Tom and Diane Peterman tried to buy flood insurance when they moved to their retireme
nt home on the shores of Black Lake 14 years ago but were told it wasn’t available. John Solum
was told he wasn’t in a flood zone when his family bought a 1940s-era cabin there.
Then came this spring’s historic and devastating floods across northern Michigan —
in some areas, for the first time anyone can remember — swamping homes, pushing dams to the brin
k of failure and washing out roadways. Dozens of counties were under a state of emergency.
Black Lake was so high that floating ice broke apart decks and crashed through windows.
“We’ve never seen anything like that. Never,” said Solum, who experienced flooding often
when he lived in Houston. Knee-high floodwater forced them to tear out flooring, drywall, furniture, bedding and appliances.
Across Michigan, thousands were left without financial protection after record April rains fell on t
op of record March snowfall. Worse, many had no idea they were at risk despite years of increasingly heavy precipitation.
Their experience exposes vulnerabilities across the country, experts say, because flood plain maps don’t cover all areas. What’s more, the federal government’s mapping
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method is arguably outdated and does not account for actual risks as climate change increases the odds of more extreme weather.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency develops and updates maps that determine who’s in a flood plain and must buy insurance, and to help communities plan.
But it hasn’t developed maps in many l
ess-populated areas, including some Michigan counties that experienced unprecedented flooding.
Black Lake, for example, straddles two counties — Cheboygan, which has a 2012 FEMA flood pla
in map, and Presque Isle, where most areas have never been mapped. The longtime summer and retire
e destination is ringed by small cabins and some larger homes.
Another issue: FEMA’s maps are based on risks of rivers, streams and other waterways overflowing their banks. But they don’t account for flooding caused strictly
from increasingly heavy ra
infall that overwhelms stormwater infrastructure in urban areas and inundates rural towns where there’s nowhere for the water to go.
Related: Flood Insurance Gap Will Squeeze Local Governments and Property Owners, Moody’s Says
First Street, a company that researches the financial implications of climate change, found more than twice the number of properties at significant flood risk n
ationwide after incorporating that rainfall data into its own models and by mapping the whole country, i
ncluding smaller streams that FEMA does not.
That includes four times more properties in Michigan.
