That’s 57 percent of all claims paid in the entire Ninth District. Over the five-decade history of NFIP, the program has paid claims totaling $352.5 million (adjusted for inflation) in counties in the Red River watershed (Chart 2). That seems to be less of a problem in the Red River and Souris River watersheds. Higher risk awareness, high payoutsĮxperts have attributed the low rate of voluntary purchases nationally to a lack of awareness of flood risks. Property owners can see that they don’t have to be in one of the high-risk zones to worry about flooding. One of the tools Boerboom mentioned is an online map that shows which buildings will be flooded at different river levels. Residents have had many reminders about flood risks both from the river, which nearly forced the city to evacuate in 2009, and from city hall. The voluntary rate in Fargo is also 96 percent. We’ve created a lot of tools available for them to see what their home risk is.” “We’ve known quite a while that our community is very-what we like to call-‘flood aware,’” said Nathan Boerboom, a city engineer overseeing flood control efforts in the Red River city of Fargo, N.D. Of these, 428,000 policy records and 32,000 claims records were in the Ninth District. The data include 48.3 million records on NFIP policies sold since 2009 and 2.4 million records on NFIP claims made since 1970. (To learn more about flood insurance, see “ Flood insurance: Rolling some expensive dice.”) This and other key findings emerged from a deluge of data FEMA began releasing earlier this year about the National Flood Insurance Program, a program under financial pressure with rising damage from hurricanes and high water. Only in high-risk zones is insurance usually a requirement for those with federally backed mortgages.īut voluntary insurance purchases outside those high-risk zones are 24 percentage points higher across the Ninth District than the U.S. That means those property owners bought policies not because they had to, but because they chose to. Sixty-five percent of the properties insured against flooding in the Minneapolis Fed’s region are located outside high-risk zones. This makes the state eligible for the maximum of 20 percent toward the program.One of the biggest problems with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood insurance program is that, nationwide, few property owners actually choose to buy into it.īut that’s not the case in many counties in the Federal Reserve’s Ninth District. South Dakota recently had an enhanced statewide hazard mitigation plan approved. The HMGP program is funded through a percentage of overall federal disaster response and recovery costs. Tina Titze, Director of the South Dakota Office of Emergency Management said the funding is the result of one of four presidential disaster declarations approved for South Dakota in 2019 and noted that in addition to home buyouts, additional HMGP grants have been awarded for numerous smaller projects across the state including the construction of storm shelters and safe rooms as well as providing emergency generators to protect critical infrastructure. The purchased lots become the property of the sponsoring community. The State of South Dakota will contribute an additional $443,547 for the projects with the local community responsible for the remaining costs.įEMA Federal Coordinating Officer Jon Huss said the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) funds can be used for the purchase and demolition of structures and the cost of returning the property to green space in perpetuity. The $3.3 million from FEMA represents a 75 percent cost-share of the acquisition projects. $443,607 for the purchase of six properties in the City of Yankton.$806,641 for the purchase of 10 properties in the City of Dell Rapids.
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