A Tool for Elevating Flood Mitigation Awareness in Your Community
In the roughly nine months since ASFPM launched the Reduce Flood Risk flood mitigation resource, the United States has endured a number of significant, large-scale flood events.
During a five-week period over the summer, there were so-called 1,000-year rainfall events in St. Louis, eastern Kentucky, southern Illinois, California’s Death Valley, and Dallas. Severe flooding in Mississippi knocked out Jackson’s troubled water supply for weeks, and an historic flood in Montana damaged roads, water and wastewater systems, and power lines and forced evacuations in Yellowstone National Park.
In the fall, Hurricane Fiona ravaged Puerto Rico before Hurricane Ian brought destruction to Florida and South Carolina. Ian became one of the most expensive hurricanes in U.S. history and the most deadly since Katrina. And, most recently, a series of atmospheric rivers deluged large areas of the California coast.
But while these major storms grab headlines and shine a light on the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, they are only part of the story that needs to be told if we are to raise flood risk awareness. Where it can rain, it can flood. And flooding doesn’t have to make the news to make life miserable and cost tens of thousands of dollars in damage to each home it enters.
As you work with property owners looking to make informed decisions around the actions they can take to protect their home, Reduce Flood Risk can help. This interactive website helps homeowners understand their flood risk and the specific steps they can take to better protect their most valuable assets.
To get started, individuals simply go to ReduceFloodRisk.org, answer a series of five simple questions, and receive a detailed list of mitigation options recommended to reduce flood risk for their specific property type. The curated results can be filtered and sorted by key attributes, such as cost, complexity, and level of required maintenance.
In addition to its decision-support engine, Reduce Flood Risk features a variety of resources to help property owners and renters better understand flood risk, flood insurance, financial assistance options, and who to contact with any questions they have about flood mitigation. The site is completely free and users do not need to create an account to gain access to the resources.
When it comes to flood events. It’s easy for homeowners to get overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem and think there is nothing they can do to protect themselves. Reduce Flood Risk aims to demystify flood mitigation for the general public.
With spring flooding not far off, consider adding ReduceFloodRisk.org to your outreach campaign. We’ve put together a complete toolkit that can be used to amplify your efforts to raise awareness of flood mitigation options in your community. In it you will find:
- A social media toolkit with draft posts and image options
- A brief video to include in your social media posts or presentations
- PowerPoint slides to use in relevant presentations
- Trifold brochure to print and bring to meetings or events
We encourage you to bookmark the entire toolkit so you’ll always have easy access to new resources as they become available at: ReduceFloodRisk.org/faq/outreach-toolkit.
Thanks for joining us in this important effort! Please don’t hesitate to contact Jenna Moran at jenna@floods.org if you have any suggestions for how we can continue to improve the site or help you in your outreach efforts.
