Texas

Maps are often wrong also because of changes in and around creeks and rivers. Our town was one that was hit in the flood. We know our flood map is wrong. We have flood insurance, by the way, and are across the street from a creek that flooded on the 4th.

How is it wrong? It’s quite overbroad, and it doesn’t take into account the mechanisms of flooding there and how it has changed over the years with cleaning debris out of the creek and river. There is a well known pattern and direction that these 2 bodies of water flood, which any local can describe. There are areas of much higher ground that even in another 500 year flood, or a 1000 year flood, on that map that aren’t going to flood because that’s not the direction the water moves. Danger is over-reported for one area of town, and even a bit under-reported for another.

FEMA can’t get it right everywhere. It just isn’t possible. But sometimes they should pay more attention not to developers, but to people who’ve lived in those flood plains and experienced the massive floods, when we tell them that the maps are based on the wrong assumptions about how flooding occurs.