FEMA's Map Underestimated North Carolina Flood Risk

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Many of have wondered, almost since day one, why Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) is doing flood risk analysis rather than NOAA (my first choice) or the U.S. Geological Survey (my second choice). 

An investigative report by the Washington Post shows FEMA's flood risk maps are grossly in error. An example is below.
FEMA's risk (left); insurance industry risk (right).
Washington Post. 
In addition to mistakenly leading people to believe they don't need flood insurance, a second injurious aspect of these maps was to make people who were very much at risk of flooding is to believe they were safe. This may explain why so many were caught completely off-guard when we were warning of "catastrophic" flooding in the region well ahead of the event. 

FEMA is another federal agency we would be better off without in its present form. It accomplishes its mission poorly, expects big praise for doing something routine, and spends huge amounts of money on the wrong things in the meantime. 

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