Huntington Flood Plan

Summary

Like many communities in the Midwest, Huntington County, Indiana, has been experiencing an increase in the frequency and severity of flooding events. After seeing other communities develop flood response plans, the Huntington County Government worked with a consultant to create its own plan that could be applied to all the cities and towns within its jurisdiction. With the completed Huntington County Flood Response and Evacuation Plan, all local governments within the county are prepared to respond during a flood event and can take advantage of funding opportunities while flood insurance policyholders can receive discounts because of the actions the local government takes.

In the past 25 years, the City of Huntington has seen five of their top 10 highest recorded flooding events along the Little River. Additionally, the area has experienced an increase in low-moderate flood events. With no plan in place for responding to floods, the City of Huntington and Huntington County knew they needed to prepare.

While having a plan to respond to flooding is important, Huntington County also realized that having a plan could open new opportunities to prepare for flooding. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Community Rating System is an incentive program that encourages communities to exceed the minimum requirements of the National Flood Insurance Program. Communities that achieve a higher rating are eligible for grants to buy out properties in flood-prone areas and residents can receive policy discounts for flood insurance. For a community to increase its rating and have access to these benefits, a flood response plan is essential.

Huntington County started the planning process by looking at what their peers had done. The County reviewed a flood plan developed for Columbus, Indiana, and they decided to use it as a framework.

The County hired an engineering firm to assist in the plan’s development. The consultant was responsible for facilitating a committee made up of staff from the county, cities, and towns that work on flood planning and emergency management. The consultant also made sure that the plan framework would include a standard operating procedure that anyone could implement, even if they were not intimately involved in the creation of the plan. 

After the framework was established, the committee tasked the involved departments with specific assignments to investigate for the various jurisdictions. This information included historical data on flooding, response operations, emergency management procedures, and GIS mapmaking. Departments also determined what areas would be impacted by flooding at various stages and identified hotspots and low-lying areas of concern.

When going through the background information, each department examined their existing flood response plans and reported out what they could do during a flood. This process helped the committee determine who would be responsible for what while ensuring the response activities were synergistic instead of duplicative.

The committee used multiple federal services to develop their event detection and classification framework. These services include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service and the United States Geographical Survey’s stream gauges for monitoring. They also created custom alerts through these services to notify the appropriate managers when conditions reached different flood stages.

The committee then completed an inventory of resources that could be used for flooding events. They created a list of community and Red Cross shelters that people could access and made school buses available to transport residents to and from the flood shelter during certain flooding stages. They also created a contact list of all the necessary people that would be involved in a flooding event.

Once the committee had all the information, they created a flow chart with all the data for the decision-making process. The flow chart contains different action plans depending on the severity of the flood and the conditions that trigger each of the plans. Each plan includes a flow chart that provides processes to follow, who to contact, and what communications need to be sent out to the public. The action plans also include information for the planning stages, implementation during the flood event, and what to do after the event. There are also contingency plans built in for potential problems, including when certain routes need to be diverted and alternate shelter locations.

Funding

The development of the plan cost $25,934. The funding came from the County’s budget.

Timeline

The plan was developed in six months. Since the plan is a living document, it also has annual time frames for testing the plan and updating it as needed.

While the plan does not explicitly focus on equity and justice, some of the flood-prone areas are communities with lower incomes that may have difficulty responding to flooding events or affording non-mandatory flood insurance. With the plan in place, the County and the City and Town governments are better positioned to respond to these communities. For instance, the buses can make evacuations easier and more efficient while helping residents with limited mobility.

With the plan in place, Huntington County is eligible to apply for funding from FEMA for buyouts and additional flood insurance. Buyouts offer residents in the floodplain an opportunity to sell their house at a fair value and the flood insurance offers them additional financial protection from flood damages.