Catastrophic inland flooding in North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee has made headlines across the country in recent months. Severe flooding in areas not typically associated with flood problems can cause Americans to wonder whether they should purchase federal flood insurance.

But National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) coverage may not be available to everyone who wants it, Insure yourself reports.

Nationally, 2,279 communities do not participate in the voluntary program that provides insurance against flood damage, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, and most homeowner’s policies do not cover flood damage. Property owners in non-participating municipalities cannot purchase federally supported flood insurance.

Often non-participating communities are rural, and many have very small populations. Other communities may appear to have little or no risk of flooding, although some may not be aware of the true risk in their area.

Communities that don’t participate in the NFIP often have “terrible, inadequate flood maps,” Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, or ASFPM, told Insurify. “FEMA’s limited mapping budget goes to areas at risk, and your higher risk areas are going to be larger. In smaller communities, you’re going to have old, approximate flood data.”

A lack of good data and flood maps is a widespread problem for communities, Berginnis said.

“We have 3.5 million miles of streams, rivers and shorelines in the country. We’ve mapped 1.2 million miles of them. We’ve only mapped a third of our flood plains.”

How NFIP works

FEMA administers the NFIP, which Congress created in 1968 with the National Flood Insurance Act. Homeowners, businesses and renters can purchase flood protection through the NFIP Direct system or more than 50 insurance companies that work with FEMA.

To participate in the NFIP, communities must agree to regulate residential and commercial development in all floodplains that fall within the municipal boundaries. Communities can participate in the NFIP only if their adopted and enforced regulations meet or exceed the NFIP criteria.

In participating communities, all properties are eligible to purchase NFIP coverage – even those outside of a mapped flood plain. Currently, NFIP underwrites approximately 5 million policies in over 22,600 communities in all 50 states and six US territories.

Any area that receives rain can be at risk for flooding, and flooding is the most common natural disaster, causing the costliest damage, according to FEMA. Yet nearly one-third of all NFIP claims come from areas outside of high-risk areas.

Why communities do not participate

Berginnis, who spent a decade in Ohio’s state flood office before joining ASFPM, said communities may opt out of NFIP participation for several reasons.

Some have no identified flood plains in their boundaries. Others may have flood zones that are already off limits to development. Some may have considered the relative costs of initiating a floodplain management program—a prerequisite for NFIP participation—and chose not to participate in the program.

In such situations, city officials may decide it’s not worth the effort to participate — especially if they don’t see resident demand for flood insurance. A lack of penalties for non-participation may also be a factor, Berginnis said.

“Essentially, joining (NFIP) is a very simple and straightforward proposition,” he said. “Typically, the community passes a resolution of intent to join the program. That’s something the (city) council can do, literally at their next meeting. Then they pass a set of rules and standards that include appointing someone as a flood officer.”

Each state provides fill-in-the-blank regulations to make it easy for communities to create the rules necessary to participate in the NFIP, he said. When communities commit to participation, they must administer and enforce the rules they have adopted around floodplain development.

“We’ve kind of made it easy in this country, in my opinion, for communities to participate, and remove all barriers for them to participate,” Berginnis said. “They just need the political will to do it.”

Consequences of Non-Participation

Residents of non-participating communities cannot purchase federally supported flood insurance. They may also struggle to find private flood insurance companies willing to cover their properties, as some private insurance companies will not sell flood coverage in areas that do not participate in the NFIP.

In addition, residents will not be able to use federally-backed mortgages, such as loans from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Federal Housing Administration or Rural Housing Services, to buy or build a home in a Special Flood Hazard Area, or SFHA. And if disaster strikes — as it did on Sept. 27 for many western North Carolinians — non-participating communities will not be able to receive financial assistance from the federal government to repair or rebuild structures in the SFHA.

The tragic example in North Carolina

Perhaps no state better exemplifies the potential consequences of unprotected flood risk than North Carolina. Most of North Carolina’s 550 municipalities participate in the NFIP. But 27 do not — including Mills River, which suffered damage in Hurricane Helene.

Helene tore through the northwestern part of the state on September 27, decimating communities in North Carolina’s largely rural Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountain ranges. The storm killed more than 225 people, and about half of those deaths were in North Carolina. In October, authorities were still unsure how many were still missing.

The flood damage to homes and businesses in affected communities is extensive. Because many affected communities are participants in the federal program, the NFIP can cover these losses, at least in part. However, few property owners in these areas purchased NFIP policies before Helene.

For example, Asheville, with a population of more than 95,500 and 47,606 homes, saw nearly 10 inches of rainfall that caused devastating flooding. But the city’s residents and businesses had only 447 NFIP policies in force, offering total coverage of just under $152 million. Helen’s total cost could range as high as $250 billion, according to AccuWeather.

North Carolina Nonparticipating Communities

At least one Tarheel community that saw damage from Helene does not participate in the NFIP.

The town of Mills River in Henderson County is south of the Asheville Regional Airport – and the Mills River. After Helene, the city’s Mills River Park became a distribution point for food, water and supplies, offering a mobile shower station and a mobile kitchen that served hot meals to storm victims.

The city was home to more than 7,300 people, according to the North Carolina League of Municipalities. Because the community does not participate in the NFIP, most — if not all — homeowners and businesses in the city lack flood insurance and will have to shoulder the cost of rebuilding without federal funding.

Many of the communities in North Carolina that do not participate in the NFIP have very small populations of less than 1,000 residents. Like Mills River, they also tend to be rural. Many are found in close proximity to a number of bodies of water, from large rivers and lakes to creeks and streams. With inland waterways comes an increased risk of inland flooding.

What’s Next: Will Communities Rethink Non-Participation?

Helen’s severe effect on many inland communities in several states surprised many. But with climate change driving more frequent and stronger hurricanes and other weather events, it’s likely that more communities will face situations similar to Helene’s effect on western North Carolina.

Smaller communities may be unaware of the heightened risks they face.

“In counties and rural areas, you have to pick up 10 to 20 square miles of drainage before a FEMA flood map starts picking up the floodplain, but you have flood risk even if there’s only one square mile of drainage,” Berginnis said. “These little communities way up in the hollows, they have significant flood risk. (But) we haven’t mapped that, and that’s, I think, on us as a country.”

Property owners can take steps to protect themselves, even if they are in a non-participating community, he said. The federal government has worked for over a decade to support the development of a private flood insurance market. People in communities where NFIP coverage is not available may be able to purchase private flood insurance. Homeowners and businesses can also ask their city leaders to start participating in the NFIP.

Above all, Berginnis warned, communities should continue to prepare for flooding — even those that have already experienced a catastrophic flood event.

“Don’t fool yourself into thinking it can’t happen again, or it won’t happen again. It will,” he said. “And it could happen next week, it could happen next month, it could happen a year from now — the same extreme event.”

This story was produced by Insure yourself and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.