Know It Before the Water Does
Two letters on a federal map decide whether your lender requires flood insurance and how much it costs. They do not decide whether your house can flood.
What VE, AE and X mean in plain words, why a homeowners policy will not pay for floodwater, the 30 day wait, how to look up your own address, and why houses well outside the shaded areas went under water in Sally.
Water already inside?
Floodwater is dirty water. Stay out of it, keep the power off in wet rooms, and call {{PHONE}} any hour.
Most people in Mobile and Baldwin counties learn their flood zone once, at closing, from a page in a stack of mortgage papers. Then they forget it until a storm is in the Gulf and someone at work asks whether they have flood insurance.
This page is meant to be read on a calm day. It explains the zone letters FEMA puts on the maps, what a homeowners policy leaves out, how the federal flood program works, and how to find your own address on the official map in a few minutes. It also explains why the map is a guide to risk and not a promise, using the rain and the river readings from Hurricane Sally.
FEMA’s Flood Insurance Rate Maps sort every property into zones. Three of them cover most homes on this coast.
VE is a Coastal High Hazard Area. FEMA describes these as flood hazard areas "along the coasts that have additional hazards due to wind and wave action." Think of the Gulf front and the shores most exposed to waves. Building rules here are the strictest, and the map shows a base flood elevation the lowest structural member has to clear.
AE is part of the Special Flood Hazard Area, the land FEMA expects to be covered by "the flood event having a 1-percent chance" of happening in any year, often called the "100-year flood." The map shows a base flood elevation, the height the water is expected to reach in that flood. Low ground around the bays, bayous and rivers is often AE.
Shaded X is a moderate flood hazard, between the 1 percent flood and the 0.2 percent flood. Unshaded X is minimal flood hazard, above the 0.2 percent flood. X is not "no risk." It is lower risk, and lenders usually do not require flood insurance there.
A "100-year flood" is easy to misread. It does not mean once a century. It means a 1 percent chance in any given year, every year, and over a 30 year mortgage those odds add up. Two such floods can come in back to back years.
FEMA says it plainly: "Most homeowners insurance does not cover flood damage."
Rising water from a storm, a river or a flooded street is flood. A homeowners policy is written for other things: a burst pipe, a fire, wind that tears off the roof and lets rain in. When Gulf water or bayou water comes in under the door, the homeowners policy is usually not the one that pays.
Flood coverage is a separate policy. FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program sells it in participating communities; in FEMA’s words, it "is available to anyone living in one of the 22,600 participating NFIP communities," and it "can cover buildings, the contents in a building, or both." Those are two separate choices. A policy on the building alone will not pay for the couch, the clothes or the freezer.
FEMA notes that homes in high risk areas with government backed mortgages must carry flood insurance. If you are in Zone X, nobody will require it, and that is exactly where many uninsured flood losses happen. Hurricane wind and named storm deductibles are a different subject, covered on our page about hurricane deductibles and the Beach Plan.
The 30 day wait
FEMA’s own wording: "Typically, there’s a 30-day waiting period from date of purchase before your policy goes into effect." FEMA lists a few exceptions on the same page. For most homeowners, a policy bought when a storm is named in the Gulf will not be in force when it arrives. June is the time to buy, not September.
The official map is free and public. The FEMA Flood Map Service Center is, in FEMA’s words, "the official online location to find all flood hazard mapping products."
Start from FEMA’s flood maps page and follow the link to the Map Service Center search.
Include the city and ZIP code. The search finds the effective map panel for that spot.
Zoom to your lot. The colored areas are the Special Flood Hazard Areas; the label inside each one is its zone, such as AE or VE.
In AE and VE areas the map shows the expected flood height. Compare it with the elevation of your lowest floor, if you know it.
Download or screenshot the panel with your house on it, and keep it with your insurance papers.
Maps change. Coastal studies are redone, and a new map can move a house into a higher or lower zone. If you are buying, building or adding on, check the map that is in effect on that date, and ask your county or city permit office about any preliminary maps.
Surge maps show where the Gulf can push water. They do not show where 30 inches of rain has nowhere to go.
Hurricane Sally made landfall at Gulf Shores early on September 16, 2020, moving at less than 5 mph. A storm that slow keeps raining on the same ground for days. The National Weather Service in Mobile recorded these totals over three days:
| Location | Rain from Sally, Sept 14 to 17, 2020 |
|---|---|
| Orange Beach | 29.99 inches |
| 2 miles east of Fort Morgan | 29.30 inches |
| Foley | 21.04 inches |
| Elberta | 20.99 inches |
That much rain overwhelms ditches, culverts and small creeks. Water ponds in subdivisions that are nowhere near a beach and are mapped as X, and it comes in under doors and through slabs. FEMA puts the general point simply: floods "can happen almost anywhere."
The rivers rose too. On the Fish River near Silverhill, the Weather Service gauge has a flood stage of 11 feet, with moderate flooding at 13 feet and major flooding at 18 feet. Sally pushed it to a crest of 20.68 feet on September 16, 2020, the third highest reading in the gauge’s record; the record, 23.06 feet, came at the end of April 2014, weeks before hurricane season even began. The gauge page notes that at 18 feet "Water begins to surround houses on the river side of McPhillips Road" in the Fairhope Falls subdivision. Surge is the other half of the story, and our page on storm surge and Mobile Bay covers Frederic, Ivan, Katrina and Sally.
The one document that turns a zone letter into a measurement for your particular house.
An elevation certificate is a FEMA form that records how high a building sits compared with the expected flood. Communities keep these records to show that new buildings and substantial improvements in high risk areas were built high enough, and FEMA notes the form "also can be used by the property owner to obtain flood insurance." In A zones it records the lowest floor; in V zones, the lowest horizontal structural member.
Nobody will require it, but you may still want it. Zone X means lower risk, not no risk, and Sally showed how heavy rain floods streets and homes far from the water. Ask your agent for a price and compare it with what a foot of water in the house would cost to put right. The 30 day wait means the decision belongs in spring.
Usually not. FEMA says most homeowners insurance does not cover flood damage, and water rising from the bay, a river or the street is flood. A separate flood policy, through the federal program or a private insurer, is what pays for that water.
Get people out of the water, keep the power off in wet rooms, and photograph everything before it is moved. Then call your flood insurer and get drying started. Floodwater carries sewage and mud, and walls soak it up fast; our team handles water damage restoration and documents each room for the adjuster.
A person answers 24 hours a day. We dry, clean and document every room for the adjuster, whether the claim goes to flood insurance or not.