Construction Continues in Flood Prone Areas Despite Warnings
When homes are built in flood prone areas, it goes against emergency preparedness principles. Emergency preparedness is, by definition, designed to reduce the impact of an emergency situation, whereas building homes in flood prone areas does the exact opposite.
Why Homes Continue to Be Built in Flood Prone Areas
Federal rules and regulations have been implemented to reduce this practice, but unfortunately, local governments around the country have ignored these rules and have not been held accountable or suffered any consequences for doing so.
The federal rules come in the form of the National Flood Insurance Program, run by FEMA. This program offers affordable insurance to homeowners in flood prone towns, and only requires that local officials in those towns build higher floors in newly-constructed homes.
However, many new homes have not been built with higher floors, and FEMA refuses to demand accountability or levy any penalties. In fact, FEMA is unaware of the vast majority of violations because its audit rate is a bottom-of-the-barrel 3%.
An analysis published in the New York Times reveals that over 112,000 structures across more than 2,000 counties in the U.S. fail this ‘raised floor’ requirement, accounting for nearly 250,000 FEMA flood insurance policies that paid out over $1 billion in claims from 2009-2018.
I can see why FEMA is hesitant to punish an entire community based on the actions of a couple of bad actors. Suspending an entire community’s eligibility to the flood insurance program would all-but make the homes located there unsellable, and that would be a pretty harsh punishment.
As you can see, there is no easy solution. The rules will continue to be broken because there are no consequences for breaking them. Homes will continue to be built in flood prone areas for the foreseeable future. While this complicates our lives as emergency preparedness professionals, there’s not much we can do about it. The only thing we can do is be aware of it, and maximize our overall preparedness.
