Scottsboro, Ala., has purchased almost all the most frequently damaged properties on the town’s flood-prone East Maple Street in an effort to eliminate private losses.
“In the last 15 to 20 years, this particular area on East Maple Street has flooded probably three times,” Scottsboro Mayor Melton Potter said of the short road on the north end of town sandwiched between a 200-foot-high hill to the north and a railway to the south.
“The last one came about three-and-a-half years ago when we received about seven inches of rain in two hours and it got up in several houses,” Potter said.
That episode prompted officials to seek help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, he said.
The purpose of the federal grant is to reduce the loss of life and property from natural disasters and to enable mitigation measures to be implemented during the immediate recovery from a disaster, according to the FEMA program’s website.