Flood Plain home and how to find details.?

Question

My wife an are are looking to purchase our first home. We have found one that we are interested in but it has a creek on the property and is a AE zone flood plain. I know this means that according to FEMA its got a higher chance of flooding which with flood insurance im not to concerned over. What im trying to find out if is there is any record to search that covers past damage or past floods. Even if its just by amount of rain per area. Any info or recommendations would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Talk to the neighbors. If this is just a creek then you may not be able to tell how likely it is to flood your house even if the surrounding rivers were to flood. Your best bet may be just to ask any long term neighbors whether the creek has ever flooded the house or even come close.

Answer 2

The city may have a record of the amount of water/rain in that area over the years. Past damage/floods would have to be obtained by the insurance company who covered the home over the years. I'm not sure you can get that information. Perhaps, you can knock on some neighbor's doors and ask - hope that they are friendly.

Answer 3

Best bet is to knock on some of the neighbors doors and ask. This info is not public record, but neighbors would know.

Answer 4

Ok. You need to look at a few things in an AE zone.



1. Be aware that an AE zone makes this an SFHA (Special Flood Hazard Area), so if you have a mortgage, Flood Insurance will be a requirement.

2. You might want to spend the money on an Elevation Certificate. AE zones will have a BFE (Base Flood Elevation) and if the home itself sits uphill from the creek, you might not be that bad.

3. I would be shocked if you could locate historical flood data for this particular property. Regionally, sure, but I would be surprised to find anything that specific.



Ultimately, find a good local insurance agent who understands flood. Say "SFHA" and if they look at all confused...find another agent. I explain flood coverage to clients frequently; its backed by the government so its more confusing than it should be...

Answer 5

Unless that creek is under the jurisdiction of some Flood Control District or other governmental jurisdiction that cares enough to have been monitoring levels in that creek, the information you're looking for does not exist.



You might be able to find rainfall data from the NWS or other source, but that data would only tell you how much rain fell at a specific monitoring station, which may or may not be the same as how much rain fell within the watershed for that specific creek. Even then, it's pretty much impossible to correlate rainfall to water surface elevations, as how high the creek gets depends on more than just how much rain falls, such as terrain and development/land use.



Bottom line, the FEMA map is the best and most likely only information you're going to get. Even then, those maps are just educated guesses. They are are based on anticipated storm events which during your time in that house might not ever occur, or might occur several times. I'm an engineer and have worked on projects that haven't had a 100 year storm event in well over 100 years of recorded history, and I've also worked on a project that over an 18 month span had 2-100 year and a 500 year flood. You simply never know.

Answer 6

Even though you required to purchase flood insurance, you need to consider the flood zone.

Flood insurance comes with a deductible $1000/$10000 deductible to $10000/$10000 deductible. Obviously, $10000/$10000 is cheaper but you are going to need to self fund the deductible to get the discount.



You have a 1% chance of flooding each year, finding out what really happened should be that difficult.

Answer 7

National Weather Service and FEMA should have that information.

Answer 8

National Weather Service would have that info. You could also google "town name + floods" Be aware that the cost of flood insurance skyrockets the longer you have the property. Make sure to have the property inspected for hidden water damage. If it is in an area that floods frequently, your flood insurance is going to be expensive and there should have been modifications to the home to lessen any impact.

Answer 9

FEMA has flood plain maps - these are your best sources of information. You will not find damage reports (you did not own the house and are do not have access to insurance for other people). NOAA may have historical data on floods and rainfall, but these really won't tell you much that affects you. Remember that the flood plain maps are projections based on all of the weather factors plus topography, etc., so are the most inclusive pieces of info you can get.