PLT - Was FEMA assistance equitable after the 2015 dam failures in Columbia, SC?

FEMA does not consider dam breach inundations when it creates its flood risk maps, potentially leaving additional flood-prone areas overlooked. FEMA has also been shown to unfairly allocate more payouts to claims filed in predominately White and wealthy communities. Furthermore, loss of life and damage costs tend to be the only indicators used for measuring a dam failure’s impact, leaving demographic disparities unexplored. Acknowledging these oversights, it is necessary to determine if FEMA assistance is equitable after a dam failure disaster and ensure that those impacted and socially marginalized can recover effectively. Using the 2015 dam failure disaster in Columbia, SC as a case study, this research assessed if the distribution of FEMA claim payouts was equitable when regarding race and class. Relevant FEMA claim data for the disaster was obtained and filtered using R and ArcGIS Pro. The claim data was then categorized by census tract and linked to corresponding race and median household income data. After conducting a comparative analysis, results revealed that predominantly Black and lower-income census tracts had higher percentages of claims unpaid. This disparity indicates that FEMA’s assistance was inequitable and thus could have excluded those who would need assistance the most due to social barriers. This research not only introduces an alternative way to assess the impact of dam failures, but also provides findings that support the need to consider additional and more detailed impacts that tend to be overlooked.