STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- If Staten Island were to be slammed by another catastrophic storm, would you know what zone you are in?
New York City maintains a hurricane evacuation map, which tells residents what zone they live in and where the closest evacuation center is located should they need to leave their home.
Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency maintains flood maps that detail the borough's flood zones.
As of Jan. 31, the last time FEMA revised its preliminary Flood Insurance Rate Maps, 11,600 of Staten Island's 135,200 structures were located within the Special Flood Hazard Area -- where flood insurance is mandatory. That's a 45 percent increase from 2007, when only 8,000 borough structures were located within a flood zone.
Of those 11,600 structures, just 100 are located within what FEMA classifies as the most vulnerable of its three flood zones, Zone V, where the velocity of rushing water and the action of waves poses an additional risk.
The rest of the Staten Island structures located in the Special Flood Hazard Area lie within Zone A, where flooding is a risk in a 100-year storm event like Hurricane Sandy. Base flood elevation for homes within Zone A range from 11 feet to 16 feet, according to the most recent preliminary flood maps.
Property owners can visit FEMA's Base Flood Elevation Address Lookup Tool and plug in their address to determine whether their property falls within a flood zone, and if so, what zone it's in, and its base flood elevation.
This online tool also tells homeowners their estimated current ground elevation -- so if a home is already at a ground elevation of 10 feet, and the base flood elevation is 12 feet, the home would have to be elevated only by 2 feet to meet those requirements.
Homes that are below base flood elevation face higher insurance premiums, because they are at greater risk of flood.