At the 2018_FloodWarn_Training_Kingwood on May 2, Diane Cooper of FEMA pointed out several startling statistics about the Hurricane Harvey Flood and flood insurance.
Home outside the 100-year flood plain during Hurricane Harvey.
According to the City of Houston, approximately 90,000 structures OUTSIDE of the 0.2% Risk Area (500-year flood plain) were impacted. Additionally, another 30,500 structures INSIDE the 1% risk area (100-year flood plain) and 29,000 in the 0.2% risk area flooded.
However, out of approximately 150,000 total homes flooded, only 26,511 insurance claims were filed. That’s because approximately only one in six Houstonians had flood insurance.
Most people felt that if they lived outside the 1% risk area, flood insurance was an expense they could do without. Yet four in every five flooded homes were outside the 1% risk area.
Let’s examine flood insurance vs. disaster assistance as hedge against such risk.
You are in control. Flood insurance claims are paid even if a disaster is not declared by the President.
More than 20 percent of NFIP claims from from outside of mapped Special Flood Hazard Areas.
There is no payback requirement.
Flood insurance policies are continuous, and are no non-renewable or canceled for repeat losses.
Flood insurance reimburses you for all covered building losses up to $250,000 for residential occupancies and upon to $500,000 for businesses. Contents coverage is also available up to $100,000 for residential occupancies and up to $500,000 for businesses.
The average cost of a flood insurance policy is about $600 annually. The cost of a preferred risk policy is less than $450 annually, if you live in a moderate-to-low-risk area.
Disaster Assistance
Compared to flood insurance, disaster assistance has several drawbacks.
Most forms of Federal disaster assistance require a Presidential declaration.
Federal disaster assistance declarations are not awarded in all flooding incidents.
The most typical form of disaster assistance is a loan that must be repaid with interest.
The duration of a small Business Administration (SBA) disaster home loan could extend to 30 years.
The average Individuals and Households Program award for Presidential disaster declarations related to flooding in 2008 was less than $4,000.
Repayment on a $50,000 SBA disaster home load is $240 a month or $2,880 annually at 4 percent interest.
The More You Know, the Better Flood Insurance Looks
Everyone should have flood insurance. Remember, not all flooding comes from rivers and streams. During Harvey, thousands of homes flooded from overflowing streets when storm drains and sewers backed up. Floods can happen anytime, anywhere…even in deserts.
Homeowners insurance policies typically don’t cover flood damage. Disaster assistance payouts will not come close to covering all the damage that people typically suffer from a flood. And the most common type of disaster assistance is a loan that must be repaid with interest.
You can buy flood insurance through the NFIP regardless of your flood risk; it’s easy to get through any licensed broker. You can even use your credit card. Consider it seriously as we enter another hurricane season and a tropical wave is expected to slime us this weekend.
Posted by Bob Rehak on June 12, 2018
287 Days since Hurricane Harvey
00adminadmin2018-06-12 12:34:462018-06-13 00:05:57Benefits of Flood Insurance vs. Disaster Assistance
Structures flooded in Lake Houston area by watershed and political jurisdiction.
From this damage map, it’s clear that Kingwood suffered the most home damage in the upper Lake Houston area during Hurricane Harvey.
Harris County Food Control has worked diligently to map damage due to Harvey. The map above shows the total number of damaged homes by watershed AND political jurisdiction. The black line that divides Kingwood in two is the dividing line between East Fork and West Fork drainage.
In Harris County, there were 4,484 homes (City of Houston – Primarily Kingwood 3,652; Humble 466, Atascacita: 366) flooded by the West Fork. Additionally, 1,290 homes (Kingwood 1,162; Huffman 128) were flooded along the East Fork.
These totals do not include additional homes flooded along each Fork that were not in Harris County, i.e., in Montgomery County. They do not include businesses. Nor do they include homes flooded further down on the lake, i.e., in Crosby or Summerwood.
These totals are lower than initially expected based on SBA and FEMA data. At a meeting of the Houston Geological Society on June 6, County Judge Ed Emmett explained that after floods many con artists file fraudulent claims. Therefore, he says, it’s common to see reductions in damage numbers after claims are investigated.
How to Read the Map
The total number of damaged structures within both the West Fork watershed and Houston appears three separate times for three different subdivisions. The total for all three is associated with each segment; do not make the mistake of adding the same number three times to get an exaggerated total for the damage.
Harris County Flood Control compiled this map for the Lake Houston Area Grass Roots Flood Prevention Initiative. Thanks go out to Matt Zeve and his team. They are currently working on a more granular breakdown that would show damage by subdivision, for instance, Barrington, Kingwood Lakes, Kings Point, etc.
Don’t Forget Meeting Tonight: Featured Speakers from Army Corps
Don’t forget the meeting tonight at the Kingwood Community Center. Mark Micheletti will update the community on SJRA flood mitigation projects. Bill Fowler will address tax valuations. Jonathan Holley will give us a quick overview of the Harris County Flood Bond. And the featured speakers from the Army Corps will address objectives, scope, timing and details of their emergency dredging project. The meeting starts promptly at 6:30 pm and will end by 8. Please attend.
Posted 6/11/2018 by Bob Rehak
286 Days since Hurricane Harvey
00adminadmin2018-06-10 22:14:082020-01-17 10:15:15Damage Map: Neighborhoods in Lake Houston Area Hardest Hit by Harvey
A study by consulting firm Freese and Nichols looked at the value of adding flood gates to the Lake Houston Dam. It found that during Harvey, new gates would have lowered the level of flooding around Lake Houston by up to 1.9 feet depending on the number of gates added. Obviously, the gates by themselves won’t protect us from another Harvey, but they are an important part of a comprehensive solution that includes ongoing river dredging, ditch maintenance, debris removal, additional upstream retention, and better warning systems and more.
Modeling the Effect of More Gates on a Harvey-type Flood
Freese and Nichols conducted the gate study, which modeled flood levels only for the Hurricane-Harvey case. It did not address the impact of adding gates on smaller floods, such as those that occurred in 1994, 1998, 2001, 2015 and 2016.
Extent of modeling in Freese and Nichols study on the effects of adding floodgates to Lake Houston
Would Pre-release Help with a Storm as Big as Harvey?
Additional gates were originally proposed as a concept that could enable pre-release of water from Lake Houston as a flood mitigation strategy. The idea behind a pre-release strategy is to lower the level of a lake BEFORE a storm. The lake then has more capacity to absorb heavy rains before overflowing its banks and flooding residents, much as the City of Houston did before a small flood at the end of March.
Pre-release is currently difficult for Lake Houston because the dam consists mainly of a spillway with a fixed height – 42.5 feet above mean sea level. The Lake Houston dam does have two small gates, but they have less than one tenth the capacity of the flood gates on Lake Conroe. This makes it difficult to coordinate discharges between the two lakes.
The SJRA repeatedly cited fear of overloading the Lake Houston watershed as a reason for delaying its release from the Lake Conroe dam during Harvey. Additional gates might have reduced those concerns, encouraging the SJRA to release water earlier.
Theoretically, that could have reduced the volume of water coming down the west fork at the peak of the storm. At the peak, Lake Conroe’s release constituted one third of all the water coming down the West Fork where most of the damage occurred. It’s therefore easy to see how reducing the peak flow down the west fork could have spared hundreds of homes and businesses.
However, Freese and Nichols found that the volume of water coming into the lake during Harvey from multiple sources was too great to realize much benefit from pre-release. The amount pre-released would have quickly filled back up again – within a few hours.
Primary Benefit Comes from Additional Discharge Capacity
This does not mean that Freese and Nichols recommended against adding gates. They found that gates would have benefitted the community, but in a different way than originally anticipated. Surprisingly, they found that the largest reduction in flood levels came simply from the additional discharge capacity that the gates provided during the peak of the flood.
Freese and Nichols states in its conclusion, “Adding additional gates to the spillway at Lake Houston would be a feasible alternative to allow for additional discharge capacity to reduce the impact of very large flood events. … Though additional gates would provide the ability to lower the lake quickly in advance of an anticipated major flood event, the additional capacity of the gates would have far more impact on the flood level than any preliminary lowering of the lake.”
Cost/Benefit Ratio
Like many engineering studies, Freese and Nichols says that any decision to build the gates depends on whether elected officials find benefits worth the costs. However, the scope of the study did not include cost savings to home and business owners. So let’s look at that.
FEMA, the agency that would likely pay for most of the gates evaluates projects primarily on the number of people helped. They want to provide the most “benefit-per-buck” possible.
Looking at the world from FEMA’s Point of View
The City of Houston is currently in the process of developing the FEMA grant application. Mayor Sylvester Turner stated at a community meeting in Kingwood in March that he supported 10 additional gates, which he estimated would cost $47 million.
FEMA estimated in November of 2017 that 16,000 homes and 3,300 businesses in the Lake Houston area were damaged. Therefore, to reduce the impact of flooding, this project would require an expenditure of less than $2,500 per structure. Repairs to flooded structures in virtually all cases cost 10 to 100 times more than that. I know of at least one case where repairs cost $600,000. It doesn’t take many of those to equal the cost of the additional gates that the mayor proposed – $47 million.
The gates would completely eliminate flooding at the edge of the flood, and would reduce the depth of flooding inside of that.
It’s not clear at this point how many homes sit within that band where flooding could have been eliminated. Nor is there a precise estimate of damage to those homes.
Calculating the Value of Flood Reduction
Looking at homes that would seen reduced flooding, it’s important to note that the cost of repairs correlates highly with the level of flooding. According to Bill Fowler, a real estate tax expert and Co-Chair of the Lake Houston Area Grass Roots Flood Prevention Initiative, the Harris County Appraisal District is lowering valuations on homes by the amount of flooding they experienced.
Lowering flood levels usually lowers repair costs. Lower flood levels can also lower flood insurance costs, losses to insurance companies, damage to contents, and damage to vehicles. Value can be measured many ways.
It’s also important to note when calculating value in floods smaller than Harvey, pre-release might actually become a viable strategy and greatly reduce or eliminate flooding altogether. Freese and Nichols did not evaluate additional gates from that perspective; they considered only Harvey-level flooding.
Adding floodgates to Lake Houston will be a valuable flood mitigation tool. It must be viewed as an essential PART of the solution, not THE solution. Consider its value within the context of other mitigation efforts, such as dredging, ditch maintenance, and additional upstream storage capacity.
Posted June 10 by Bob Rehak
285 Days since Hurricane Harvey
00adminadmin2018-06-08 13:12:172018-06-10 01:08:00Freese and Nichols study finds more gates on Lake Houston dam could have lowered flood during Harvey
Benefits of Flood Insurance vs. Disaster Assistance
At the 2018_FloodWarn_Training_Kingwood on May 2, Diane Cooper of FEMA pointed out several startling statistics about the Hurricane Harvey Flood and flood insurance.
Home outside the 100-year flood plain during Hurricane Harvey.
According to the City of Houston, approximately 90,000 structures OUTSIDE of the 0.2% Risk Area (500-year flood plain) were impacted. Additionally, another 30,500 structures INSIDE the 1% risk area (100-year flood plain) and 29,000 in the 0.2% risk area flooded.
However, out of approximately 150,000 total homes flooded, only 26,511 insurance claims were filed. That’s because approximately only one in six Houstonians had flood insurance.
Let’s examine flood insurance vs. disaster assistance as hedge against such risk.
The following information came from the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) portion of the FEMA website.
Flood Insurance
Flood insurance has six primary benefits:
Disaster Assistance
Compared to flood insurance, disaster assistance has several drawbacks.
The More You Know, the Better Flood Insurance Looks
Everyone should have flood insurance. Remember, not all flooding comes from rivers and streams. During Harvey, thousands of homes flooded from overflowing streets when storm drains and sewers backed up. Floods can happen anytime, anywhere…even in deserts.
Homeowners insurance policies typically don’t cover flood damage. Disaster assistance payouts will not come close to covering all the damage that people typically suffer from a flood. And the most common type of disaster assistance is a loan that must be repaid with interest.
You can buy flood insurance through the NFIP regardless of your flood risk; it’s easy to get through any licensed broker. You can even use your credit card. Consider it seriously as we enter another hurricane season and a tropical wave is expected to slime us this weekend.
Posted by Bob Rehak on June 12, 2018
287 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Damage Map: Neighborhoods in Lake Houston Area Hardest Hit by Harvey
Structures flooded in Lake Houston area by watershed and political jurisdiction.
From this damage map, it’s clear that Kingwood suffered the most home damage in the upper Lake Houston area during Hurricane Harvey.
Harris County Food Control has worked diligently to map damage due to Harvey. The map above shows the total number of damaged homes by watershed AND political jurisdiction. The black line that divides Kingwood in two is the dividing line between East Fork and West Fork drainage.
In Harris County, there were 4,484 homes (City of Houston – Primarily Kingwood 3,652; Humble 466, Atascacita: 366) flooded by the West Fork. Additionally, 1,290 homes (Kingwood 1,162; Huffman 128) were flooded along the East Fork.
These totals do not include additional homes flooded along each Fork that were not in Harris County, i.e., in Montgomery County. They do not include businesses. Nor do they include homes flooded further down on the lake, i.e., in Crosby or Summerwood.
These totals are lower than initially expected based on SBA and FEMA data. At a meeting of the Houston Geological Society on June 6, County Judge Ed Emmett explained that after floods many con artists file fraudulent claims. Therefore, he says, it’s common to see reductions in damage numbers after claims are investigated.
How to Read the Map
The total number of damaged structures within both the West Fork watershed and Houston appears three separate times for three different subdivisions. The total for all three is associated with each segment; do not make the mistake of adding the same number three times to get an exaggerated total for the damage.
Harris County Flood Control compiled this map for the Lake Houston Area Grass Roots Flood Prevention Initiative. Thanks go out to Matt Zeve and his team. They are currently working on a more granular breakdown that would show damage by subdivision, for instance, Barrington, Kingwood Lakes, Kings Point, etc.
Don’t Forget Meeting Tonight: Featured Speakers from Army Corps
Don’t forget the meeting tonight at the Kingwood Community Center. Mark Micheletti will update the community on SJRA flood mitigation projects. Bill Fowler will address tax valuations. Jonathan Holley will give us a quick overview of the Harris County Flood Bond. And the featured speakers from the Army Corps will address objectives, scope, timing and details of their emergency dredging project. The meeting starts promptly at 6:30 pm and will end by 8. Please attend.
Posted 6/11/2018 by Bob Rehak
286 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Freese and Nichols study finds more gates on Lake Houston dam could have lowered flood during Harvey
A study by consulting firm Freese and Nichols looked at the value of adding flood gates to the Lake Houston Dam. It found that during Harvey, new gates would have lowered the level of flooding around Lake Houston by up to 1.9 feet depending on the number of gates added. Obviously, the gates by themselves won’t protect us from another Harvey, but they are an important part of a comprehensive solution that includes ongoing river dredging, ditch maintenance, debris removal, additional upstream retention, and better warning systems and more.
Modeling the Effect of More Gates on a Harvey-type Flood
Freese and Nichols conducted the gate study, which modeled flood levels only for the Hurricane-Harvey case. It did not address the impact of adding gates on smaller floods, such as those that occurred in 1994, 1998, 2001, 2015 and 2016.
Extent of modeling in Freese and Nichols study on the effects of adding floodgates to Lake Houston
Would Pre-release Help with a Storm as Big as Harvey?
Additional gates were originally proposed as a concept that could enable pre-release of water from Lake Houston as a flood mitigation strategy. The idea behind a pre-release strategy is to lower the level of a lake BEFORE a storm. The lake then has more capacity to absorb heavy rains before overflowing its banks and flooding residents, much as the City of Houston did before a small flood at the end of March.
Pre-release is currently difficult for Lake Houston because the dam consists mainly of a spillway with a fixed height – 42.5 feet above mean sea level. The Lake Houston dam does have two small gates, but they have less than one tenth the capacity of the flood gates on Lake Conroe. This makes it difficult to coordinate discharges between the two lakes.
The SJRA repeatedly cited fear of overloading the Lake Houston watershed as a reason for delaying its release from the Lake Conroe dam during Harvey. Additional gates might have reduced those concerns, encouraging the SJRA to release water earlier.
Theoretically, that could have reduced the volume of water coming down the west fork at the peak of the storm. At the peak, Lake Conroe’s release constituted one third of all the water coming down the West Fork where most of the damage occurred. It’s therefore easy to see how reducing the peak flow down the west fork could have spared hundreds of homes and businesses.
However, Freese and Nichols found that the volume of water coming into the lake during Harvey from multiple sources was too great to realize much benefit from pre-release. The amount pre-released would have quickly filled back up again – within a few hours.
Primary Benefit Comes from Additional Discharge Capacity
This does not mean that Freese and Nichols recommended against adding gates. They found that gates would have benefitted the community, but in a different way than originally anticipated. Surprisingly, they found that the largest reduction in flood levels came simply from the additional discharge capacity that the gates provided during the peak of the flood.
Freese and Nichols states in its conclusion, “Adding additional gates to the spillway at Lake Houston would be a feasible alternative to allow for additional discharge capacity to reduce the impact of very large flood events. … Though additional gates would provide the ability to lower the lake quickly in advance of an anticipated major flood event, the additional capacity of the gates would have far more impact on the flood level than any preliminary lowering of the lake.”
Cost/Benefit Ratio
Like many engineering studies, Freese and Nichols says that any decision to build the gates depends on whether elected officials find benefits worth the costs. However, the scope of the study did not include cost savings to home and business owners. So let’s look at that.
FEMA, the agency that would likely pay for most of the gates evaluates projects primarily on the number of people helped. They want to provide the most “benefit-per-buck” possible.
Looking at the world from FEMA’s Point of View
The City of Houston is currently in the process of developing the FEMA grant application. Mayor Sylvester Turner stated at a community meeting in Kingwood in March that he supported 10 additional gates, which he estimated would cost $47 million.
FEMA estimated in November of 2017 that 16,000 homes and 3,300 businesses in the Lake Houston area were damaged. Therefore, to reduce the impact of flooding, this project would require an expenditure of less than $2,500 per structure. Repairs to flooded structures in virtually all cases cost 10 to 100 times more than that. I know of at least one case where repairs cost $600,000. It doesn’t take many of those to equal the cost of the additional gates that the mayor proposed – $47 million.
It’s not clear at this point how many homes sit within that band where flooding could have been eliminated. Nor is there a precise estimate of damage to those homes.
Calculating the Value of Flood Reduction
Looking at homes that would seen reduced flooding, it’s important to note that the cost of repairs correlates highly with the level of flooding. According to Bill Fowler, a real estate tax expert and Co-Chair of the Lake Houston Area Grass Roots Flood Prevention Initiative, the Harris County Appraisal District is lowering valuations on homes by the amount of flooding they experienced.
Lowering flood levels usually lowers repair costs. Lower flood levels can also lower flood insurance costs, losses to insurance companies, damage to contents, and damage to vehicles. Value can be measured many ways.
It’s also important to note when calculating value in floods smaller than Harvey, pre-release might actually become a viable strategy and greatly reduce or eliminate flooding altogether. Freese and Nichols did not evaluate additional gates from that perspective; they considered only Harvey-level flooding.
Adding floodgates to Lake Houston will be a valuable flood mitigation tool. It must be viewed as an essential PART of the solution, not THE solution. Consider its value within the context of other mitigation efforts, such as dredging, ditch maintenance, and additional upstream storage capacity.
Posted June 10 by Bob Rehak
285 Days since Hurricane Harvey