Southwest Florida residents living here in November 2022 know how Category 4 Hurricane Ian altered the entire community — with impacts still being addressed today.
Low-lying coastal areas were inundated with storm surge surpassing 12 feet — sending once sturdy residential homes floating down submerged streets. Inland neighborhoods were ravaged by wind gusts upward of 140 miles per hour, causing any sedentary object — from coconuts to truck beds — to become lethal projectiles, followed by nearly two weeks without power (more than 250,000 residents in Cape Coral alone).
The community surrounding Mullock Creek in south Lee County — a low-lying coastal preserve vital to the watershed for surrounding areas such as Estero and San Carlos Park — experienced similar impacts.
According to the National Hurricane Center tropical cyclone report for Hurricane Ian, Mullock Creek Preserve and surrounding areas were submerged in more than 8 feet of water.
To address this, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) updated the emergency flood maps for residents and property owners surrounding the preserve, nearly four years after Ian’s landfall. The alterations are slated to take effect this summer.
But there’s a common misconception regarding these maps and why they are altered — one Donald Duke, Ph.D., a Florida Gulf Coast University professor in the Department of Ecology and Environmental Studies, said property owners in all areas need to remain privy to.
“It’s a mistake to think of these maps as identifying this area is prone to flooding, in that area it’s safe from flooding,” Duke said. “That’s just not so.”
Instead, Duke said the maps are drawn "probabilistically" and that, year-after-year, nearly half of the flood insurance claims are filed outside designated flood zones.
“It’s the best estimate based on the information we have from the past about flows and about changes that we’ve seen in watershed,” Duke said.
Duke said the process is largely driven by FEMA’s program, which funds states. States then pass those funds to municipalities. He also said that the voluntary Community Rating System (CRS) helps track actions taken by communities to mitigate flood risk.
By undertaking these activities, communities are awarded points. Based on the number of points a community earns, it is placed in one of 10 CRS classes. Each class determines how much of an insurance premium discount a community receives, ranging from 5% to 45%.
Duke also said the maps are a way for the insurance industry to base rates for certain areas, determine which properties are required to carry flood insurance, and set building codes.
“It’s more [of a] likelihood that some flood will happen, then you pay more for it, just as a driver who has demonstrated that they have more accidents than someone else will pay more for auto insurance,” Duke said.
As development persists, flood map revisions have increased in frequency as well. Lee County’s first flood map took effect in 1984, followed by a more than 20-year-gap with revised versions taking effect in 2008, 2018, 2022, and now 2026.
Duke said the main causes for these changes are an increase in development — especially projects that require concrete, altering waterflow — and increasingly erratic climate conditions.
“A map that was drawn in 1970 with the pace of change that we’ve seen in land use in Florida is very badly outdated,” Duke said.
If your flood zone changed because of the revisions and you are concerned about the upcoming hurricane season, Billie Jacoby, Lee County’s floodplain manager and CRS coordinator, said there are proactive measures property owners can take to alleviate flood risk and limit damage and rising costs after the storm. The most important is to obtain flood insurance if you haven’t already.
“With so many damaging storms over the past several years, we have learned the importance and need for not only flood insurance but also the need to better understand the Increased Cost of Compliance (ICC) portion of the policy,” Jacoby said.
Jacoby also said not to wait to purchase flood insurance, as in most cases, there is a 30-day waiting period.
For more information, visit your municipality’s website.
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