Is Rapides Parish, LA in a flood zone?
FEMA's National Risk Index puts Rapides Parish's flood hazard at the 82.2th percentile nationally — a middling flood hazard by national standards — driven by inland rivers and flash flooding rather than the coast — FEMA's model puts a flood event here at about 1.4 times a year. That's a county-wide figure, not a per-address one — FEMA's parcel maps are a live lookup, not a bulk file.
Mandatory flood insurance compliance in Rapides Parish
Rapides Parish is one of the counties where FEMA's own denominator for mandated flood-zone structures is missing, so no compliance rate is shown rather than a guessed one — the data quality guide covers how common this is. Across all residential structures in Rapides Parish, not just the ones FEMA mandates, 5.1% carry an NFIP policy — most flood damage nationally happens outside the mapped high-risk zone, so that broader number matters too.
How Rapides Parish compares nationally
Rapides Parish sits at rank 584 of 3144 counties on FEMA's flood hazard scale (1 is worst) and rank 519 of 3144 by population (1 is biggest). Rapides Parish, Louisiana covers 1,324.08 square miles and counts roughly 125,899 residents.
Checking a specific address in Rapides Parish
Across all of Rapides Parish's 52,260 residential structures, 2,688 carry an NFIP policy today — a county-wide count that still can't tell you one address's own mapped zone.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly which FEMA and Census tables feed Rapides Parish's numbers. See the data quality guide for why Rapides Parish, like hundreds of other counties, doesn't get a clean compliance percentage.