 The American playwright Robert Paul Smith once wrote that people who don't have nightmares don't have dreams. In a sense disaster planning combines both nightmares and dreams. The nightmare of catastrophic events and the dream of mitigating the impact of those events. Hello, I'm Ken Stewart and on today's program we'll be examining the nightmarish experience of Franklin, Virginia, where in 1999 a hurricane dumped sufficient rain across the community to put the entire downtown underwater. Franklin is a city of about 8,000 people. It's located about 45 minutes southwest of Hampton Roads, one of the busiest ports at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. We'll be viewing a case study of the event prepared by the Virginia Beach Fire Department. The study will open with dramatic flood footage, quotations from Franklin residents and background information on Hurricane Floyd. In part two, community officials will describe their mitigation efforts after the fling, and then finally we'll hear about the lessons learned from the disaster. After the presentation, we'll return here to the studio to discuss the incident with several panel members and to summarize current flood mitigation and insurance programs available through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. My father remembers the 1944, which was five years before I was even born, and the water never even reached Main Street, and that was the most dramatic flood that the city had ever had. So having nothing on Main Street going to 8 feet of water on Main Street was just beyond anyone's comprehension. It is a real sick feeling, I guess like you lost one of your best friends, kind of feeling. I was amazed though, at 7 o'clock that evening I was standing with a reporter here at Main Street, Main and 2nd Avenue, it was dry as a bone, no indication, and the water came up so fast it was just hard to believe, couldn't imagine it. We were always trying to plan for the worst, but no one ever thought that we would have such a situation as the flood to deal with. It felt like yes, because this had been my world for like 30 years. I've been here in the store, same place. Unbelievable, couldn't believe it, it's not happening, this can't be happening. During mid-September of 1999, Hurricane Floyd, a Category 1 minimal hurricane, tracked over the Wakefield area. This storm tracked across the area similar to Hurricane Donna in September of 1960, and Hurricane Charlie in August of 1986. The barometric pressure in Norfolk, Virginia was the fourth lowest for hurricanes last century, according to the National Weather Service. Well, barometric pressure, at least the barometric pressure of a hurricane relative to the surroundings determines in many instances how strong the winds are. The lower the barometric pressure of the center of a hurricane, general speaking, the more intense the hurricane is, the stronger the winds are. And ultimately, the impacts from things like wind and storm surge and perhaps even rain are going to be worsened as a result. I think probably the most unique aspect of what happened with Floyd was the breadth of the heavy rainfall. There is an area that was close to 80 miles wide and probably 200 miles long where six inches or more of rain fell. And that's just an enormous amount of rain over an enormous area. And a lot of times, even though hurricanes will produce copious rains and sometimes in excess of 20 inches, most of the time the heaviest rains focused on a rather narrow band. In this case, it was focused over a very wide area. And I think meteorologically, at least for this area anyway, that was certainly unique to Floyd. The flooding that occurred with Floyd was very widespread. It was very much unlike a typical flash flood situation which focuses on a relatively narrow area. In this instance, two-thirds of the eastern half of Virginia was affected by not only flash flooding, but in many cases river flooding. And that flooding cut off roads and in fact, our office was cut off on all sides by flooding. To the east, we were cut off by flooding in two places to the north. The one way out was cut off by flooding. The main route that comes by the office was cut off to the west by a washout. And the main highway that comes by here into the south, all the roads were also flooded. So for approximately a 24-hour period, the office here was isolated. And those people that were working had to keep working because nobody could get in or out. Well, I think some of the first obstacles that we faced with that morning when we first were alerted and I came down at six in the morning and we saw all the water and all of our services were eliminated. We had no EMS. We had no police. We had no 911, which was very scary, had no communications. I think that was our first and foremost challenge was to find a way to establish some kind of communications for safety sake. We had to set up a perimeter right away to protect people from getting into the water and then protect those businesses that people tried to go downtown in the war. So there was a real safety factor. Another issue that we dealt with right away was whether it was hazardous material in the water. Again, another safety issue. So we had to deal with all of that. The police got a perimeter set up. The National Guard came in right away. The state police came on board and we were able to augment our staff with those people to protect the citizens from getting into the water as we all faced a period of shock as to exactly what would be next. Well, first of all, when you get there, it's pretty overwhelming. You got a whole downtown environment, probably seven to 10 square blocks covered in several feet of water with all kinds of drums, propane tanks, tractor trailers all submerged. Upon your arrival, it's really hard to get a game plan together at the beginning to figure out what you're going to do. It takes some forethought and some planning to just line up and determine what your course of action is going to be. What we did the first day when we arrived is simply to go out and first thing we did is shut off all the propane tanks because they were a significant hazard to us. And once we got those shut off, then we started to address some of the floating drums and whatnot that were in the area. Janet's gifts and collectibles was flooded to the ceiling. Well, the water covered the top of the columns that came to the Blue Dental work here at the highest point. About three o'clock the afternoon before, it was about halfway the door and it steady rose. We came down about three o'clock in the morning and it was up close to the top of the door and then the next morning it went to the dental work. Janet and her husband used their own lice savings to repair the flood damage and bring their business back to what it was before Floyd. Nothing like that had ever happened in my life before. You know, I felt like I had just lost my whole world. My world had just washed over. Well, I've been here like 30-something years and nothing like that. We never had water even standing in the yard. We'd seen water running in the streets in the gullies, but never seen water standing in the yard before. And we'd had a lot of big rains and a lot of wind and a lot of storms, but nothing like this. Well, we lost basically all of it was damaged, terrible. And we did a lot of washing and cleaning and repainting and just worked at it and refinished our cabinets and all. They came with dump trucks and hauled most of it away. But some of it we could salvage and we're selling it for hair price and have been selling it for hair price for over a year. The flood actually came in a couple of stages around here with the amount of drainage water that backed up, creating floods. I was at home that night, the night before the hurricane actually hit, home with the family. And about a foot of water came into my home and evacuation of that neighborhood at the time. Then the following afternoon, that next morning I came down to work the station that morning, going out, rescuing anything from floating propane tanks to there were some women in labor out there that were needing some assistance. And when the hurricane actually came in around noon approximately, everyone got the call to come in the station and hunker down here for a couple of hours till it blew over. Well, some of the major obstacles were of course that we lost all telephone communications to the city and surrounding areas, which was a tremendous obstacle for us to overcome. We didn't really have any cell phone usage to fall back on because we had limited coverage here in the city as well as in Southampton and Olive White. So we relied a lot on the ham radio operators to continuously update the state on our condition and to also file our situation reports. Probably the two most obvious obstacles we had to overcome was the lack of manpower personnel to handle the amount of people, the calls that we were experiencing due to the flood and the hazardous material incidents. We received a tremendous amount of help from the state levels, FEMA and from local jurisdictions City of South Virginia Beach, Norfolk, the military bases and the local volunteer organizations in the area. Well, it took several days. For example, as the water started to recede, more drums would appear, tractor trailers that were submerged that had, for example, we had one that had 7,000 gallons of hydraulic fluid in it. It was completely under water. As the water went down, we found that the trailer had developed a leak and was leaking about three gallons a minute of hydraulic fluid. And we just spent several days out there dealing with the problems as a result of this. Another thing that occurred is the propane tanks, once they get wet and the packing gets wet in the valve, as that dries out, it shrinks and all those started to leak days after the flood waters had dissipated. We set up an operations center immediately and we had to evacuate downtown. So we set it up in Hunterdale at the fire department there. And then all of a sudden, other outset agencies started coming in. The state arrived quickly. I'll always remember George Forsman showing up from the Department of Emergency Services. And his first comment to me was, we are here to stay with you until this disaster is over with. And they were as good as their word. They brought in resources and expertise. Soon after that came the federal folks, FEMA, and the decor of engineers. But what really was a surprise was all of a sudden the volunteer people from all over from the different fire departments, EMS people and police departments from other municipalities started coming. And that was something we hadn't expected or counted on and which turned out to be a real blessing because it would just added manpower to our stressed manpower who were going around the clock and allowed our people to get a rest. I'll remember forever one of the first nights, I guess it was the third or fourth night into it, we had moved our briefing center from outside at the fire department Hunterdale to the community college. And at a six o'clock briefing, I noticed there was someone I didn't know, recognized in a white pressed shirt with all the fire insignias. And I asked Dan Eggleston, our chief, who this person was, and he said, well, this is a chief from Virginia Beach. And he's come out to be our watch commander tonight so our people can get a rest. And I was just awed and amazed by that. And not only did he come, but he brought his whole cadre of people that took over. And they literally took over the operation of our emergency services for the city while we all went home and got some rest. And I just thought that is something that we'd never counted on that. And they just showed up and they said, they didn't come and we didn't have to call. They called and said, you know, we're coming, we're here to help. And it was Virginia Beach, it was Norfolk, it was Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Williamsburg, James City County, everyone in our region were here to help. Employee came and sent six police officers and cars because we had no radios so that they could monitor our streets for us while our police officers took a break. I worked about the first 48 hours. And then as flood waters continued to rise, my home went on again. And that's when I had to take a break and take care of the family for a little bit. Some of the things we did that we did so well was to get the word out for our first meeting that we held on that Sunday. We just used flyers and leaflets and used people to distribute because we had no method of communications. The television people and the radio people were very, the news were very good to us by being able to get things out on the news. Right now we would probably handle things the same. One of the fortunate things that we have is we have a small geographic area. So when we lost 9-1-1, we immediately set up patrols between fire, EMS and police to notify the citizens and to let them know if they did need assistance that a police officer or fire truck or an ambulance would be in the area that they could flag down. But we are increasing our communications abilities right now with establishing a little stronger partnership with the ham radio operators. We'll be more proactive today than what we were before the flood. We're looking at things in a totally different manner as far as prevention. The fire prevention plans will have more input into any building construction going on. The proactive way is the way to look at a disaster of this nature. As far as the reactiveness, the way we react in the timely manner and with the personnel that we had available to us and the resources, I wouldn't change a thing. I think it went relatively well. Yeah, this was a very extraordinary event. For example, we had one afternoon out there about seven days into the incident where in one afternoon we ran more hazmat-type scenarios than most teams will run in a year. We had three or four propane tanks that started to leak. We had to drill an overturned tank truck that was leaking and we needed to get it offloaded as well as several other small events such as surveying a store that sold pool chemicals that we needed to go in and evaluate before we could let the owners back in. So there was just a tremendous amount of things that had to be done out there and a lot of them in a very compressed period of time. Of course we had a major hazardous material situation to deal with. We have a petroleum facility located in town here that was leaking out gasoline and fuel oil products as well as some other facilities that had pesticides and herbicides. In addition, we have two railways that run through the city and we had a train engine abandoned right behind the public safety building that was left running for three or four days. So we had that to contend with as well as a peanut warehouse that was flooded and it caused the fermentation to evolve in the peanuts which at the time we thought was gonna cause a fire in the warehouse. So we had that problem to deal with as well as the hazardous materials problem. Well we actually could gain access to one portion of the warehouse and the reentry teams discovered this problem so we were able to catch it early and we immediately went in and ventilated the structure and maintained a watch to prevent any occurrences of fires and so forth. So we felt like we caught it very early to prevent a catastrophic fire in the downtown area. At the point, the next day when daylight came and we could really see what we were dealing with and take in mind the river was still rising at this point, we had floating LP gas tanks, fuel tanks, diesel fuel tanks. Even at one point we had a floating 40 foot gasoline tanker which later turned out it was empty, thank the Lord. It had floated down on Main Street. These, all of these things were very hectic. It was very unsecure feeling for the workers in the field because they didn't know what they were dealing with. It was empty, whether it was full, where they were lying, what area, every corner you turn with the boats you saw something different. You saw LP gas tanks as I said. At this point, which were in the next day of the flooding, I believe the 18th or 19th in that date range, the state came in and started assistance with the hazmat. At that point we started tagging the full cylinders, empty cylinders, full tanks and rendezvousing all of this equipment that we could get for as tanks and 55 gallon drums to a centralized location and haul away. It took a long and hard effort on the hazardous material aspect of this operation and this went on for the entire time of the flooding and even after the flooding, the water had receded. We had no idea how dangerous what was in the water would be. It was a real unknown. The hazmat people from the state came in and took control of that real quickly and they worked with the city to keep us informed on as to what their progress would be, what they needed to do and what the safety hazards were to protect our citizens. They organized the drum retrieval, which we had over 500 drums that had to be retrieved all the way from fuel oil to floating natural gas tanks, propane tanks and the like. And it just lumber, you name it, it was in the water. And they just did a great job to be able to make sure that we were kept in the loop. I think one of the things that we really experienced that was helpful to us, it was a tremendous sharing of information. We had meetings daily on what was gonna happen each day, what the plan would be, but each of the state agencies from hazardous materials to all the other services would brief our city staff and it was a hand in glove thing. It was a great team effort. So we could do what we could do and then they would do what their profession called for them to do. That's the Hampton Roads Regional Flag and I wear that every day with great pride and gratitude. This Hampton Roads area all the way from James City County out to Franklin and all the south side of Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and Norfolk have all come together under a regional approach for the Hampton Roads area or the Hampton Roads region. A flag was developed by a senior in high school that I think is just to epitomize as what the area is all about. The reason it's so important to me is because we were blessed by the regional effort to help us in our disaster. We found out very quickly that there are disasters that succeed our own capacity either financial or manpower wise and we could never have recovered to the extent that we had had it not been for regional support who came to our aid right away. We found out that having neighbors that are good neighbors is what it's all about and that's what's made the difference to our recovery. You know, none of us expected or even thought that something like that that could happen here. That'd be my first thing, it can happen and it can happen anywhere. And second thing was have flood insurance. And the third thing is, you know, do what you can to prepare for emergencies ahead of time because you never know when they're gonna strike. We learned several things as a result of spending a few weeks out there taking care of this cleanup. First of all, it's important to get to know the people who you're gonna work with before the emergency or the incident occurs. We went into Franklin knowing who the fire chief was, who the police chief was and several of the other key players and we didn't have that two days of getting to know who's who and getting ramped up. We were ready to go when we arrived there the first afternoon of the flood. So that's very important. Also, we were there for over two weeks and as a result of that, you can lose focus or actually never have focus on what you're doing. So during the first day, we developed a strategic goals plan to figure out where we wanted to be at the end of all of this. And each day we would provide at the end of the day a status report as well as an upcoming work plan for the following day. And we provided that to the Unified Command Group at a six o'clock briefing every evening. Be prepared, be open-minded and mutual aid agreements is one of the best things that is since bought on bread. When you can get this automatic help coming in automatically and not have to go through a lot of red tape, it is one of the products that we have come up with in a long time. Well, my advice would be to participate very much in the mitigation efforts that are offered through the state and local governments and to also continuously plan and train on your plan to be prepared for anything. It should, the plan should be an all hazard plan, not just focused on one particular disaster, but try to develop your plans to, so it can be applied to across the board to most any kind of hazard. And always keep your eye on the ball, inspect the unexpected. Okay, if I was gonna give some advice to any other agency that would have a disaster and have to work with other agencies coming in, outside agencies to help them out, work together, be open-minded about it, and really accept the help that everyone's there to offer. Because everybody played an important role in it, and we use a lot of different ideas to help us get through this. What I've learned from this is that there is more impact on the logistical side for the whole organization as well as the whole city to make sure that things are coming in and that they're accurately tracked. Because with FINGA's rules and regulations that they put in place for what you get paid for and what you won't get paid for, if you don't have the documentation to support that, then more than likely they're not gonna fund those replacement costs. If anybody'd like more information on what we did out there as the Department of Emergency Management, you can contact me. My telephone number is 757-363-3891. I also have an email address of R-UnderScore-Haring-H-A-R-I-N-G at mindspring.com. One of the things that we've learned is that being prepared in advance has a great deal of merit. We now have a disaster recovery task force that we have put together as a result of this that taps into every civic organization, every social organization to piece together all the necessary pieces that we now have discovered were needed, whether it's housing, whether it's food, whether it's clothes, whether it's distribution centers, whether it's rescue, whether it's a variety of things. We now have a task force that have identified those players so that when another disaster occurs, we already have key people in place. And I think that's one of the best things that civic leaders can do is to just anticipate, you may never know what the disaster will be, but put together a committee or commission that would be already in place. So all you have to do is to let the siren go and everybody knows it's time to come together. And each has its function. You've already ironed out where the overlaps are so that each person or each organization knows his vital role into the recovery process. The floodwater stayed up for a period of nine days. The response and recovery report issued by the city of Franklin estimated the average loss of revenue due to the effects of Hurricane Floyd were as follows. The average loss of revenue per business was $72,100, resulting in $13.99 million. The average repair cost per building is estimated at $109,159, for a total of $19.9 million. Demolitions have resulted in the removal of $3.5 million in private property improvements. Equipment and inventory damages are estimated at $30.88 million. Only 8% of the losses were covered by insurance. 1,290 jobs were affected in the downtown district, along with another 2,000 at international paper. To make up the city's lost revenue of the Beelow Shopping Center alone, a 2.5 to 3 cent increase in city taxes would be required. Lost wages are estimated at $7.3 million. Repair costs for the sewer treatment facility was $1.2 million. Construction and rehab costs for City Hall and the public safety building are estimated at $8 million. Yes, my wife gave me that for Christmas. We thought we ought to remember exactly what we've been through in 1999, and this was the high water mark for the flood level here at my office. And I'm two feet above the center line of the main street in Franklin, and we still had four feet of water in our building just like everyone else did. But this is just something to remind everybody of what we've been through, but more importantly, what we've recovered to become. Everything within our power to harness all the resources that we could. I can see that out there in the city. You might have a neighborhood that might pull together, but when it came to an entire town going under water like it did, it took the bond of the people to make it come back together. It's like the old television show of Danny Griffith Mayberry. Everyone knows everyone else's affairs. Nothing really is secretive in Franklin. And when one feels pain, the whole community feels pain. But when you have a tragic situation such as a devastating flood, Franklin pulls together as one big community and that's what makes it so strong. How does a community rebound from such incredible odds? The strength, spirit, and commitment of this community have come together to beat the storm, to pick up the pieces and move ahead, to turn this test of each other into an experience of patience and caring. What is it that makes Franklin, Virginia such a great place to live? We're a small town close to the large city, so we're close to the proximity of all the things that people would like, shopping, cultural, and civic events, and yet we have a wonderful small town atmosphere to come home to live and enjoy and to raise our families. Our special thanks to the production unit from the Virginia Beach Fire Department for putting that video together for us today. We're joined in the studio now by Stephanie Nixon from FEMA Region III, Cecilia Rosenberg from the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration, Michelle Pope, who is Mitigation Project Coordinator for the Virginia Department of Emergency Services, and by Dan Sullivan, also from the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration. Welcome, folks. Nice to have you with us today. Thank you. Now, we just got done looking at this horrific flood in this community. Do floods come as a surprise? Floods are not a surprise. They can happen anytime, anywhere. The key is knowing your risk factor, and if you live or have a business that is situated in a special flood hazard area, it's important that you know what the risk is, and it's also important that that community participate in the National Flood Insurance Program, having ordinance for regulating development in the floodplain. So we can plan for floods. Is that what we're saying? Definitely. Definitely you can plan for floods. There are maps that are already put together, flood hazard maps that are put together by FEMA. Most communities already have those. Some areas, unfortunately, are not mapped at this point, but for the most part, the areas that need it the most are already mapped, and you can look to see if you're building your property, your business is in one of these areas, and you can start to plan accordingly for what you need to do. Okay, so now we look at the map. The folks in the video referred to a 1940 flood, and they said, wow, gosh, remember, I was up to here, but it wasn't up to here. So what happened? What happens between 1940, in this case, and 1999? Well, what happens is in the watershed itself, the development that takes place as a natural part of communities growing and changing, little by little, alters the scientific basis in the hydrology and hydraulics of the watershed, and what happens is, even though we as FEMA do the flood maps at a given point in time with certain scientific assumptions, every day that there's new development that changes the characteristics of the flood plains, that changes the mapping of the flood, and so one of the things that a community should do, as good as our maps are, is to still check into the development patterns and other things going on in the watershed that could affect the flood boundaries. This sounds like an ongoing planning issue. Absolutely, in many ways it is, and it's long, again, I can't stress this enough, as long as the community, one, participates in the National Flood Insurance Program, has that flood plain ordinance, and also, currently, we now have 322 planning that we're using also to better prepare a community for development in the flood plain. Now, what's included in 322 planning? 322 planning is the new Disaster Mitigation Act 2000, has come up with a new planning regulation, not only for states to have to deal with, but also for all communities that want to participate in any mitigation funding sources, either prior to or after a disaster, but what this planning will help you do is, it helps you look at your community as a whole, in every different hazard as a whole, in your community, and look at what they may or may not affect, not only numbers-wise, but also lives, property, and contents-wise. You may be surprised that your specific municipal building that holds all of your critical paperwork may be in a flood plain, and you never knew, so that's something that it's gonna help in the long run with every community, and I can't stress enough how much these plans, even though they may be time-consuming, and they may take a lot of effort and work on everybody's part in the community, it really is gonna help so much more in the long run, it will really help with the planning process. Cecilia? And this is, the Section 322 pertains to the act within the paragraph within the Disaster Mitigation Act, but the significance of this, as Michelle said, it's also significant because it's the first legislation we've had that stresses pre-disaster planning. Oftentimes we get into the situation after disaster to get post-disaster hazard mitigation grant money to do a plan. What this does is it brings the whole planning process up front ahead of the disaster, where it longs, it gives communities and states the time in the non-disaster timeframe to set its own priorities, look at its risks and look at what's vulnerable because, as Michelle and Stephanie said, it is a time-consuming process, but it will serve you as a community for a long, long time and the basis for many decisions from that. Now, Dan, we've heard reference to the flood insurance here, where we're still kind of pre-disaster, I think we're still kind of looking at that angle. Does insurance get mentioned at this point when we're doing this early planning? Do we start thinking insurance? Because one of the things that Nancy Drake, I believe the business owner in the videotape said was, it can happen anywhere. And one of the lessons learned that she pointed out was by-flood insurance. I think another point that Cecilia and Stephanie made a little bit earlier was that the nature of the flood hazard area changed from the 1940 flood and we mapped according to that so that areas that we thought were relatively safe got flooded. So, yes, insurance is an essential planning and mitigation tool. You've got to look at that. Good strong point. Now, what I like to do is I kind of look at the issue. We're looking at planting. We've got our map. We're identifying where the potential flood is. We're looking at potential insurance issues, but are there things that could be done by the community before a flood that might help out reduce either the risk or the damage? What are some of the things that a community might look at before a flood? Regulating development. Again, having that floodplain ordinance that regulates development in the floodplain, stating whether a building must be above the base flood elevation or maybe even having a freeboard that increases that and stating that that building must be two feet above the base flood elevation is protection and also puts you in a third risk category, I believe, for flood insurance. And again, all this works together and that is again, planning and a part of preparation for a community to help mitigate against any future flood laws. So, you would look at your floodplain map, kind of figure out where this flood's level to be and then you begin looking at development issues within that. Absolutely. I think we've got the Franklin map up now and we're looking at the, and this is the interesting part and I think Cecilia, this goes back to what you had talked about earlier. The green part was, I guess, the 1940 floodplain. The pink part was after the 1999 flood. That's a big difference. And so I think what I'm hearing us say here is, and we can see that the entire downtown area there in the upper left, and this is not a criticism of Franklin or any of the communities, if a community looked at a map like this, I think what we're saying is, if you plan, you can address those issues, Cecilia? Yes, definitely and possibly at the same time you wanna look at, as a community, you may wanna look at your existing properties that are in the floodplain to see what can be done, sort of in a triage method. And then look at the future of growth and development. There's, community planners have tools at their disposal. They give them the authority to work with the citizens to decide how to use that land and they can make changes. They have legal authority in most cases to look at how they're going to regulate or develop that land. And it's a wonderful tool to have the flood mapping that shows exactly, pair that up with your local growth and development patterns to see what you can do. So if we're looking at new growth, we can kinda regulate what the buildings look like, how they're built, maybe how many buildings are built. What do you do with existing buildings? Well, every time there's anything considered substantial damage because of either flood or anything along those lines, natural disaster, if you are part of the National Flood Insurance Program, you do have to build your structure back to the new code according to the National Flood Insurance Program, which means that if you had a substantially damaged house and you wanted to rebuild your house or make it livable again, you would have to elevate your house and make it to the point where you could live in it at the current code standard. That's one way that a community can enforce that, but that's still after the fact. But there's always the potential now with the new pre-disaster mitigation funding source that communities can look in their area and do the triage method, as Cecilia said, and see which ones need it the most. Which buildings, which houses, do they need to be flood proof? Do they need to be just totally taken away and demolished? Could they just be elevated with that, make the problem a little less? There's always things that you can be looking at, but planning is the number one. If you don't have a plan, you don't know what you need to do, planning is the key. Now, I suspect a lot of folks have seen instances where particularly after the Midwestern floods a few years ago, whole communities got picked up and moved up the hill. That sounds a little drastic, but is that viable in some cases? Is that what you have to do if the community is that much at risk? I'm gonna throw that open to anybody who wants to answer it. After the Midwest flood, I think the poster child for that was Valmyre, Illinois, and that's at the end of the spectrum. But on the other end of the spectrum, there's a lot of smaller things, particularly that businesses can do, to keep the business viable after a flood event, such as elevating utilities. Or even as Stephanie and or Michelle mentioned before, moving critical documents just from the basement up to the attic is something that can be done in just a few minutes, costs no money, but after a flood, you'll be glad that you did that. There's a lot of simple things and then things in between, things that you can do to openings in the building to create a barrier to the floodwater similar to a levy on a large scale, but you can do to buildings on a small scale. I would say it's the exception of moving to move an entire community. There's a lot of social implications to that as well as funding and the physical, logistical concerns over that. A good point, we're going from the extreme of picking up the whole community down to very simple things like getting stuff out of the basement. So it's up out of the floodwaters. But again, it sounds to me like if you don't plan, you can't figure out any of this. You won't even know what buildings to look at. That's the beauty of the planning process. It's a systematic way of looking at your hazards and overlaying that on top of what the community's goals are for themselves in terms of how they grow and change to determine a very unique approach or strategy for reducing losses, not just from floods, but from any hazards. And as was discussed with the new Disaster Mitigation Act planning requirements, the requirements are there to really reinforce a very basic concept, which is looking at the nature of your problem, determining through that risk assessment process exactly what kind of hazard and problems you have, then devising strategies to reduce those risks and then going back and seeing how that worked and obtaining the resources from the state and the federal government and the agencies and private sector to make it happen. And then revisiting that all over again, making sure it stays current. So this is not a once and done. Oh no. This is ongoing. Continuously ongoing. Okay. So we're ongoing. We're kind of looking at this mitigation. A lot of folks here mitigation and they go, okay, that's a really big word. Let's get a basic definition of mitigation. What are we talking about with mitigation? Primarily to lessen the impact. We know what's going to happen. We know floods are going to occur. What can we do to help lessen that impact, to help protect our lives and our property? Moreover, what else can we do? Again, as Cecilia said, are we raising buildings? Are we moving away from the floodplain? Those are the types of measures that we want to do. So mitigation is a result of planning. Or is planning a result of mitigation? I said chicken and the egg. But what we're looking at here is, what's the relationship between mitigation and planning? In the past, a lot of communities do mitigation, have done mitigation in the post disaster, in response to a very extreme event, something that's very emotional personally and to the community as a whole. And the projects that come out of that are usually very viable. However, by taking that step backwards, before the disaster, without all that emotional and pressing needs going on, you have, it gives you the time to look at a more comprehensive way of looking at your community, of bringing in other communities outside of yours and maybe a regional approach or in dealing, getting more resources to help you. It really is, to every community's benefit, to take that time upfront to do that. Because you'll find you'll have more time to gather the information. You'll find that you have more time to get the resources to help you. And you come up with a better product instead of projects because they are the result of a public process, a community process where you've taken the time to meet with the community, find out what the goals are and probably just place priority on those things that the community wants to fix first. It's just a stronger process. And one thing not to do is to just assume that it won't happen, it can happen here to underestimate the flood risk because we know that it can happen. And another thing that we can allow to happen is just to assume, well, the federal government will come in afterwards and help us pick up the pieces in terms of disaster relief. And there are lots of reasons why that's just not the way to go. Well, I'm glad you brought that up because the next question that I would wanna ask is does everybody come back from the flood? We saw some really terrific interviews with folks who had businesses, who said, well, we've never had water and the whole place was under water and we had great shots of them cutting the ribbon, we're opening, but the one couple completely ate up all their life savings to open the store again. They obviously made a commitment to the community. Does everybody come back from one of these? What kind of economic impact would something like this have on a community? A lot of times, businesses who are marginally profitable before a disaster, that that disaster was enough to push it over the edge. A lot of times, history has shown that it just depends on the pre-disaster condition of that business or even community. A disaster can do different things depending on the pre-disaster status. We had talked, Michelle, off camera about the fact that some homes after a flood just really aren't viable. So what do we do? We in Franklin specifically had many homes that were in the flood plain that were very low income, either rental homes or just homes that people had purchased over the years. A lot of homes that were great grandma's house who passed on to grandma, to mom, to now it's owned by Auntie Susie Q. I mean, it's somebody that's gone through and a lot of times they don't even have the paperwork to follow up on these things. The flood plain seems to be an attractant for people who can buy cheap land. So these houses usually end up in what we call the hazard mitigation grant program, assuming that the people are willing to sell these homes. The problem that we ran into in Franklin is it was very difficult to find replacement housing for either these renters who were renting at standards that you cannot find anywhere either in that area or in any other area or people who haven't paid mortgages in over 100 years because it's been owned by the family for over 200 years. So that was the biggest thing that we came up with, especially in the flood plain in Franklin, having to deal with that and finding these people new places to live affordably at what they could handle. But that's something that the community with planning could look into and realize what the economic statuses of the people that are in the flood plains or in whatever hazard that they have so that they can plan accordingly just in case something does happen down the road, what can we do with the 50 people that are living in these maybe not substandard housing but just very low income housing? What can we do with these people when they can't live in these houses anymore and they have to be demolished? So we've talked about the fact that it's the viability of the business beforehand. It's the age and condition of the housing, the location, the income. Dan, we've got a couple of ways to resolve this. There's loans, there's insurance. What can we do here? What are some of the pros and cons here? We recently looked, the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration recently looked at the cost of repaying a disaster loan and we compared that with the cost of buying flood insurance. And we found that it's really no, it's a no-brainer. The monthly cost on average to repay a disaster loan, and this is each and every month is over $300. So every month someone is writing a check for more than $300 to repay their disaster loan for about $50,000. The average premium under the National Flood Insurance Program is a little more than $300. So really it's no comparison. And that's for a year. Once a year, writing that check to keep yourself covered versus paying month after month after month for whatever term the loan is. And the irony is that once a person does qualify for a disaster loan, they still have to buy flood insurance as a condition for that loan. So they're gonna write an extra check every month. That's right. You're gonna write that anyway. So who gets flood insurance? People who live in the flood zone? Anyone, as long as the community is in good standing and participating in the National Flood Insurance Program, flood insurance is made available to them. And I just wanna add one more thing. With the city of Franklin, when the flood happened in 1999, there were 25 flood insurance policies. Since this has happened, it's increased by 175. So they have approximately today 200, at least 200 policies. Within Franklin. Within the city of Franklin. So they have learned. Planning. If we know we're in the flood plain, we know we have to do things. Let people know you can get insurance. Part of planning is education. And by letting people know that regardless of whether they're in the designated flood zone on the map, as long as you're closer or even if you're a mile away on top of a hill, anyone can buy flood insurance. The premium is based on the risk. It's on rate. So the lower the probability of being hit by that flood, the lower your premium will be. Now, in closing out here, I understand that there are some new resources available for states and communities to help them plan. Cecilia, what are some of those? Yes, in response to the Disaster Mitigation Act and some of the regulations that were published earlier this year, we are publishing a series of mitigation planning how-to guides, two of which are available, the first two are getting started, which is building support for the planning process and understanding your risks, which is identifying hazards and estimating losses. Those are the first two stages of what we have defined as a four-stage planning process. So those two documents are out in the FEMA warehouse in hard copy and CD. We also have mitigation planning workshops that FEMA has developed for states to work with local communities to get the community started in the planning process. And we've also have a lot of information on our website at FEMA.gov that will also allow people to understand as we're developing products daily, monthly. The last two of these how-to guides will be out by the end of this year and that will enable communities to work through the process in a very step-by-step fashion. All right, so we have some good help here available for planning and mitigation and locking those two together. Last question, Dan, who do I call to get flood insurance? There's an 800 number that we can refer people to from our website and actually, if anyone is interested in getting flood insurance, they can contact their insurance agent. And if the insurance agent needs technical assistance, we can provide that to them through our website. So you don't need to be without. That's right. We've been talking today about a very particular type of disaster. And the good news is the help is there. More good news, you have to go and get it, but it's readily available. If you're looking for further information, we recommend that you check out the website at www.fema.gov that will get you into the mitigation and flood insurance menus. There is an incredible amount of information available there. And much of it is on CD and hard copy, and you can get ahold of it. I wanna thank our panelists for being with us today. And I guess closing as the folks in the video said is, check your flood insurance cause you never know when you're gonna need it. Thanks for joining us today.