Storms’ rising frequency, intensity challenge flood insurance program

Hurricane season officially ends this month, but the events of 2024 will undoubtedly have a lasting impact.

The focus rightly is on the people recovering from two monster storms that ravaged multiple states, but as things settle down on the hurricane front, it’s a perfect time to take the pulse of the National Flood Insurance Program and size up what effect such storms have on it.

Further reading:

• With the 100-year flood model seemingly obsolete, what now?
• Helene rain, winds, flooding leave Southeast US reeling; civil engineers poised to help
• Milton batters Florida as hurricane season emphasizes need for infrastructure resilience

Carol Haddock, P.E., F.ASCE, has up-close, firsthand experience of how the NFIP works. She was the acting director of Houston Public Works when Hurricane Harvey devastated the city in August 2017. (In 2018, she was appointed to the position permanently, remaining in the role until earlier this year.)

Haddock and other city officials decided that rather than simply “build back” after Harvey, it was imperative to “build forward.”

Unfortunately, the NFIP is more focused on rebuilding property to the state it was in before a flooding event, thus potentially setting people up for repeat events.

“We can’t put people back in the same risk that they were before the storm,” Haddock said. “We’ve got to build forward, and that became our approach. But the federal programs didn’t necessarily match our desire to build forward because the flood insurance program is about building you back.”

With a focus on ending this cycle, Haddock and her team presented the Houston mayor and the city council with data showing increasing flood risk as disastrous storm activity increases globally. About a year after Harvey struck, the city acted, amending its floodplain ordinance to require design for a 500-year flood event rather than the in-place requirement to design for a 100-year flood, a difference of about 3 inches of rainfall in the 24-hour design storm.

Last year, ASCE/SEI 7-22: Minimum Design Loads and Associated Criteria for Buildings and Other Structures was updated with new flood load provisions to protect against 500-year flood events, an improvement from previous guidance protecting against the 100-year model.

Haddock sees it as a positive step toward changes in the insurance program and building codes.

“ASCE 7 becomes that data and that solid technical recommendation that policy then can be built around,” she said. “You’re going to see some cities adopt it a lot more quickly. You’re going to see some cities embrace it a lot more quickly.”

Landscape has changed

The NFIP was created in 1968 to help owners of homes and other structures that were built before floodplain regulations existed and which didn’t meet codes of the day.

It was designed to help those in such situations “recover from what should have been a one-time-type flooding event,” said Haddock, who is serving as vice chair for ASCE’s 2025 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. “And what we’re seeing is that some of the premise behind how it was set up is not matching where we are today. It’s not matching the types of events that we’re having. It’s not matching the fact that people are flooding multiple times.”

“If you just look at the finances behind it, the program is clearly in tough financial shape,” she added. “(There are) significantly more demands on the program than there is funding available in the program.”

While the program is slowly evolving to ensure buildings are built back to current code, it isn’t keeping up with the damages and payouts resulting from increased rainfall total and intensity, often in areas that previously were not considered high risk.

Despite issues with the NFIP, it remains a critical piece of the resilience puzzle. The program is set to expire Dec. 20; it has been through a series of short-term extensions, the last one coming in September. If the program lapses, no new contracts can be signed, and active contracts would expire at the end of their terms.

Significantly, if left to lapse, the NFIP’s borrowing authority would be greatly reduced. The program currently is authorized to borrow $30.4 billion from the Treasury Department, but without an extension, that number drops to $1 billion.

In a post-Harvey Houston, Haddock said, those who had flood insurance received prompt and significant payouts. Others were left to rely on the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other sources of assistance.

“The payouts were an order of magnitude of 10 difference between relying on disaster recovery through FEMA and other agencies versus tapping into your flood insurance policy that you had paid for and paid into,” Haddock said. “So not renewing that and not continuing that program is going to shift a significant burden into disaster recovery, and it’s going to greatly impact people who are experiencing disaster in a really bad way by not being able to access the funding that they’ve been paying into over all these years and having that insurance policy canceled at the end of this term.”

Mitigation is key

Ideally, Haddock would like to see reform to the program emphasizing mitigation. There is a consensus that $1 spent in mitigation brings at least $6 in avoided disaster.

“The way that (the NFIP) has been structured and the way that it’s been funded has not provided the flexibility to do the right mitigation at the right location,” she said. “The flood insurance program really needs to evolve into a mitigation approach, so that instead of people recovering from a disaster, they’re avoiding it altogether.”

This is particularly important as the frequency, intensity, and unpredictability of storms ramp up.

The big hurricanes to hit the U.S. this year stand as examples of that. Helene came ashore in Florida’s Big Bend region in September as a Category 4 hurricane. It inflicted damage upon Georgia and South Carolina as it dropped to tropical storm status. But Helene then caught western North Carolina off guard with intense rainfall that resulted in catastrophic flooding. Hurricane Milton was 2024’s other headliner, wreaking havoc across Florida in October.

Haddock says it’s time to reconsider the models, particularly when it comes to the amount of rainfall that accompanies storms.

“We’re predicting forward based on a past and experience from the past, and what we’re predicting forward may not be exactly what we’re going to experience in the future,” she said. “We have a lot more people in harm’s way on the coasts. We have a lot more people in a place to experience these disasters. What Helene and Milton – Helene in particular – really highlighted for people is that you don’t have to live on the coast to be impacted by one of these storms.”

When Helene hit Asheville, North Carolina – as when Harvey struck Houston in 2017 – it was heavy rainfall, as opposed to wind, that caused the devastation. Asheville is hundreds of miles from the coast and more than 2,000 feet above sea level, not exactly the expected target of a hurricane or tropical storm.

“These storms are dropping massive amounts of rain after they’ve lost that wind character,” Haddock said. “Houston is on the coast, so we can’t say that we shouldn’t have expected those types of rains. But (noncoastal regions of) North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, they didn’t expect those kinds of rains (from Helene).

“That’s not in their maps. That’s not in their models. That’s not in the risks that we would have normally prepared for as a public works agency, as a flood agency, as a state.

“They’ve got some significant challenges that they’re going to be going through up there, and it’s going to be not days and weeks, it’s going to be months and years on their recovery.”

Changing standards and codes is a key to protecting people from having to endure such challenges. ASCE 7 is a good model to get things moving in that direction, Haddock said.

But it can result in upfront costs for individuals. In Houston, residents experiencing increased costs pushed back against the changes in the wake of Harvey.

Ultimately, though, the public became accepting of the changes when it became clear that it would result in an improved financial picture over the long term.

“If we can get to a point where people are not experiencing these life-changing disasters, these life-changing events, then that’s a better place to be,” Haddock said. “It’s really important as we look at these codes, we look at ASCE 7. That’s what it’s driving towards. It’s driving towards having people not experience these life-changing events. Having people be able to live their lives, to weather a storm with minor damage.”

Also of note

• Coinciding with the third anniversary of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Department of Transportation announced the awarding of $3.4 billion in grants for infrastructure projects across the country, including $1.4 billion for 19 rail projects to improve service and safety along the Northeast Corridor.
• President Joe Biden sent Congress an emergency funding request for about $100 billion to help recovery from natural disasters, including hurricanes Helene and Milton.
• President-elect Donald Trump nominated former U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., as his secretary of transportation.
• ASCE’s Mississippi Section gave the state’s infrastructure a grade of C- in the 2024 Report Card for Mississippi’s Infrastructure. It was a one-step rise from 2020’s D+.