.

That airport is right next to these southern suburbs that are being bombarded every hour of the day.

So that's what people have to get through.

One of the roads, the old road to the airport, was hit yesterday.

The main highway is still open.

The airport's still functioning, but we don't know for how long.

In 2006, when the war happened, Israel did hit that airport and put it out of commission.

And because the two borders here are with Israel and with Syria, crossing them is not an option for most people.

So we may soon see military aircraft carriers and speedboats coming and taking people to Cyprus and to Turkey from the ports here.

That's the fear that we could be seeing a mass evacuation by sea for anybody who hasn't left yet.

JOHN YANG: The U.S. State Department said that they are working to get a ceasefire in Lebanon.

Of course, they've been trying to get a ceasefire in Gaza for months without much success.

What do you think the chances are of success here?

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: There seems at the moment very little chance of a ceasefire.

What we're seeing here, of course, is with the October 7 anniversary coming up tomorrow, huge tensions across the region.

Everybody is expecting some significant attacks on both sides of the border and of course, everybody also waiting for what Israel's response will be to Iran's huge missile attack on the country earlier this week.

The United States and other allies of Israel have urged them not to target Iran's nuclear facilities or any major infrastructure to try not to escalate.

But what we've really seen happening is Israel increasingly not listening to its western allies saying, we are now in this position where we need to defend ourselves and we will do whatever is necessary.

Israel says that this fight is against Hezbollah, but much of the infrastructure they're hitting, we are seeing huge civilian high rises being hit.

We're seeing medical infrastructure being hit.

100 medics, at least, have been killed in just the last couple of weeks.

There were 28 medics killed here in 24 hours.

Not just hospitals, which are being struck, but also ambulances, civil defense going and trying to dig civilians out of buildings.

That forms a part of the larger issue here, which is that not only have things become so polarized in this region, one side or another, but in the rest of the world across the west, people have such incredibly strong feelings on either side about this conflict.

And what we've seen is the complete dehumanization of civilians on both sides of this conflict, whichever side it is that one supports and a real lack of what used to be the fundamental principle here, that civilians must be protected in all cases.

People here are absolutely terrified that they feel no one in the international community is understanding the extent to which civilians are being affected by this escalating conflict, and they just see that getting worse and worse.

There's real fear across the region now that this could turn into an absolutely brutal, all-out war in which hundreds of thousands of lives are affected forever.

JOHN YANG: Leila Molana-Allen in Beirut tonight.

Thank you very much.

On Israel's other military front in Gaza, an airstrike on a mosque this morning killed at least 26 people.

The mosque was sheltering displaced people near the main hospital in Deir al Balah.

The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas militants.

Nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed since fighting began after the October 7 attacks.

The Gaza health ministry doesn't differentiate between civilians and militants, but says most of the casualties have been women and children.

And in southern Israel, a woman was killed and 10 people wounded in a shooting and stabbing attack in Beersheba.

That's about 60 miles south of Tel Aviv.

It happened at the city's central bus station.

Police killed the attacker and said they're treating it as a terror attack.

And President Biden ordered 500 more active duty troops to North Carolina to help with cleanup efforts from Hurricane Helene.

As the death toll rose to at least 230 people, officials worked through the weekend to recover more bodies.

Potentially hundreds are still missing.

In hard hit Asheville, North Carolina, community organizers say they're trying to get much needed food and drinking water to residents while also trying to figure out how to get people to the polls on election day.

ANTANETTE MOSLEY, City Council Member, Asheville: Asheville is an especially politically active community under all circumstances, and you see how busy it is now it's going to be busier on election day.

Folks are going to get it together and help their neighbors figure out how to get to the polls because this is such an important election.

JOHN YANG: As the recovery from Helene goes on, the southeast is keeping anxious eye on the Gulf of Mexico.

That's where now Hurricane Milton is rapidly intensifying.

It's expected to become a major hurricane by Monday and approach Florida by midweek.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, an Israeli mother pleads for the return of her son being held captive by Hamas.

And why insurance gaps can make it harder to recover after natural disasters.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: During the October 7 attacks on Israel, about 250 men, women and children were abducted by Hamas militants and taken to Gaza.

117 have been freed and eight others rescued by Israeli soldiers.

But for the loved ones of the more than 60 hostages believed to still be alive, the past year has been a nightmare without end.

Nick Schifrin spoke with the mother of one of those who is still being held captive.

NICK SCHIFRIN (voice-over): For Alon Ohel, music is life.

He started playing when he was nine.

His mother says music helps define him.

Today, his piano is silent, its lid kept open.

IDIT OHEL, Mother of Hostage Alon Ohel: So the fact that it is open, it makes, it's like, come home.

It's like energy.

Come home and play.

Come home and play.

Come home and play.

And he makes sure that he will play again.

NICK SCHIFRIN (voice-over): 365 days ago, Ohel was in the Nova music festival, the deadliest location of the deadliest day in Israeli history.

A video shows Ohel pulled into a pickup truck destined for Gaza.

Ever since, there's been no video proof of life.

Edit Ohel doesn't need one.

IDIT OHEL: I can feel him.

You know, I talk to him.

I have a conversation with him, like, not a real conversation, okay?

I don't like the phone and talk to him.

But, like, I close my eyes and I think about him.

He's my son.

I held him in my belly for nine months.

I still feel like there's a thread, like there's a red thread that comes from my, you know, my belly.

And it's moving, and it goes wherever he goes, and it's still connected with him every day.

And every day I check it in my mind.

If I see it and I see it's, like, moving and it's around him and it's in his belly, and it's like the cord, you know, there's umbilical cord.

Time is running out.

NICK SCHIFRIN (voice-over): Like many hostage families, she urged the government to accept a ceasefire, especially after Hamas murdered six hostages last month.

IDIT OHEL: This is very scary.

This could happen again.

I hope not.

So it wouldn't have happened if they were freed, like a month and a. NICK SCHIFRIN: Half freed before, meaning through a ceasefire, through a deal.

IDIT OHEL: Obviously, yeah.

NICK SCHIFRIN (voice-over): But there has been no ceasefire in Gaza or from Hezbollah rockets in northern Israel where she lives.

And so after a rocket alert, we sit in her safe room, also Alon's room.

IDIT OHEL: I'm thinking about the fact that whatever happens in the north, the hostages will be the same deal that will stop everything that ceasefire, and they'll be over with.

NICK SCHIFRIN (voice-over): Until then, they come to Tel Aviv's hostage square, summoned by solidarity and a piano with a mother's message to the world and to Alon, you are not alone.

And from Japan to France, back to Israel, Idit Ohel has created more than 40 yellow pianos across 10 countries.

IDIT OHEL: A pianist, the common place, he gives to Alon, because when you play for somebody, you give something from yourself to somebody else.

Music is his life, so music is part of him.

So when you play for him, it will get to him somehow.

That's what I feel.

NICK SCHIFRIN (voice-over): And she feels him here, too.

That's the shirt he wore when he was kidnapped.

IDIT OHEL: It's like he's sitting here and he's playing in my mind somehow.

NICK SCHIFRIN (voice-over): For PBS News Weekend, I'm Nick Schifrin.

JOHN YANG: With at least 230 people dead across six states, Hurricane Helene is proving to be one of the deadliest U.S. storms in recent history.

And property and economic losses are estimated to be as high as $250 billion.

But the insurance industry says that as little as 5 billion of that is covered by insurance.

After weather events like hurricanes, tornadoes and flooding that climate change is making more frequently and more severe, homeowners can get a rude awakening about what their insurance does and doesn't cover.

Jeff Schlegelmilch, Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.

Mister Schlegelmilch, in western North Carolina, which has really got hard hit by flooding in this storm, it's estimated that fewer than 1 percent of the households were covered by flood insurance.

What does that mean for the recovery?

What does that mean for homeowners?

What does that mean for the region?

JEFF SCHLEGELMILCH, Columbia University: Yeah, unfortunately, what this means is that for many of the people who are affected by the flooding, they're not going to have the additional funds that would be made available through their homeowners insurance or business insurance or plans like that.

There are some mechanisms through federal programs and federal assistance that we would expect to see, although that generally is at a much lower amount and can generally take, some of those programs can take a little bit longer to come to fruition.

So it just means that people will have less access to some of those financial resources than those that were fortunate enough to have insurance ahead of the storm.

JOHN YANG: Could that also mean that there are some places that just won't be rebuilt?

JEFF SCHLEGELMILCH: Possibly, yes.

Unfortunately, when we see disasters like this, we'll see areas that are high visibility that do get rebuilt very quickly.

But it becomes sort of a very big challenge in terms of what resources do you have and would you want to rebuild?

Would you want to put in all of your own money above and beyond what little assistance you can get to rebuild?

It certainly does mean that we should expect to see a slower recovery and one that is much more dependent, public assistance or philanthropic assistance than would come from the mechanisms like we would see in a higher insured area.

JOHN YANG: Beyond North Carolina, across the country.

Are there many households that lack flood insurance that probably should have flood insurance?

JEFF SCHLEGELMILCH: Yes, and this is for a couple of different reasons.

One of them is that the flood maps that we use to actually tell us where the areas are at the highest risk don't necessarily cover risk, both in terms of our current knowledge, but also integrating climate change into that.

In particular, they're not really great at smaller riverine basins, the kinds we see in more of the mountainous areas like we see in western North Carolina.

If you are in one of those floodplains, in one of those maps, most likely your lender is going to require you to have insurance.

But outside of that, it's not necessarily something that we think about or really look at.

If you're not in one of those maps and if you're not required to get flood insurance.

JOHN YANG: Are there places that might not have been one of those maps in the past, but given the changes from climate change, given the more intense, more severe storms, that it ought to be prudent now?

JEFF SCHLEGELMILCH: Absolutely.

And I think all homeowners, certainly those who would have the means to do so, should take a look at what flood insurance would cost, even if they're not necessarily in a floodplain.

It's worth noting that oftentimes this is related to risks, or if you're in a lower risk area, it shouldn't cost as much.

But we are seeing storms like this.

We've seen thousand year flood events.

We've seen flood events that are hitting areas with very little coverage of flood insurance because these areas that typically weren't at risk historically.

But we're seeing larger and larger amounts of rainfall and just greater exposure to hazards than we have before.

JOHN YANG: And help us understand flood insurance.

This is not insurance from private insurance companies, right?

JEFF SCHLEGELMILCH: Well, so the insurance you buy comes from a private insurance company, just like any other kind of insurance.

But it's backstopped by the National Flood Insurance Program.

Something like 95 percent of all of the policies that are issued through the National Flood Insurance Program.

So that's ultimately backstopped by the federal government, who then engages in some relationships with different tax dollars through the treasury, but also increasingly lately through things like reinsurance markets and other types of private markets to help cover that.

So you would still go and purchase this the way you would other kinds of insurance through a private insurer, but it is underwritten and ultimately backstopped through the National Flood Insurance Program.

JOHN YANG: What's this doing to the insurance industry with greater storms, bigger storms and hurricanes in Florida, wildfires in California?

JEFF SCHLEGELMILCH: Yeah, to be totally honest, it's putting them under.

A lot of insurers are pulling out of areas with high hazards.

We've seen this in California and other wildfire prone areas.

We're seeing it in markets like Florida and Louisiana, where they're just increasing losses as a result of storms and they have to pay out these record payouts.

They just don't have a recourse in order to stay viable in doing business in these circumstances.

So it's putting tremendous pressure on the insurance industry.

So at a time when we're seeing increased need for it in terms of having the resources to recover from a disaster, we're seeing many insurers just not able to afford to be able to stay in the game here, making it more expensive or nonexistent to people who would need to access it.

JOHN YANG: There's some people who make the argument that ensuring the losses from these events is encouraging or incentivizing people to live in dangerous areas.

What do you say to that?

JEFF SCHLEGELMILCH: This is a really important point and it's part of the reason.

So the National Flood Insurance Program has had short term extension since 2017.

I think everybody agrees that this is a problematic situation, that we're actually artificially reducing the cost, reducing the financial risk of living in places that are actually exposed to hazards.

To that, though, that I say is that a lot of people are already living there.

You already have your homes there.

And we saw this about a decade ago when they tried to right size some of the insurance rates.

Basically, if you're in a riskier area, you have to pay more.

Those subsidies start to go away.

Then you saw entire communities with homes, most individuals largest source of wealth, and how you build generational wealth all of a sudden uninsurable or insurable at a cost they couldn't afford, property values dropping off because of this.

So in the abstract, it's absolutely true, right?

We're creating what economists call a moral hazard where we're basically not properly disincentivizing living in dangerous areas.

But the fact of the matter is people already live there.

And this is a major part of our economic viability as individuals, as businesses, as communities.

And we don't really have a good answer on how to right size the risk with so many homes already there.

So it's a big challenge.

And that's reflected and not really having a long term extension of the National Flood Insurance Program or really a long term game plan on how we're going to fix this problem with the insurance.

JOHN YANG: No good answer on right sizing the risk.

But if you were to change this program to make it better, make it work better for both sides, what would you do?

JEFF SCHLEGELMILCH: Well, I think the key to this is not actually increasing the size of the insurance market, and that'll help with some things in terms of increasing risk pools, but it's actually preventing the damage from disasters in the first place.

One of the things that's really important to remember is that even if 100 percent of these homes in western North Carolina and that were affected by Hurricane Helene were covered by flood insurance, they would still be destroyed.

The physical damage would still be there.

So insurance helps to transfer the financial risk.

It doesn't transfer the physical risk.

And so that's where we need much more money put into building codes, disaster mitigation, climate mitigation, reducing emissions, all the things that prevent this from happening.

And study after study shows that actually saves a heck of a lot more money by preventing the loss of lives and livelihoods and damage to properties.

And it's really the only way to truly take pressure off the back end, because what's really draining the insurance isn't necessarily just the design of the insurance, but the fact that there are huge payouts because of the damage that's being caused as a result of these major events.

JOHN YANG: Jeff Schlegelmilch of Columbia University, thank you very much.

JEFF SCHLEGELMILCH: Thank you.

JOHN YANG: And that is PBS News Weekend for this Sunday.

I'm John Yang, For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.

Have a good week.