Franklin County, VT: flood risk, in FEMA's own numbers
On FEMA's National Risk Index, Franklin County scores at the 52.1th percentile for flood hazard, rated "Relatively Low" — below the national norm for flood hazard. 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 1.7 times a year. This describes the county, not any one street — FEMA only publishes exact parcel zones through a live map service.
Franklin County's flood-insurance compliance gap
FEMA hasn't published a residential structure count for Franklin 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, 0.7% of all residential structures in Franklin County carry flood coverage voluntarily or otherwise — relevant because most NFIP claims nationally come from outside the mapped SFHA.
Where Franklin County ranks
Among the 3144 US counties FEMA scores for flood hazard, Franklin County ranks 1569 — 1 being the highest hazard nationally — and 999 by population among all 3144 counties covered here, where 1 is the largest. Franklin County, Vermont covers 630.961 square miles and counts roughly 51,066 residents.
What to do next if you own or are buying in Franklin County
Across all of Franklin County's 19,486 residential structures, 132 carry an NFIP policy today — a county-wide count that still can't tell you one address's own mapped zone.
Where Franklin County's figures come from
Every figure on this page traces to a named FEMA dataset, documented in the methodology guide. Franklin 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.