California Surveyors Forums

I helped some homeowners, some 7 years ago, deal with some FEMA issues. In this case, FEMA erroneously mapped 9 homes in a flood zone when, in reality, they are 400 feet above the flood zone. In spite of all the work and proof that the maps were in error, FEMA did nothing. I was contacted today by a young couple who are facing exorbitant flood insurance fees for property that is nowhere near a flood zone. The insanity continues.

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/ ... nce/71588/

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/homeow ... map-errors

eLOMA

Indeed.

Many years ago, I had a similar battle on behalf of a client who owned property near the top of the hill in Bonsall. It took months of letters back and forth to get the requirement for flood insurance deleted from their mortgage.

In my last letter, I wrote, "If Mr. & Mrs. X make a claim against their flood insurance policy, it will be at the end of 40 days and 40 nights of rain and no one will be left to receive their claim having all drown in the Second Great Flood. The property lies over 700 meters above the nearest FEMA Flood Map benchmark to their property."

Sanity prevailed and the requirement was removed. The savings the first year's premiums more than paid for my time.

Good story!

In my experience it is simply a matter of documenting your evidence and submitting it to them for their review. There are several effective tools in their website for this scenario (MT-1, MT-EZ, LOMC - remove structure, remove portion of property by legal description, etc). There is also a 1-800 help line if you need to talk to a FEMA technician about the situation. I think I am 3 for 4 on getting structures removed from the flood plain via LOMC. Still hammering on the last one (which was denied), some are tricky but I have to say that generally, this system works reasonably well in it's current state

FEMA is as incredibly incompetent as they get. Combined with the rampant corruption, the whole process is a joke. Large parts of San Diego are in gross error. See the attached.

https://www.nrdc.org/experts/joel-scata ... flood-maps

"However, a recent investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General revealed that 58% of all FEMA flood maps are considered inaccurate or out-of-date. Inaccurate and out-of-date flood maps put communities at risk."

I would say the Inspector General was spot on in 2017. Much comes from poor mapping, and of course with poor mapping you get poor engineering studies and results. Garbage In = Garbage Out.

A lot of the so called FEMA Follies stems from their over-estimation of watershed area and mis-representation of stream channel and floodplain geometry.
As the quality of digital terrain models improve, perhaps we might see better quality FEMA maps?
Can't have them too good, because then there would be no need to spend the money to update the flood studies......