Black Lake, Mich. — The ice came first. Then the water. Then the bills.
For John Solum, who bought a 1940s-era cabin on Black Lake after being told his family was not in a flood zone, the damage from this spring’s historic northern Michigan floods was total. Knee-high water forced him to rip out flooring, drywall, furniture, bedding and appliances.
He had lived through floods before, in Houston. He had never seen anything like this. Neither had anyone else.
Floating ice broke apart decks and smashed through windows. Dams nearly failed.
Roadways washed out. Dozens of Michigan counties declared states of emergency. The April rains fell on top of record March snowfall.
The result was devastation across a region that, for generations, had not needed to plan for it. The Petermans tried to buy flood insurance when they moved to their Black Lake retirement home 14 years ago. They were told it wasn’t available.
Thousands of Michigan residents now face the same reality: no financial protection, and no warning they would need it. That gap is not an accident.
It is baked into the system. The Federal Emergency Management Agency develops and updates the maps that determine who is in a flood plain and therefore must buy insurance. Those maps also guide community planning.
But FEMA has not developed maps for many less-populated areas. Some of the Michigan counties hit by unprecedented flooding have no up-to-date maps at all.
Black Lake straddles two counties. Cheboygan County has a FEMA flood map from 2012. That is old.
And the federal government’s mapping method is arguably outdated, experts say. It does not account for actual risks as climate change increases the odds of more extreme weather. So the maps miss places.
They miss people. They miss the fact that a retirement home on a lake in northern Michigan can now flood in ways no one alive has seen before.
The stakes are concrete. Without flood insurance, homeowners absorb every dollar of damage themselves. Solum is tearing out his own walls.
The Petermans cannot even buy a policy. Across Michigan, thousands of people are in the same position.
They had no idea they were at risk, despite years of increasingly heavy precipitation. This is not just a Michigan problem. The same vulnerabilities exist across the country.
Flood plain maps do not cover all areas. And the maps that do exist do not reflect the weather that is actually arriving. What is at risk is not just property.
It is the financial stability of families who thought they were safe. It is the ability of communities to recover.
It is the basic assumption that if you buy a house outside a designated flood zone, you will not be flooded. That assumption is breaking. The April rains that followed record March snowfall broke records.
The ice that broke apart decks and crashed through windows was unprecedented. The water that forced Solum and his family to gut their cabin was knee-high and real.
And the maps that were supposed to warn them did not. FEMA has not developed maps in many less-populated areas. That includes parts of Michigan that experienced flooding for the first time in anyone’s memory.
The result is a population that is exposed, uninformed and uninsured. The Petermans tried to do the right thing. They tried to buy flood insurance when they moved in.
They were told it wasn’t available. That is the system.
It does not offer a product for people who live on a lake but are not in a mapped flood plain. It does not warn them that the lake can rise anyway. Solum knew what flooding looked like.
He had lived through it in Houston. But he was told his family was not in a flood zone.
So he did not buy insurance. Now he is tearing out drywall. The floods in northern Michigan this spring revealed a gap.
The gap is not in the water. It is in the maps. It is in the insurance.
It is in the assumption that what has never happened will never happen. That assumption is no longer safe.
And thousands of Michigan residents are paying for it out of pocket.
