Flooded Again: Visualizing Repeated Flooding Across the U.S.

beSpacific 2024-09-20

NRDC: “For communities across the country, flooding is an all-too-frequent experience—and, often, one with devastating consequences.  Over 250,000 properties in the United States have had multiple claims under the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). These “repetitive loss properties” are found in every U.S. state as well as Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and Washington, D.C. They account for over 750,000 flood insurance claims, at a cost of billions of dollars as well as harms to physical and mental healthhousing instability, and cascading disruptions to daily life. Historically, information on repeatedly flooded properties has been difficult to find. But in early 2024, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (which manages the NFIP) made anonymized repetitive loss data publicly available for the first time. This dataset includes a larger universe of properties than the “severe repetitive loss” records analyzed in our Losing Ground tool.  NRDC’s new Flooded Again dashboard allows users to explore FEMA’s repetitive loss property data and highlights troubling trends related to flood risk, as well as policy solutions that can help make communities safer. Click through the maps to explore where repeatedly flooded properties are located and what has (and hasn’t) been done to reduce their risk. Next, take a closer look at your own community to see how it compares to others across the country.  While every region of the country has repetitive loss properties, flood-prone states on the Gulf and East Coasts have the most. Louisiana alone has over 43,000 repetitive loss properties, and only 22% have received some kind of mitigation action (like elevation or floodproofing) to reduce the risk of future flood damage. Most are single-family homes that serve as their owners’ primary residences, and a 2023 report found that many repetitive loss properties are found in neighborhoods with high percentages of people 65 years or older…”