Baltimore County, MD Hello Baltimore County, 4 Oct 2017

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From YouTube: Floods Happen, Even Here!

Description

County experts explain floodplains, flood insurance and how the County is preparing for rising sea levels.

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Welcome to hello! baltimore county., I'm ellen kobler.

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scientists have observed for years that warming ocean and air temperatures.

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Mean stronger, more devastating storms and flooding.

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The atlantic hurricane season this year has been extremely devastating.

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For the united states., we've been relatively lucky with hurricanes here in baltimore county,.

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But we are right in the middle of the mid-atlantic seaboard and could find ourselves in the crosshairs.

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we've brought in two county experts to help us be prepared.

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We have engineer extraordinaire dave, thomas from the department of public works, director's office, and fire division, chief, ken hughes.

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From the county's emergency management group.- thank you so much for joining us.. Thank you for having us. dave,. Please tell us a little bit about what we're doing in baltimore county to prepare for rising sea levels.

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And increasing storm intensity?.

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One of the most important things we're doing at baltimore county is to prepare a set of flood maps that'll. Let people know.

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Where the hazard areas are and there's a waterfront portion of this.

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Where people are already fairly familiar., they know what's going to happen with flooding.

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Kobler: on the eastern side, yeah.

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But what can really get scary are the riverine floodplains.

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Next to our streams, next to our rivers, and really sometimes, people live over top of a storm drain. Culvert.

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And don't understand that it also can flood.

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and that's the kind of thing that can surprise people.

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And we want to do our outreach and let them know that this situation occurs and to be careful of it..

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All right, and you've brought a video with you that explains floodplains,, so we're going to go ahead and take a look at that.

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That's a video for the waterfront area and there's some new things.

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That are being done in our building code to prepare us for wave action and sea level rise that we didn't do. Prior.

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Okay., let's take a look.

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Narrator: there are three basic coastal zones and one new zone in the new nfip maps.

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The flood zone x is considered to be a low-risk of flooding.

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Ve zones, or coastal high hazard areas,.

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Are zones where high velocity wave action accompanies the storm surge.

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And can cause severe damage to buildings.

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ae zones are areas affected by storm surge.

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But where wave action is diminished or absent.

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For the first time, fema has established another area within the ae zone called the limit of moderate action, or lmwa.

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These moderate waves can cause damage to buildings,, though they are not as damaging as the waves expected in the ve zone.

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Communities that adopt the limit of moderate wave action.

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As a higher regulatory standard may earn flood insurance rate discounts.

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So dave, in baltimore county,, we do of course have 200 plus miles of waterfront..

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We also have rivers and streams.. Tell us a little bit about how these flood plains.

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Affect people in baltimore, county.

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Well,, if you live in a special flood hazard, area,.

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Which is something shown on the maps,, then your mortgage lender.

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Will usually require that you buy flood insurance.

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And we'll never tell someone not to buy flood insurance,, even when the maps show that you're not on a floodplain when they update them.

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There a lot of people in houston that were not in a flood plain.

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That now their homeowner's insurance doesn't cover the flooding damage.

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Exactly,- and we don't want to let that happen., the good news is, if you don't live in, that special flood hazard, area,.

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You can buy the insurance at a much lower rate.

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and that rate has been going up. Significantly.

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Yeah, and we want to talk a little bit more about that,, but first, ken, tell us about some flooding that has occurred.

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Right here in baltimore county people may not be aware: of.

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sure., so you don't need a major storm to have flooding.

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We could have a cluster of thunderstorms that produce a significant amount of rainfall, and that can certainly happen anywhere in baltimore county.

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Reisterstown earlier this year;, we have a photo.

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Reisterstown, for example, and woodlawn, for example, cockeysville., pretty much any part of baltimore county can be exposed to a large thunderstorm that could result in flooding..

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Okay. dave, tell us more about flood insurance.

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So,, as you say,, it's not just for people who are necessarily aware that they could experience flooding., that's right.

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Mortgage lenders will require flood insurance when the federal insurance rate map says you live in a special flood hazard, area,.

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But if you don't live in that special flood hazard area.

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And you're near a stream or you're near an area where you know.

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You do get some flooding when you have a heavy storm,.

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Buy all means buy it.. The key is that homeowner's insurance does not cover flood.

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Now, baltimore county doesn't sell insurance., no, no,, of course, not.. What we do, though, is we maintain the maps and we work very closely with fema.

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In fact, we've gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars in fema grants.

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I called fema up and said I thought their maps were wrong..

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They got in touch with me and said you may be right.

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We have some money, but we don't have the resources.

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Can you help us? and for about 15 years we've been collaborating with them.

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and hopefully next year, 2018, we'll be publishing the new set.

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Of riverine flood maps that should be much more accurate.

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And in general, if you see these maps and we have them all online,.

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And if there are any questions,, be sure and call us., and so people can go to the county website and look at these maps.

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That are in development or they'll be published next year.

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The maps that are in development will be published next year.

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right now. We have a very comprehensive website that does show riverine as well as waterfront areas.

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And I encourage people to look at that. the website's a little complicated.

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But we have a set of instructions that goes with it.

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And if you're anywhere near a hazardous area and have any questions,.

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Please feel free to call.

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You'll call dave personally and you're happy to help people.

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sure. okay. and I know we've shown some of the maps, but we have a map that shows the whole county and just indicates rivers, streams,.

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Way down to the small tributaries, and those are areas that can flood as well.

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So almost everybody is near either a small tributary.

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Or you mentioned, off-air,, you mentioned about storm drain culverts.

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Thomas:, that's right.

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On the maps,, the larger drainage areas are shown on the federal maps;.

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Smaller drainage areas are not,, but they're still just as dangerous.

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And we have at least two communities and probably more where large culverts, where land developers put streams into a pipe.

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In the 1920s or '30s, back when people did things like that.

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And you might not see any flooding in those communities for many, many years until you get that one percent annual chance event.

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And then, all of a sudden, you have two, three, four feet of water.

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Around your house- and you don't know where it came from.

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and unless you bought the flood insurance, you're in trouble.

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Yeah. ken,, when there are flooding incidents,, can you tell us a little bit about how the different county agencies work together.

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To respond, but also to prepare in advance.

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Sure., so multiple county agencies work day in and day out.

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In terms of preparation., one of the big components to any large-scale flooding event.

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Would be the emergency operations center, where multiple agency participants.

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Come together so we can quickly resolve any issues that arise.

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And, of course, at the street level, where our folks in the fire department.

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And police department are navigating emergency responses, they're working together hand in hand to safely navigate these flood waters.

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I think the importance that dave is stressing in terms of preparation is key,.

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But I also want everybody to be aware that when flooding does occur,.

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The strength of water and its unpredictability is significant.

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We're advocates of the "turn around,, don't drown" theory.

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We don't want people driving through flood waters because, as you can see from the pictures with recent flooding in baltimore, county,.

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The strength of water is capable of lifting cars and moving cars, and that can put people in a significant hazard.

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Okay. well, thank you both very much for bringing us this information.

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And people will keep an eye on what you're doing with those flood maps that are coming out next year.

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okay.. Thank you very much. thank you. and thank you for watching hello! baltimore county..

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We encourage you to connect with baltimore county government on all of our social media. Platforms., we'll see you next time. ( ♪♪♪ ).