Bear Lake County, ID: flood risk, in FEMA's own numbers
On FEMA's National Risk Index, Bear Lake County scores at the 7.2th percentile for flood hazard, rated "Very Low" — among the lowest flood hazard in the country. The hazard here is driven by inland rivers and flash flooding rather than the coast — FEMA's model puts a flood event here at about once every 3 years. County-wide, not parcel-specific: FEMA's real flood-zone map is queried live, never shipped as a download.
Bear Lake County's flood-insurance compliance gap
FEMA hasn't published a residential structure count for Bear Lake County's mapped flood zone, so a reliable mandatory-compliance percentage can't be computed here — see the data quality guide for why this gap exists for roughly a quarter of US counties. Looking beyond the mandated zone, 0% of all residential structures in Bear Lake County carry flood coverage voluntarily or otherwise — relevant because most NFIP claims nationally come from outside the mapped SFHA.
How Bear Lake County compares nationally
Among the 3144 US counties FEMA scores for flood hazard, Bear Lake County ranks 2931 — 1 being the highest hazard nationally — and 2671 by population among all 3144 counties covered here, where 1 is the largest. Bear Lake County, Idaho is home to about 6,779 people across 975.731 square miles of land.
What to do next if you own or are buying in Bear Lake County
Across all of Bear Lake County's 3,763 residential structures, 1 carry an NFIP policy today — a county-wide count that still can't tell you one address's own mapped zone.
Where Bear Lake County's figures come from
Every figure on this page traces to a named FEMA dataset, documented in the methodology guide. Bear Lake County's compliance figure is one of the ones affected by FEMA's incomplete denominator data — the data quality guide explains what that means and how many counties it touches.