Excellent question.
I live in a city that about 100 miles inland so I’m not in an area that is prone to the direct effects of a Category 5 hurricane…or 4, 3, 3, 1 or tropical depression.
However, should a Category 5 hurricane hit my coastal area it is highly likely that my area would see winds and rain equivalent to a Cat 3.
First off, my city isn’t below sea level. My house sits at an elevation of 250ft and on a hill that isn’t prone to flooding or sit in a flood plain. In addition, local building codes prohibit any type of construction in flood plains.
I do live in a city next to a major river. My house is about 3 miles from the river but it isn’t prone to flooding due to terrain.
About 15-20 years ago the major part of the city near the river was prone to flooding. Every time a major storm or hurricane passed through…especially to the west in our mountains the area would flood and businesses would be wary of building down there. So the city spent millions of dollars and installed a floodwall which sparked redevelopment and the downtown are thrived because they thought this wall would hold…more on the double edged sword this wall has later.
That being said I’ll give you a couple of examples of two incidents in the past 2 years which showed that my area was prepared…and one where the unthinkable happened.
Hurricane Isabel hit the VA/NC line and rolled right over our city two years ago. By the time it reached us it was still a Cat. 1 hurricane. A week before the storm hit the coast we were put on alert and everyone started to warn us to prepare. The city/county started readying shelters for those who needed it, posted checklists, special coverage, etc. Personally I stored up water, batteries and ice. We knew power was going to go out so we prepared accordingly. I also had portable stoves and non perishable food stocked. The storm hit and power was out for at my house for 2 weeks. Water went out for 3 days and wasn’t potable for a week. I survived…was out of work for 3 days due to power outages and trees down on roads. Got my chain saw out and helped clear my yard, neighbors, and parents. Parents had a whole house generator that runs off of propane gas so they were set and not affected. The city was back to normal and the city wasn’t flooded due to the flood walls working. All in all the city/county was back to normal in a week but we didn’t have major flooding…just minor and it drained properly.
A year ago Tropical depression Gaston hit us by surprise. In a period of 6 hrs 11 inches of rain fell on the city. The city closed the flood gates. The river didn’t flood BUT the flood gates were responsible for flooding in the city. What happened was the drainage system was overwhelmed by that much water in such a short period of time. So the downtown area’s storm system started being overwhelmed. Our storm and sewage system is antiquated due to the age of the city. When you have that much water it starts backing up…and it starts backing up into peoples houses as well since it’s a combined system. So many houses got flood by water backing up in their basements and toliets if they didn’t have a backflow preventer installed on their sanitary lines. Not with just rainwater but sewage water. In addition, the river didn’t flood (it was low to begin with) but they closed the flood wall just in case. Closing the floodwall actually acted as a wall to hold water in the city preventing it from draining into the river. So in this case it helped flood the downtown instead of protecting it from flooding. The root cause of all of this was an antiquated drainage system that needs major repair.
So in one case we were prepared…in another we weren’t. In both cases I was prepared b/c I don’t really trust the local and state govt’s ability to handle all of this.