RALEIGH – On Thursday, September 30th, the residents of Garner and surrounding areas of Wake County will have the opportunity to review and ask questions about preliminary copies of new, updated Flood Insurance Rate Maps at a public meeting in Garner. The meeting will take place between 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. in the Board Room of the Garner Town Hall, 900 Seventh Avenue. The Town of Garner Planning Department is hosting the meeting.
The new flood maps can be viewed online using the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Information System. A link to this system is provided on the website of the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program: www.ncfloodpmaps.com . Wake County residents who visit the site will find an Address Locator Tool to help them locate individual properties and see their relationship to floodplains. Other tools are available to assist them with viewing and downloading digital data from the website. Paper copies of the complete set of maps for Wake County are currently available for public review at the Wake County Geographic Information Services offices on the fifth floor of the Wake County Office Building located at 336 Fayetteville Street Mall in Raleigh. Copies of maps for Garner can be viewed at the Town of Garner Engineering Department, 900 7th Avenue, Building B.
The September 30th Public Participation Meeting provides an opportunity for residents to see the results of the advanced digital technology used to create the new maps. Garner and Wake County officials will be on hand to help residents locate particular properties on the maps and determine their level of flood risk. During the meeting, representatives from the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program and North Carolina Floodplain Management will make a short presentation on the map production process, features of the new maps, and how they can be used to reduce future losses due to flooding. Attendees will also see a demonstration of the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Information System. Following the presentation, State and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) representatives will be available to answer questions about the mapping process, flood insurance coverage, and floodplain management topics.
Wake County’s new Flood Insurance Rate Maps, which were presented to local officials on July 14, 2004, were produced and issued by the State of North Carolina under a unique partnership with FEMA. The partnership agreement, signed September 2000, designates North Carolina as a Cooperating Technical State and delegates the primary responsibility for the creation and maintenance of all Flood Insurance Rate Maps to North Carolina. The effort to remap the state’s floodplains was spurred by the devastation caused by Hurricane Floyd, which flooded large areas of eastern North Carolina and left thousands of people homeless. This disaster highlighted North Carolina’s vulnerability to natural disasters and the need for accurate, up-to-date floodplain maps.
# # # #
NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information on the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program, visit the web site at www.ncfloodmaps.com. More information on the Public Participation Meeting can be obtained from Mr. David Bamford, Town of Garner Planning Department, at (919) 772-4688.
