Venting: FEMA sucks balls! Stupid inaccurate flood map nightmare.

[Pribilof]

Ugh! Trying to buy a new house and the FEMA flood map is plainly wrong is so many ways. Elevation, location, etc.

The creek is drawn through the middle of my driveway, roughly 40 feet from where it actually is. One can plainly see this discrepancy on the FEMA supplied map.

The roadway is a lower elevation from my house (verified on the USGS LIDAR map of my area) and would obviously flood before even a drop of rising water hit my driveway. Of course, zero of the road is marked as in the flood plain.

I send in a challenge today to FEMA based on the obvious visual inaccuracy. Surveyors in my area are booked out 4 weeks before I can get an elevation study started.

Anyone have any experience with this?

 

[DAVESVT2000]

City hall, local conservation commission agent ?

county department of environmental protection DEP ?

 

[Blk04L]

Dealing with FEMA is fun, but can't help you here in this situation.

 

[Pribilof]

Road is marked on the right. Lowest point of home on the left. Magically, FEMA thinks my house floods and the road is not in a flood plain.

Map...

 

[jmsa540]

This for house ins. Coverage?

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[CobraBob]

Definitely keep us posted. I really hope you can get this resolved quickly without pulling out all your hair.

 

[AustinSN]

What zone is it populating with?

Did you already have the location checked for flood coverage?

 

[Pribilof]

What zone is it populating with?

Did you already have the location checked for flood coverage?

Flood Zone AE. The sellers have a loan against the property and do not (supposedly) have flood insurance. The map was updated in 2014.

This is me trying to avoid flood insurance. There was a 100-year flood event in September 2013. The water did not breach the banks of the creek, much less come all the way to the side of the house. The bridge needed minor repair (it was 80 years old anyway!)

 

[SID297]

A lot of people in my county are dealing with the same issues.


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[AustinSN]

Flood Zone AE. The sellers have a loan against the property and do not (supposedly) have flood insurance. The map was updated in 2014.

This is me trying to avoid flood insurance. There was a 100-year flood event in September 2013. The water did not breach the banks of the creek, much less come all the way to the side of the house. The bridge needed minor repair (it was 80 years old anyway!)

That's annoying.

And a hella expensive zone.

 

[03cobra#694]

They have raised all elevations here by a foot last year, and I heard another one possibly next year. This is based on new construction.

 

[DAVESVT2000]

But is it based on a 100 year flood or a 500 year flood ?
There is such a thing and it’s a huge difference.

 

[Pribilof]

But is it based on a 100 year flood or a 500 year flood ?
There is such a thing and it’s a huge difference.

It's based on a 100 year flood. Just to reiterate, that house had a 100-year flood event in 2013. The water did not breach the banks, much less make it all the way up to the house.

Breaching the banks requires roughly a 10-ft rise in water level across just the creek bed. where the water to rise the additional 20 ft or so to the house, it would have to do so over a 150 ft or more wide section. That's biblical amounts of water.

I just don't think some high elevation mountain Creek could be 150 ft wide and 30 ft deep. It's not like we're down in the Grand canyon. We're up at over 7,200 ft above sea level.

 

[Sirhc7897]

Ok so they didn’t actually “raise or lower” it a foot. They simply changed the FEMA map datum from NGVD29 to NAVD88 several years back.

One of the biggest issues that arose from it was they basically ignored 20+ years of LOMAR’s and independent flood studies when they redid the maps.

The end result being they now have very immaculate maps and have had to issue mass revision letters blanketing numerous parcels.

OP. Might be worth going to the FEMA map service center, pulling the revision letters for your area and searching by parcel ID to see if you are covered under a blanket revision.


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[Pribilof]

Ok so they didn’t actually “raise or lower” it a foot. They simply changed the FEMA map datum from NGVD29 to NAVD88 several years back.

One of the biggest issues that arose from it was they basically ignored 20+ years of LOMAR’s and independent flood studies when they redid the maps.

The end result being they now have very immaculate maps and have had to issue mass revision letters blanketing numerous parcels.

OP. Might be worth going to the FEMA map service center, pulling the revision letters for your area and searching by parcel ID to see if you are covered under a blanket revision.


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FEMA "revalidated" the flood determinations for my community in 2014. The revalidation effectively superceded successful LOMAs from roughly 14 or 15 pages worth of properties. The LOMAs were all filed between 1993 and 2013.

I spot checked a few of the properties listed on that revalidation letter. All of the ones I looked at were roughly on the same elevation as the creek on a much flatter part of the canyon. It was pretty easy for me to see why they got looped back into a flood determination.

The house I'm looking at was built in 1939. None of the owners had ever filed any LOMAs, at least none that I could find.

The revalidation letter says that it would not be distributed to mortgage lenders or two insurance companies. Perhaps that's how the current owners have a mortgage without flood insurance. They've owned the home since approximately 2003.

I also wanted to add that the elevation I posted in my op was USGS lidar data from 2013. I asked FEMA why they didn't use that when they were building their maps. I may as well have been talking to my 3-year-old.

ETA: I guess I'm not exactly totally worried about getting an elevation survey done which will show that my house is above the elevation listed on the flood map. However, what if the elevation of my house is a foot below the current elevation of the flood map but the flood map itself is so wrong that the base flood elevation is listed as 10 or 15 feet higher than it should be? Is it even possible to get that revised/corrected?

 

[Sirhc7897]

The short answer is yes. You can have an engineer do a drainage study and prepare a report for FEMA.

The long story.....it’s a PITA.


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[MDShelby]

Anywhere with water is going through the same thing. And with a bjillion miles of waterfront in the county I live, lots of complaints and issues. Good luck.

 

[Pribilof]

From FEMA's site:
The creek is way off (center blue line in middle of shaded area). This really takes a drainage study to move the creek to its actual location, as shown on government aerial photos?

 

[03cobra#2]

I had this issue back in 2014. FEMA changed the flood zones and the back corner of my property touched the flood zone. I don't remember specifically but one of the neighbors was able to reach out and get the area remapped. So I know it's possible to get it changed.

 

[Pribilof]

Spoke to a Civil Engineering firm. LOMA is the only way to fix this. "Unfortunately you can't just show FEMA the map, point to the creek with a tape measure and show them how f'ed this map is." Elevation study and submit it to FEMA. They said it's likely that there is 15-20 feet from the flood plain to the house, based on just a visual from the street. FEMA is supposed to start using the LIDAR data to fix the maps... Eventually