The discrepancies led Fugate’s team to develop its own flood maps with what they felt were better models.
PHILADELPHIA FLOOD MAP SERIES
“We found that there were a series of mistakes with the FEMA maps that were alarming,” Fugate said.įugate said the agency hadn’t accurately accounted for the way winds would drive waves inland during massive storms, and also used a 50-year-old model to predict the way a storm surge would begin moving over the land. Michael McCarter & Carrie Cochran, USA TODAY Network This has been the most significant Ohio River flooding since 1997. The Ohio River floods downtown Aurora, Indiana on Feb 25, 2018. FEMA revamped its flood maps along the state’s coast in recent years and actually lowered storm-surge estimates by up to five feet where Fugate knew the opposite was true. Grover Fugate, former executive director of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Management Council, said he butted heads with FEMA over floodplains during his nearly 35 years with the council. The agency also looks only at historical data to assess where flooding could strike next, leaving out current and future models that assess where else risk might exist or even be growing. The federal agency is stretched thin, struggling to keep its flood maps up to date, particularly for inland areas perceived to be less vulnerable than the coasts, experts said. Many flood experts said the discrepancy between the two models wasn’t surprising, given the limitations baked into FEMA’s calculations. Local and county planners also use the threshold to determine which areas are safe to develop. But experts say it’s also misleading, as it actually equates a 1-in-4 chance of flooding over the course of a 30-year mortgage. The 1% threshold is the gold standard used by the federal government to assess which homeowners are required to purchase flood insurance. Siders, a professor at the University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center. “Who is going to pay and how we are going to pay, is the ultimate question,” said A.R. And it presents difficult new questions about who will pay billions of dollars to save communities from going underwater: homeowners, towns and cities, or the U.S. Meanwhile, the model prepares residents of coastal states and cities for risks to come as their communities head toward a future of more intense storms and rising seas.Įxperts say the analysis is the latest evidence of a decades-long bungling of flood planning and policy at multiple levels of government across the country. The federal government’s best efforts to predict where flooding will strike have underestimated the risk to nearly 6 million homes and commercial properties primarily in the nation’s interior, leaving them unprepared for potential devastation, the analysis shows. as a country woefully underprepared for damaging floods, now and in the future. Mike De Sisti and Scott Clause, USA TODAY NetworkĪ new, nationwide flood modeling tool released Monday paints a picture of the U.S. Substantial rain has caused severe flooding in the Louisville area. A drone photograph showing a structure submerged by flood waters west of Zorn Ave.
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