#TULSA FLOOD MAPS SERIES#

Other Oklahoma cities continue to suffer extensive damage when sudden storms known as “toad stranglers” pass through. Today, its rates are just about the lowest.

Not that long ago, Tulsa had the highest flood insurance rates in the nation. Still, Tulsa has done more to address its exposure to a serious natural threat than just about any other city in the country. Although the city has gone a long way toward reducing the overflow of its creeks, it hasn’t done much lately to deal with another potential problem: flooding along the Arkansas River, which runs through parts of town. All told, the city has paid to transport or destroy roughly 1,000 houses, an effort that’s ongoing. It’s also pursued an ambitious plan to move or tear down homes that have been subject to repeated flood damage.

#TULSA FLOOD MAPS SERIES#

Since then, it has put in place a series of detention ponds - excavated basins designed to hold water following severe storms - and uses flood maps more demanding than those required by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Following a particularly devastating storm in 1984, which killed 14 people and damaged 5,500 homes, the city decided it was time to take a new approach. Back in the 1970s, so-called 100-year floods occurred nearly every year, with creek beds overflowing and damaging property. In recent decades, Tulsa has become an unlikely model for strong flood control efforts. “Since the 1970s, we have not built noncompliant homes in floodplains.”Īmerica is a member of the Tulsa, Okla., City Council. “We haven’t done that for decades,” she says.

That kind of thing wouldn’t happen where America lives. Army Corps of Engineers had intended to use for a reservoir and other flood control projects had been paved over, taken up by homes that left flood waters with nowhere to go. Thousands of acres in Houston that the U.S. Like many others, she wondered whether the city’s massive sprawl contributed to the damage from Hurricane Harvey. Along with millions of other people, Anna America was saddened by the devastation and loss of life that struck Houston in August.

Tulsa flood maps