By Susan Vela
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Deborah Davenport looks over the now-calm Duck Creek in Fairfax. In July 2001, its rushing waters smashed into her family home and killed her husband and daughter. (Ernest Coleman photo) | ZOOM |

FAIRFAX - In one huge wave, creek water crashed into Deborah Davenport's home, roared into her basement and changed her life forever.

Her husband, Ronald, 48, and daughter Anna, 21, perished on July 18, 2001, drowning in the crashing water that caught them by surprise in the early morning hours. The two were trying to save the family's belongings. Rain had pummeled their Simpson Street home all night, and they knew Little Duck Creek's treacherous ways.

Time has passed but Deborah Davenport still hangs a banner at her old, abandoned residence. The banner captures a memory: Davenport's husband and daughter leaning into each other, their warm, caring smiles beaming her way.

Davenport keeps the banner up because she wants everyone to know what's at stake for those living in Hamilton County's flood plain: Family. A home. The things that truly matter.

Flood dangers have come into focus again, now that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has released new, preliminary 100-year flood plain maps - the first major revisions in more than 20 years.

The new mapping, which cost $180,000, shows that flood risks have worsened in Hamilton County, especially along Duck Creek in Fairfax, O'Bannon Creek in Loveland, and the Mill Creek in Sharonville and Evendale.

INFOGRAPHIC

• Flood prone areas of Hamilton County

The maps show "base flood elevations" - the levels that flood waters have a 1 percent chance of reaching in any given year. In Fairfax, there is a point along Duck Creek, south of Red Bank Road, where this 100-year base flood elevation is 8 feet higher than it was in 1979, when the village's first floodplain map was drawn. Such a change is considered drastic.

Final versions of the maps won't be available for about a year. But already, critics are pointing to what they consider a serious flaw: the early maps don't take into consideration development upstream in Butler and Warren counties, which is widely believed to have worsened floods in Hamilton County communities in recent years.

Effects of paving

Experts have blamed flooding on impervious surfaces such as roofs, roads and parking lots that come with upstream development, antiquated pipe systems that can't handle today's storm water runoff, and occasional ice jams and debris clogging creeks.

If these conditions aren't reflected in the new maps, some say, county residents could be left unprepared for a worst-case scenario.

All Davenport knows for sure is that lives are at stake.

At the time of the flood, she was living in a home built in 1966, before FEMA drew its first flood plain maps for Fairfax.

"I don't want it to happen to any of the other families," she said. "It could have been anyone that night. It's just that my husband and daughter's dice came up that night. We were left defenseless."

Even though they are still under review, FEMA's maps are bound to boost flood insurance rates for hundreds of county residents and require developers to build on higher ground in areas that have become more flood prone.

But flood plain residents, business owners, politicians and engineers join Davenport in focusing on the maps' most basic value: They could save lives.

"That's the name of the game - to keep people safe," said Doug Bellomo, a FEMA engineer in Washington, D.C. "It's to avoid loss and hardship."

Nancy Ellwood, executive director of the Mill Creek Watershed Council, said the new maps were long overdue. Along the 28-mile Mill Creek, about 1,000 property owners risk flood damage when rains are heavy. The 450,000 residents who live within its watershed also are threatened.

"We've been asking for new maps forever," she said. "Anyone who's been around Cincinnati knows that a lot has happened here in the last couple of decades. It's probably pretty obvious to (property owners) when they're walking in water. That's probably one of the disadvantages of using maps that are 20 years old."

FEMA will notify residents of new base flood elevations in the next month. Residents will have a 90-day appeal period to protest their property's location on the 79 panels that make up the new set of maps. It could take a year for the maps to become final.

Fairfax resident Mike Bohlen expects his $650 annual flood insurance rate to double because of the new maps. But he doesn't mind.

Living across from Davenport's ruined home, he prays for the day when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will buy out his property. Meanwhile, he wants property owners to study the new flood plain maps and think of his old neighbor, now a widow and struggling mother of three.

"She lost her family in that flood. She lost everything," said Bohlen, whose home also was built before FEMA issued the first flood plain maps for the village.

Marking the major floods

1789. 1847. 1937. 1945. 1997. 2001.

Hamilton County has experienced horrendous flooding since its first settlers arrived. The Ohio, Great Miami and Little Miami rivers course through the area's topography, with a vast network of tributaries that feed them.

In recent years, flooding has turned deadly. Monica Kuchmar, 16, of Blue Ash, died within hours of the Davenports. She escaped a stalled vehicle in Symmes Township only to be swept away by creek waters rushing toward the Little Miami River.

FLOOD POLICIES

Flood insurance policies in effect in counties, 2002: Hamilton: 1,653 Butler: 847 Warren: 572 Clermont: 592 Total in Ohio: 33,845 Across the nation, annual premiums average $593 for a single-family home with $125,000 worth of coverage. Source: FEMA

Fairfax Village Administrator Jennifer Kaminer said FEMA's flood plain maps are precise tools that can save vast amounts of money."They're accurate," she said. "It was almost unbelievable to think that Little Duck Creek could do that. Now when it rains, I think, `Oh, my God, please.' It is nerve-wracking and I'm sure it's fourfold for the people who live down there."

Environmentalists also find the maps useful. The Sierra Club's Glen Brand would like to see development prohibited in Hamilton County's flood plain.

In lieu of that happening, "to the degree that the FEMA maps are accurate and reflect the areas that are in danger of flooding or sprawling development, the maps will be useful," he said.

But, "it sounds like there's a problem if it doesn't take into account the flooding that's being caused by poor planning."

Along with politicians and flood plain residents, he criticized FEMA for not factoring in Butler County's high growth rate, which is creating more impervious surfaces and quicker runoff into the flood-prone Mill Creek.

The creek stretches 28 miles, from the Ohio River to Liberty Township, where population surged 146 percent between 1990 and 2000, and new impervious surfaces cause rainwater to rush toward the creek faster than ever.

Sharonville, which has 150 businesses and 30 homes in the creek's flood plain, perennially floods. Now, the new maps document that the base flood elevation has risen 2 feet along points on the creek's east fork.

If FEMA's maps factored in growth, "we'd be over-protected, which is a lot better than under-protected," said Christine Thompson, a certified flood plain manager with the city. The businesses "feel like they're getting flooded at a 100-year level every two years. Before, it was very few and far between."

Bruce Koehler of the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments is commonly called the "Commodore of the Mill Creek Yacht Club."

The environmental planner sympathized with FEMA's financial constraints but said its maps are inadequate without consideration of development and other activities that aggravate flooding problems - even washing cars, watering gardens and spraying sidewalks.

FEMA does have limits because of its finances and "so do their maps," he said.

State Rep. Tom Brinkman Jr., R-Mount Lookout, also worries about FEMA's inability to factor in flooding due to development. His Anderson Township constituents keep warning him of storm drains and sewer lines that are leading to life-threatening flood risks.

"There's a flooding problem in Anderson Township that someone's going to get killed in. When there's a big fast rain storm, there's so much water," he said. "There's no political will until somebody dies. They don't react until there's a crisis."

Insurance impact

Ron Eveleigh, executive vice president of the Greater Cincinnati Insurance Board, wishes that everybody in Hamilton County had flood insurance, not just the people living in the 100-year flood plain.

"It's that simple," he said. Property owners "think because they don't live in a flood plain, they're not going to have a loss. (But) you can have a sudden downpour where you get 4 to 7 inches of rain in a short period of time, and that floods the neighborhood. Technically, that's a flood."

He said Hamilton County - third most populous in the state - accounts for only about 5 percent of the flood insurance policies in Ohio, evidence of a lack of flood protection.

Al Grogan and Doug Daugherty - executives with Continental Mineral Processing Corp. in Sharonville - were compelled to review the new preliminary maps during a FEMA hearing.

They're still not sure about what the maps mean for their insurance rates. But they know that the higher base flood elevations for Mill Creek do not bode well for the future.

"We're not flood plain managers. We're just two guys owning a business," Grogan said. "We don't have the scientific basis to really argue them one way or another. All we know is what happens when it rains. (And) we think we're going to be in more trouble in the future, unfortunately.

"The same amount of rain that we had five years ago is going to give us a higher level of water. It's probably going to be worse five years into the future."

To review the preliminary maps, contact your city, township and village officials. FEMA has issued them panels pertaining to their individual regions.

E-mail svela@enquirer.com