The plant's reactors are elevated about 20 feet above sea level, but roads needed to carry diesel fuel and other supplies to a shuttered plant would be under more than nine feet of water.īlack residents in South Florida would be three times more likely to be flooded, a higher rate than the rest of the population, according to an analysis by Tampa Bay Times data editor Langston Taylor. Air Force base and nuclear power plant would be among the critical facilities hit by the surge. When a powerful storm comes, "Nothing to do but sit there, and pray and wait."Ī U.S. Using an array of data including wind speeds and other atmospheric conditions during Irma, as well as topography and other features onshore, the National Hurricane Center modeled the depth and extent of flooding Irma would have produced had the center of the storm made landfall in Miami-Dade County. It's a particularly urgent threat for the low-lying southern end of the county, where fast-growing suburbs are squeezed between two national parks and a shrinking farming community. Instead, the storm swerved left and crossed the Lower Keys, sparing the crowded coast from the worst of its flooding.īut what if Irma had stayed its course? As seas rise, storm surge projections modeled by the National Hurricane Center suggest the scenario Haus feared could become dramatically worse. "This would have been the complete worst-case scenario for everything in South Dade. "It was clear that basically everything east of U.S.1 would be under nine feet of water, which includes my house," said Brian Haus, the University of Miami researcher who studies the damaging impacts from storm surge. 12, 2017.įive years ago, Hurricane Irma aimed its mighty force at Miami, putting the nation's seventh-most populated county in the crosshairs of one of the most powerful storms on record. Jean Chatelier walks down a street flooded by Hurricane Irma after retrieving his uniform from his house so he could return to work at a supermarket in Fort Myers, Fla., on Sept. The National Hurricane Center began testing surge forecasts in 2014 and issued the first official forecasts in 2017, the year Hurricane Irma slammed Florida and triggered the largest evacuation in the state's history. "That kind of repetitive shock loading is the kind of thing that causes a lot of structural failure." "Each time a wave hits, it's just a big spike," Haus said. When a hurricane makes landfall, winds powerful enough to rip a roof off a house push a wall of water onto shore. Unlike flood waters from rainfall or overflowing canals or rivers, storm surge also carries the power of wind, he said. "Every bit of sea level that we add to this just makes this kind of scenario worse," said Brian Haus, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, who studies the damaging power of storm surge. By 2080, when sea rise could reach more than three feet, flooding would engulf even more critical infrastructure, including hospitals and schools that often provide shelter. In all three regions, flooding from storm surge that once lingered along the coast travels miles farther inland and grows deeper. ABFE information does NOT affect Federal flood insurance rating or requirements.The analysis used three landmark hurricanes - Sandy, Isabel, and Irma - as benchmarks to understand how the impacts of storm surge could grow. (Note: only effective FIRM and coastal Advisory Base Flood Elevation (ABFE) information are available for this county. Preliminary FIS Report: Volume 1 & Volume 2 Preliminary FIS Report: Volume 1, Volume 2, & Volume 3 Preliminary FIS Report: Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, & Volume 5Įffective FIS Report: Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, Volume 5, & Volume 6Įffective FIS Report: Volume 1 & Volume 2 Use the FAQ to get answers to frequently asked questions about preliminary FIRMs, vertical datums, and more. Online tutorials are available from FEMA to provide assistance. For some communities, revised preliminary FIRM information has been released and is incorporated into the viewing options listed below. Users can look up property-specific information using the “What Is My Base Flood Elevation (BFE)?” Address Lookup Tool, use the community map viewers listed below (see the Preliminary FIRM Viewer User Guide), or get PDF map panels, Flood Insurance Study (FIS) reports, and GIS data via FEMA’s Flood Map Service Center. Preliminary and revised preliminary Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) information is made available through this page as it is released.
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