Property Atlas

County hazard profile

Polk, TN

Tennessee · pop. 17,531 · FIPS 47139

Very Low
FEMA risk rating · RATING
Landslide
dominant hazard
$7M
modeled expected annual loss/yr

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

among the lowest nationally

national median $15M/yr Polk $7M

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 indexVery Low 31.17/100
national median ~50 lower than most counties (31st percentile)
Social vulnerabilityVery High 84.99/100
national median ~50 higher than 85% of counties
Community resilienceVery Low 16.35/100
national median ~50 among the lowest nationally

Recorded · NFIP flood claims RECORDED

Realized flood losses in Polk

The National Flood Insurance Program has paid 43 flood-insurance claims totaling $638K in Polk since 1994. The costliest year was 2003 ($222K paid).

Flood-insurance dollars paid by year of loss

1994: $64,704 paid 1995: $68,861 paid 2003: $222,191 paid 2004: $81,646 paid 2013: $50,297 paid 2015: $34,507 paid 2020: $115,358 paid 2003 · $222K 1994 2020
$638K
total paid
$14,827
average claim
$52K
largest single claim
84%
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.

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What this is — and is not

This is FEMA/CDC modeled hazard exposure for Polk, TN and where it ranks among U.S. counties. It is not a verdict on whether Polk 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.