"As climate change drives more intense storms and floods, some coastal districts are no longer relying solely on risk maps from U.S. disaster agency FEMA and are drawing up their own".
"CONWAY, S.C. - As Hurricane Florence tore through the southeastern United States in 2018, April O'Leary raced to warn hundreds of her South Carolina neighbors to protect their property from coming floods and consider evacuating.
Her pleas largely fell on deaf ears. Residents in the city of Conway, in Horry County, pointed to past experience with storms as reason not to worry - and for many, national flood maps did not show their homes were at high risk.
"They all told me that they didn't think they were going to flood - they were not going to make any preparations," recalled O'Leary, who founded the group Horry County Rising after Florence hit to advocate for greater action to combat flooding.
O'Leary was proven right: Florence deluged hundreds of homes in supposedly lower-risk spots in Horry, according to the county, turning streets into streams and causing millions of dollars in damage that wiped out the savings of some households."
David Sherfinski reports for Thomson Reuters Foundation May 24, 2022.
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