Property Atlas

County hazard profile

Buncombe, NC

North Carolina · pop. 269,305 · FIPS 37021

Relatively Moderate
FEMA risk rating · RATING
Landslide
dominant hazard
$82M
modeled expected annual loss/yr

Expected annual loss · all 3,232 U.S. counties

lower than most counties (25th percentile)

national median $15M/yr Buncombe $82M

A real dollar distribution: most counties sit far below a handful of high-exposure ones. A FEMA model of annual loss, not a record of disasters.

FEMA national percentile scores

FEMA/CDC score each county 0–100 against all others — the score is the national rank (RATING). Higher risk and vulnerability are worse; higher resilience is better.

FEMA risk indexRelatively Moderate 89.34/100
national median ~50 higher than 89% of counties
Social vulnerabilityRelatively Low 34.99/100
national median ~50 lower than most counties (35th percentile)
Community resilienceRelatively High 70.71/100
national median ~50 near the national middle (71st percentile)

Recorded · NFIP flood claims RECORDED

Realized flood losses in Buncombe

The National Flood Insurance Program has paid 1,190 flood-insurance claims totaling $104.0M in Buncombe since 1978. The costliest year was 2024 ($81.4M paid).

Flood-insurance dollars paid by year of loss

1978: $10,766 paid 1979: $29,683 paid 1980: $4,255 paid 1982: $2,564 paid 1983: $72,464 paid 1984: $21,968 paid 1987: $3,581 paid 1989: $36,867 paid 1990: $0 paid 1991: $10,675 paid 1992: $14,152 paid 1993: $0 paid 1994: $38,046 paid 1995: $1,168,448 paid 1996: $3,503 paid 1998: $356,869 paid 1999: $0 paid 2000: $0 paid 2001: $4,307 paid 2002: $0 paid 2003: $19,250 paid 2004: $14,739,787 paid 2005: $30,594 paid 2009: $37,415 paid 2010: $3,590 paid 2011: $0 paid 2012: $117,853 paid 2013: $206,954 paid 2014: $57,091 paid 2015: $796,615 paid 2016: $35,740 paid 2017: $79,750 paid 2018: $639,557 paid 2019: $832,980 paid 2020: $292,377 paid 2021: $2,867,418 paid 2023: $0 paid 2024: $81,424,626 paid 2024 · $81.4M 1978 2024
$104.0M
total paid
$87,361
average claim
$1.0M
largest single claim
73%
in high-risk flood zones (A/V)

RECORDED — these are actual paid NFIP claims (a redacted census from OpenFEMA), not a model. They are the realized counterpart to the FEMA risk score above: one is what happened and got paid, the other is what a model predicts.

Scope: these are flood-insurance claims, so they undercount flooding where owners were uninsured — read this as "what NFIP paid here," not "every flood." County-level totals, not a per-property or per-address verdict. Verify a specific address and buy coverage at FloodSmart.gov; the underlying data is OpenFEMA NFIP Redacted Claims.

What these figures mean

  • RATING — the FEMA risk score, expected loss, social vulnerability, and resilience are FEMA/CDC models, not records of disasters that happened. The 0–100 scores are already national percentiles.
  • MEASURED — population is a recorded census figure.
  • COMPUTED — the county's rank within the dollar-loss distribution is our placement over the 3,232 counties.
  • CONTEXT — the note below is framing, not a measurement.

Also available: structured data (JSON-LD) · plain text

What this is — and is not

This is FEMA/CDC modeled hazard exposure for Buncombe, NC and where it ranks among U.S. counties. It is not a verdict on whether Buncombe is a good or bad place to live — hazard exposure is not place quality, and a county can't opt out of its geography. It is not a per-property or per-address risk assessment, not a prediction of any specific disaster, and not insurance advice. For site-specific risk use a per-property assessment; for the underlying model see FEMA National Risk Index.