![]() ![]() However, the designation in this case was intended to signify the lowest elevation in the area, or a depression in the earth such as a ditch, where water would accumulate in the 1 percent chance of annual flooding-which the maps are required by law to represent, the agency said. When asked about the Warriors Mark case, FEMA said the line seen on the map of Dry Hollow Road would normally correspond with a river (and was labeled a “run”). “I’m afraid I was somewhat naïve on this,” he said. Neff, a college security officer, said he told residents they could make challenges on their own. “I’d like to strangle somebody over $300 a year,” Fred Diehl, a Dry Hollow resident, said of his flood insurance bill, “because this is something that should have never happened.”Īppealing the maps could run into the tens of thousands of dollars-prohibitively expensive for a small town. The impact was soon revealed when mortgage holders told homeowners they had 45 days to buy flood coverage. “The federal government really didn’t make people aware of the potential consequences.” The maps didn’t arrive with a notice, “Warning, you better check this or some of your residents are going to incur additional flood insurance,’” said town solicitor Lee Oswalt. Trying to make sense of the revisions was hard, said town officials, who couldn’t tell which properties were new to flood zones since the previous FEMA map from 1989 provided little detail to compare against. Mark Colussy, Planning Director of Huntingdon County, points out a new stream that FEMA added to a map in Warriors Mark, Pa. FEMA said they had 30 days to verify non-technical items such as street and creek names, and the town would then have 90 days for appeals. ![]() Stewart Neff, chairman of the town’s board of supervisors, said they received the proposed maps in October 2010. Officials in Warriors Mark, the community of 1,800 where Dry Hollow Road winds a few miles among sparsely-populated lots, said they didn’t know the maps would trigger such big changes in flood zone designations and insurance rates. Some homeowners have appealed the designations, questioning how they’ve landed in flood zones when they’re nowhere near water or have never flooded. The new maps placed some 520,000 residences into flood zones from 2005 to 2011, while taking nearly 570,000 out. People with mortgages on homes in flood zones must have coverage. The maps have come under growing scrutiny since 2012 for their role in determining flood insurance provided by FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program, which is $24 billion in debt and is eliminating some subsidies that kept premiums below market rates. “Mapping and identifying flood hazards enables informed, smart development and encourages communities to adopt and enforce minimum floodplain management regulations,” FEMA chief Craig Fugate told Congress in mid-September. And though FEMA intends for everyone to pay their share, some businesses have found a way to move waterfront condos from high-risk zones into cheaper insurance brackets, while homeowners who can’t access such services have little choice but to buy coverage. ![]() But critics caution that the maps, which are used to determine flood insurance premiums, are tough to challenge and in some cases are ensnaring homeowners who shouldn’t be in a flood zone. Using the latest in mapping technology such as laser beams (LiDar) and computer modeling will account for climate change, they say, and will lessen the blow of devastating storms by compelling homeowners to reduce their risk. Jim Seida / NBC NewsĪs FEMA has moved to update its decades-old flood maps, experts have cheered the effort. The question, his wife Stacy asked, is, “Where is the water?” Wearing a pair of waders, Don Fix stands in Dry Hollow Road in front of his house in Warriors Mark. “All of us were pretty upset about it,” said Don Fix, an engineer living off Dry Hollow Road paying $430 in insurance. Recently-redrawn FEMA maps, formalized in October 2012, showed this part of town in a “special flood hazard area,” upgraded from a lower risk one that didn’t require coverage. The first that residents heard of the supposed stream on Dry Hollow Road, known in this area of bucolic hills and farms for how dry it is, was when they received notices from their banks that they had to buy flood insurance. According to locals, the creek doesn’t exist. ![]()
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