West Virginia lawmakers got an update Sunday on state plans to secure federal disaster relief funding in response to this month’s tornadoes and flooding that have devastated much of the state.
State Emergency Division Deputy Director Matthew Blackwood told the Joint Legislative Flooding Committee 741 completed damage assessment surveys indicated 24 destroyed homes, with 58 reports of major impacts and 268 reports of minor impacts from what he referred to as a “wind event†for April 2 through April 5.
The committee’s meeting opened the Legislature’s interim session slated to run through Tuesday.
Blackwood said the wind event caused more personal property damage than flooding that hit the state the following week, with floodwaters inflicting more damage on infrastructure.
State officials and federal partners will look at properties categorized as “destroyed†or majorly impacted by the wind event to determine whether federal officials agree with those assessments with an eye toward a presidential disaster declaration that unlocks individual assistance, Blackwood said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Individual Assistance program offers benefits to survivors that might include home repair and replacement for owner-occupied primary residences, as well as financial support for uninsured or underinsured personal property losses.
The FEMA Public Assistance program, for which Blackwood said further assessment reviews were being conducted to potentially tap into for the wind event, provides supplemental grants to state and local governments and private nonprofits to aid in disaster recovery.
Blackwood noted that FEMA Individual Assistance was approved five months after August 2023 storms caused flooding and landslides for residents of Boone, Calhoun, Clay, Harrison and Kanawha counties following a presidential disaster declaration.
FEMA distributed $2.26 million to individual homeowners, Blackwood said, adding that a declaration allowing Public Assistance support came roughly a month later.
Blackwood reported West Virginia was allotted a $10 million award to support hazard mitigation, noting the funding will be available only for property owners with FEMA National Flood Insurance Program policies.
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The program, called Swift Current, is for buildings with a current NFIP and a history of repetitive or substantial damage from flooding.
The Emergency Management Division has been reaching out to property owners who fit that category. Eligible individual flood mitigation projects through Swift Current include:
- Property acquisition and structure demolition
- Structure elevations
- Dry floodproofing of historic residential structures or non-residential structures
- Nonstructural retrofitting of existing structures and facilities
- Mitigation reconstruction
- Structural retrofitting of existing structures
The NFIP requirement could be a pervasive barrier throughout West Virginia because the state has a low uptake of insurance through the program.
In West Virginia, just 12% of residential properties in Special Flood Hazard Areas have flood insurance through the National Flood Insurance Program as of last year, according to FEMA — well below the national clip of 40%.
The average yearly current cost of National Flood Insurance Program insurance for state residents as of September 2022 was $1,133, eighth-highest in the country. But West Virginia’s average risk-based cost of insurance of $3,074 was the nation’s highest.
Risk-based cost of insurance is what policyholders would pay if they were responsible for their full actuarial rate as evaluated under the rates implemented per a new FEMA insurance pricing methodology, Risk Rating 2.0. The new methodology was implemented in 2021.
When a policyholder’s current premium is below their risk-based premium, their premium will rise toward the full rate, meaning West Virginia’s federal flood insurance premiums are poised to keep escalating.
Rates can’t increase by more than 18% per year for most policyholders by law.
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