FEMA Maps Said They Weren’t in a Flood Zone. Then Came the Rain.

When the nonprofit climate research firm First Street Foundation compared its flood model to FEMA’s maps, the report found that as of 2020 5.9 million properties and property owners are currently unaware of or are underestimating the risk they face, because they are not identified as being within the special flood hazard areas zone. The small creek running past Beinin’s home wasn’t shown as flood-prone on the federal map, but First Street’s model included it and rated the property an “extreme flood risk.” Had she known that, she said, “I either would have gotten flood insurance or maybe not bought the house.”

According to FEMA, its maps aren’t meant to predict where a flood might occur, or even where they have occurred in the past. Rather, they are “snapshots in time of risk” that are used for flood insurance determinations and managing development in floodplains. 

“The flood maps are minimums. They are not a comprehensive understanding of all the flood hazards and flood risks,” said Luis Rodriguez, director of the agency’s engineering and modeling division. “Where it can rain, it can flood.”

But Berginnis says that narrow view reflects a bit of wishful thinking. “Because it is the big national dataset for flood mapping, the way the public often perceives the maps is that they’re the end-all, be-all of flood risk,” he said. “That sort of comes with the territory.”

Regardless, people in FEMA’s blindspots are pummeled at an alarming rate. After Hurricane Harvey hit the Gulf Coast of Texas in 2017, the Harris County Flood Control District, which includes the city of Houston, found that half of the 204,000 homes that flooded were outside the federal hazard zone. According to FEMA, 40 percent of claims made through its National Flood Insurance Program come from people beyond the 100-year floodplain.

Cambridge, about an hour from Barre, is another area of Vermont where FEMA maps failed to adequately capture the risks residents face. 

“I would say the FEMA maps are grossly outdated,” said Jonathan DeLaBruere, the town administrator. Cambridge’s map isn’t even fully digitized, so he has a scan pulled up on his computer and pointed to the date in the corner: 1983.

The high-risk floodplain is marked in gray and weaves up from the Lamoille River toward Main Street. A handful of properties are included in FEMA’s 100-year floodplain, but most aren’t. Regardless of their designation, almost all of the buildings have flooded multiple times in the last century.

Pearl Dennis bought her house, which isn’t in a FEMA hazard area, in 2015. It only took a few years before flood waters reached her front steps. “We tried to get flood insurance after the 2019 flood,” she said. “We were denied because we were too far away from the river.”

FEMA said it cannot comment on specific cases for privacy reasons, but in an email to Grist an agency spokesperson said the distance to a river or other body of water does not impact federal flood insurance eligibility. He also said National Flood Insurance Program policies are available for “any eligible building” in a community that participates in the program, as both Barre and Cambridge do.

This month’s storm sent the Lamoille raging through the first floor of Dennis’ house, flooding her basement and backyard along the way. Hay bales weighing 600 pounds floated over from a neighbor’s farm and still sit on the lawn. Her floorboards are peeling, and the street is piled with ruined appliances, belongings, and debris.

Similar stories and sights abound on the block, even though large swaths of the waterlogged street lie in an area that FEMA says should flood less than every 500 years.

“The word ‘flood’ never came up at all until July 10,” said Erica Hayes, whose parents bought the Cambridge Market Village earlier this year. Then they saw 9 feet of water inundate their basement. While First Street pegged the store as a “moderate” flood risk, FEMA does not include it in its hazard area.

“If we were in a flood zone, we probably wouldn’t have bought,” said Hayes. The store didn’t have flood insurance, because it wasn’t mandatory and the cost proved prohibitive. Hayes pegs the damage at roughly a quarter million dollars.

“We have to cover it out of pocket,” she said. “But there’s no pocket to pay out of.”

One of the problems Berginnis noted is that FEMA has mapped only about a third of the nation’s streams, rivers, and coastlines.There are other faults as well. Many maps are decades out of date, despite a statutory requirement that FEMA review them every five years. They also do not capture urban stormwater flooding caused by intense rain — events that Berginnis say are becoming more frequent and intense.

That points to what may be the biggest shortcoming of all: The maps don’t account for climate change, because they rely on historical rather than forecasted data. In 2012, Congress told FEMA to incorporate future conditions such as sea-level rise, but more than a decade later, that hasn’t happened.

“If FEMA did what Congress directed it to do, it would probably smooth out a lot of things,” said Rob Moore, the director of the Water & Climate Team at the Natural Resources Defense Council. 

The delay in integrating climate data stems in part from the Trump administration, said FEMA spokesperson Jeremy Edwards. “Under the previous administration, climate resilience was not a priority,” he said, which limited what could be done. Now, he said, it’s a top concern. The agency is “working toward” incorporating future conditions into its maps, especially sea-level rise, Rodriguez said. That data should be available by the end of the 2025 fiscal year.

Tik Root is a senior staff writer at Grist. This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here. This story was co-published with WBUR.