Flood Risk Doesn’t Stop At The 100-Year Line

Sept. 22--Few people living in flood zones actually have flood insurance, as we recently noted in a front-page story . But what about the people outside the zones, where there's supposed to be just a 1 percent chance every year of a really bad flood, or a 100-year storm, if you will?

Mohan Rajasekar and his team at Arlington-based startup Syndeste, which compiles flooding data and insights through its platform Beyond Floods for insurance companies and banks, looked at the five cities in South Hampton Roads. They discovered that more than 1 in 5 claims to the National Flood Insurance Program has been for properties outside of high-risk, 100-year flood zones.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has paid out $365 million in flood claims in the region, with $47.5 million for homes considered less at risk.

"The data shows us that the risk of flooding does not stop at the boundary of the 1 percent annual chance floodplain," Rajasekar wrote in an email.

He said the data also indicate that more than half of the current active flood policies in place in the five cities are for properties outside a 100-year floodplain, "showing a strong inclination for those not mandated by lenders and the NFIP to purchase flood insurance"

The number of flood insurance policies in the five cities spiked in 2006, following a trend seen nationwide after the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Rajasekar said. But as with nearly everywhere else in the country, the number have policies have dropped in recent years as premium costs have risen.

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