Climate Change Has Made Existing Flood Maps Outdated, Admits FEMA Director

The director of the FEMA visited Jackson on Friday. Her agency's flood risk assessment maps aren't currently able to account for climate change and the extreme weather events that come along with it

Across the U.S., flooding has been a problem this summer. Over the past few months, there have been multiple so-called "1,000 year" rain events in Montana, Kentucky, St. Louis, Death Valley, and Dallas.

A state of emergency was declared in parts of Georgia after more than a foot of rain fell. The damage from those floods is still being assessed.

Flooding can extend far beyond areas designated by FEMA. According to an earlier CNN analysis, almost all of the homes and businesses in St. Louis were outside of the flood zone.

The flood maps only look backwards, so people shouldn't rely solely on FEMA flood maps. Michael Gerrard is a climate change law expert at Columbia University.

FEMA's map system, which is supposed to provide an evaluation of risk and help inform decision making, is missing the mark according to scientists. According to a 2020 report from the First Street Foundation, more properties were at substantial risk of flooding than the official numbers suggest. Disasters seem to support the critique. Federal risk projections aren't adequate for the climate change era

The problem is that our flood maps don't take into account excessive rain. The amount of rain per hour in St. Louis is what the flood maps don't take into account.

Record rain events are turning into regular occurrences as a result of climate change. According to a 2020 study, the old 100 year rain events are happening 5x as frequently as they used to be. Climate change has caused $75 billion in flood damage in the US in the last 30 years, according to research.

"I think there's a lot of work that needs to go into that." The agency head didn't give any details or timelines.

FEMA is going to continue to work with all of our local jurisdictions to help them better identify what their needs are and help them create better predictive models because we have to start thinking about what the threats are going to be in the future as a result of climate change