Property Atlas

County hazard profile

Benton, WA

Washington · pop. 206,541 · FIPS 53005

Relatively Moderate
FEMA risk rating · RATING
Wildfire
dominant hazard
$70M
modeled expected annual loss/yr

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

among the lowest nationally

national median $15M/yr Benton $70M

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 87.09/100
national median ~50 higher than 87% of counties
Social vulnerabilityRelatively Low 30.31/100
national median ~50 lower than most counties (30th percentile)
Community resilienceRelatively Moderate 58.62/100
national median ~50 near the national middle (59th percentile)

Recorded · NFIP flood claims RECORDED

Realized flood losses in Benton

The National Flood Insurance Program has paid 108 flood-insurance claims totaling $1.5M in Benton since 1978. The costliest year was 1996 ($858K paid).

Flood-insurance dollars paid by year of loss

1978: $0 paid 1979: $616 paid 1980: $15,121 paid 1982: $6,781 paid 1983: $0 paid 1989: $0 paid 1990: $61,617 paid 1991: $0 paid 1995: $27,524 paid 1996: $858,296 paid 1997: $11,858 paid 2007: $13,538 paid 2009: $161,404 paid 2010: $251 paid 2011: $43,313 paid 2012: $0 paid 2015: $43,827 paid 2017: $16,672 paid 2019: $0 paid 2024: $0 paid 2025: $200,521 paid 1996 · $858K 1978 2025
$1.5M
total paid
$13,531
average claim
$100K
largest single claim
69%
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 Benton, WA and where it ranks among U.S. counties. It is not a verdict on whether Benton 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.