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Flood Resilient Communities: National Flood Insurance Program Saves Money, Property, Lives

May 25th, 2010 - admin  

Note: This is the first of three blog entries on flood resilient communities

Flooding is the one disaster to which every community is vulnerable. And as we have learned from the recent flood devastation in Nashville and New Jersey, property owners considered outside delineated flood zones can have a rude awakening if the rains hit hard and fast. Many residents and business owners outside the 100-year floodplain believed themselves safe from flooding and did not have flood insurance. They had a harsh lesson from which we can all learn.

Since standard insurance policies do not cover flooding, property owners have the opportunity to purchase protection through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) if their community meets FEMA requirements to adopt and enforce ordinances for reducing flood risks.

While community participation in the NFIP is voluntary, nearly 21,000 communities across the United States and its territories participate. Only in participating communities do homeowners, renters and business owners have access to federally backed flood insurance.

Having and enforcing an adequate floodplain management plan is a mark of a resilient community. Adopting standards that exceed NFIP standards means a community might sustain even less damage and recover more quickly. Translated: floodplain management saves money, property, and lives.

Beyond that, there are costs to a community for not participating in the NFIP. Federal officers or agencies, such as Veterans Affairs or Federal Housing Administration, are prohibited from approving any form of financial assistance related to land located in a Special Flood Hazard Area. If a Presidential disaster is declared, no federal financial aid can be used to repair or reconstruct flood-damaged homes.

Without community oversight of building activities in the floodplain, the best efforts of some to reduce future flood losses can be compromised by the careless practices of others. Likewise, insurance rates will be adversely affected.

After a disaster, non-participating communities can apply to join the NFIP within six months and, if accepted, limitations on federal disaster assistance will be lifted. But after a disaster is not the best time for a community to undertake an application. Neither is it wise for individuals to secure insurance after the flood damages or destroys a home or business, or to wait for the forecast that predicts severe flooding since most insurance programs don’t allow for last minute policies.

There are distinct benefits for living in a flood resilient community. Exceeding the minimum NFIP requirements can mean insurance discounts of between 5 and 45 percent. Further, the program has resulted in insurance reductions of nearly $1 billion annually. According to the NFIP, buildings that meet flood construction standards suffer approximately 80 percent less damage than non-compliant structures.

It’s worth noting that FEMA reports that up to 25 percent of NFIP flood insurance claims are paid on buildings that are outside the mapped Special Flood Hazard Area, those areas where floodplain management regulations must be enforced and where flood insurance is mandatory.

Resilience begins at home. The best way to protect your investment in your home is to have adequate coverage. If you live in a community that is not in the NFIP, private insurance can be purchased. Visit www.floodsmart.gov for a listing of agents by community. You can find out if your community participates in the NFIP by going to www.fema.gov/fema/csb.  If your community is not part of the program, you can petition your local government to participate.

For those not subject to the NRIP regulations requiring flood insurance, it is especially important to self-regulate and purchase insurance and use flood damage-resistant materials and building practices. Stay tuned, this is the subject of the next blog on flood resilient communities.

Arthur (Andy) Felts

Thinking the Unthinkable

May 12th, 2010 - Arthur (Andy) Felts  

Today I am “thinking out loud” as I watch, read, and listen to what is happening on the Gulf Coast – I am really concerned about what is happening there, and I thank you for listening as I share my thoughts and note these are my thoughts and not necessarily those of the CARRI Team.  A couple of years ago, Time magazine reporter Amanda Ripley published a book titled The Unthinkable: Who survives when disaster strikes and why. The book recounts individual acts of heroism in response to disasters and what bluntly must be described as incredible acts of naïveté at best and stupidity at worst. It is simplistic, but accurate, to say that those who survive disasters think ahead and those who do not, don’t.

Of course it is human nature to resist thinking about disasters, unthinkable or otherwise. We will never know why some people try to carry their luggage off a burning plane, why someone heads for their attic with no way out during a severe flood or why some thought up was the best way to get out of the burning World Trade Center.

CARRI is about encouraging communities to think about known possible threats that have a reasonable possibility of occurring. Addressing these through mitigation, preparation, response and planning to recover makes common sense.

But CARRI is also encouraging communities to think about the unthinkable where the consequences of a disaster can be dramatic in scale. The way we have been doing this is developing a Common Framework that asks communities to look at events, no matter how remote, where the potential loss is enormous. In doing this, they may decide that at least some preparation or mitigation – however modest – might be appropriate.

If we are to believe what we read these days, the unthinkable has occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. The possibilities of an oil rig exploding, collapsing and sinking one mile into the ocean, and leaving an open, gushing stream of oil were so remote and fail-safed enough we were not to worry.

However it appears a perfect storm of events did occur to make that unthinkable a reality. Given that reality, we now realize that the human/ecosystem damage could be so vast that it might have been worthwhile to construct a simple thing like a containment dome and perhaps even another one or two strategies in advance. I’m not privy to the BP boardroom, but I’m betting that they wish they did, given the costs they are facing in retribution and cleanup.

It is ironic that the unthinkable should have been because twenty-one years ago an oil spill in Alaska coated 1,300 miles of Prince William Sound. It was another perfect storm. A tired Captain turned the ship over to a tired crewman with icebergs in the outer shipping lane, forcing the ship to sail an inner lane. Add to that the technology was not operating that would have alerted the crew to the rocks that the Exxon Valdez encountered. 

Ripley writes about this at the individual level. Even though we all know that being a passenger on a crashed plane is extremely remote, those who do survive report that they actually listen to the flight attendant’s instructions and identify the nearest exit. Or those that head to the attic in a flood take an axe with them.

As they become more resilient, communities should move from thinking about the thinkable and the probable to the unthinkable where the loss could be very high.