South Carolina: Flood & Recovery

Ongoing coverage of South Carolina's recovery from the flooding of 2015.What had been Lindsay Langdale's Columbia home October 3, 2015 was a flooded ruin the next day.This coverage is made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In October of 2015, South Carolina received rainfall in unprecedented amounts over just a few days time. By the time the rain began to slacken, the National Weather Service reported that the event had dumped more than two feet of water on the state. The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the subsequent flooding was the worst in 75 years.

SC Floodplain Managers Take on Special Requirements After the October Floods

South Carolina Public Radio

Published May 2, 2016 at 4:50 PM EDT

A Town Hall meeting for City of Columbia and Richland County residents in October 2015.

Richland County’s Andrea Bolling is South Carolina’s Floodplain Manager of the Year. The award highlights her work since the October flood as well as the efforts of Richland County and her colleagues at work in Floodplain Management across the state.

Andrea Bolling is the Floodplain Manager for Richland County. Last month, she was awarded Floodplain Manager of the Year by her colleagues in the South Carolina Association for Hazard Mitigation. After more than six months of taking on flood recovery efforts in hard-hit Richland County, Bolling says the award is an honor for her and for Richland County. South Carolina Public Radio’s Laura Hunsberger has more on the story.

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For a Floodplain Manager, one of the most important tools is the map of the 100-year floodplain. FEMA creates the floodplain map and identifies hazard areas: “Flood hazard areas identified on the Flood Insurance Rate Map are identified as a Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA). SFHA are defined as the area that will be inundated by the flood event having a 1-percent chance of being equaled or exceeded in any given year. The 1-percent annual chance flood is also referred to as the base flood or 100-year flood.” (From: http://www.fema.gov/flood-zones)

This year the City of Columbia, Richland County, and other counties throughout the state are in the preliminary phases for new floodplain maps. There have not been any changes to the floodplain mapping because of the thousand-year flood event, but the changes could impact the status of some residents whose property may or may not have been in the floodplain previously. Andrea Bolling, Floodplain Manager for Richland County, says the new maps are based on more accurate information: better topography as well as additional modeling and studies of the area.

The preliminary maps were released in April 2015 for an appeals period (Richland County had an open house in June 2015), and the maps and comments from the appeals are currently being evaluated by FEMA. Bolling predicts that at the earliest, the new maps will go into effect at the end of 2016.