FEMA Flood Map Confusion Leaves Millions Without Coverage

On the morning of Sept. 27, 2024, Liz Barker woke to the kind of alert no homeowner wants to see: a flash flood emergency warning flashing across her phone.

Barker, a North Carolina midwife, knew severe weather was moving in. After finishing her clinical shift the night before, she remembers trading weary jokes with other nurses that not even the approaching storm would keep them from getting home after a long night at work.

But the early-morning notification was far more serious than she expected. A mandatory evacuation had been ordered for her neighborhood in Swannanoa, just outside Asheville. Barker moved quickly, throwing essentials into a bag before leaving with her teenage daughter and their dog.

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“I definitely didn’t anticipate things to be nearly as bad as they actually became,” Barker recalled.

Across Highway 70 from Barker’s street, the Swannanoa River surged to historic levels after Hurricane Helene unleashed intense rainfall across the Appalachian region — an area already soaked by another storm just days earlier. Floodwaters tore through homes in Barker’s neighborhood, and her own house was submerged all the way up to the attic.