The NFIP provides flood insurance to property owners, renters and businesses, and having this coverage helps them recover faster when floodwaters recede. Flood insurance is a separate policy that can cover buildings, the contents in a building, or both, so it is important to protect your most important financial assets - your home, your business, your possessions. Most homeowners insurance does not cover flood damage. “First Street Foundation has not only taken this kind of data to the next level, using peer-reviewed science, but is correcting an asymmetry of information by providing free access to everyday Americans.The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is managed by the FEMA and is delivered to the public by a network of more than 50 insurance companies and the NFIP Direct.įloods can happen anywhere - just one inch of floodwater can cause up to $25,000 in damage. “Sophisticated investors have privately purchased flood risk information from for-profit firms for years,” Eby said in a press release. The tool assigns a Flood Factor score between 1-10 – with one being the lowest risk and 10 being the highest – and allows users to explore how a property’s flood risk is projected to change in the coming decades. In addition to its report, First Street is also launching a new interactive modeling system called “Flood Factor,” which will allow prospective homebuyers to explore the current and future flood risk for any on or off-market property in the contiguous US. Hamed Moftakhari, an assistant professor at The University of Alabama, who studies the threats natural hazards pose to coastal communities. “This is more evidence that shows our mapping system is not working efficiently and we need to fix it to better our understanding about flooding in the United States,” said Dr. Still, this new data shines a light on a growing climate risk that millions of Americans are already facing, though many may be in the dark about their personal exposure, experts say. In an emailed response addressing First Street’s findings, David Maurstad, FEMA’s deputy associate administrator for Insurance and Mitigation said, “FEMA is constantly working to improve the production of the Flood Insurance Rate Maps within the context of changing conditions.” Last year, Midwest states battled some of the worst floods the region has seen in decades. Right now, First Street’s flood models show that the states with the greatest proportion of properties currently at substantial risk are West Virginia, Louisiana, Florida, Idaho and Montana.įloodwaters surround a farm in March 2019 near Craig, Missouri. But about half of the homes in Houston affected by flooding were outside mapped floodplains, according to a National Academy of Sciences report on urban flooding. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey, a powerful Category 4 storm, dumped a record-breaking 51 inches of rain on parts of Texas, putting large parts of Houston underwater. Last year, many parts of the Midwest and South were swamped by flood waters that lingered for months and caused $6.2 billion in damages and four deaths, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The issue is already growing in urgency, as huge swaths of the country have been inundated by devastating floods in recent years.įlooding is now the most common and costly natural disaster in the US, causing some $155 billion in property damages in the last decade, according to Michael Grimm, the assistant administrator for risk management for the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration, who testified before the House Science Committee in February. The discrepancy between FEMA’s maps and this new data means that some 6 million property owners could be unaware of their current flood risk, the group says. Today, around 8.7 million properties are located in Special Flood Hazard Areas as determined by FEMA’s flood maps, the legal standard used in the US to manage floodplains, determine insurance requirements and price policy premiums.īut as many as 14.6 million properties – nearly 70% more than are in FEMA’s Special Flood Hazard Areas – may actually be at significant risk of flooding, according to First Street’s modeling. Those are the findings of a comprehensive new analysis by the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research and technology group that experts say has put together the fullest picture yet of the country’s growing vulnerability to flooding. And as climate change accelerates, many more will see their flood risk grow. Millions more properties than previously known across the US are at substantial risk of flooding.
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