Residents of the Chehalis River Basin have spent lifetimes living with flooding and decades working with the state to find a more effective way to prepare.
But state flood insurance numbers show Lewis County residents might still be unprepared for the area's most frequent natural disasters.
Many homes in Lewis County are at risk of being flooded, being built either in or near a floodplain and being damaged in previous floods. However, many homes in the county still don’t have flood insurance policies to help with repairing flood damage or replacing belongings after the water has come and gone.
To make matters worse, in a 2025 community assessment from the Office of Chehalis Basin, officials expressed fear that flood insurance policies have decreased in floodprone areas despite continued flood risks. Some worry that residents in the basin have either grown complacent during a period of less frequent flooding or simply can't afford the additional insurance premiums.
An assessment of flood policies in Aberdeen in neighboring Grays Harbor County between 2014 and 2024 showed the amount of flood insurance policies dropped by more than half. The fiscal amount of the coverage dropped from $137 million worth of flood coverage to $84 million. Property values and construction costs have only increased in the same time period.
“The prevalence of flood insurance policies appears to be dropping within the basin,” reads the assessment. “The loss of around 500 policies is significant, and the reason is unknown; however, owners/renters may be dropping their voluntary purchase policies because they no longer feel it’s necessary or cannot afford it.”
The most recent numbers from the Washington state Office of the Insurance Commissioner show there are nearly 2,000 residential flood policies in Lewis County. More than half, or around 1,200 policies, are through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).
There are another 675 private residential flood insurance policies in the county either through standard property insurance companies or other more niche insurance providers. Some private policies may be used to provide additional coverage to homes already insured under an NFIP policy. The limit for NFIP coverage is $250,000.
In parts of Lewis County, a lack of flood insurance in or near floodprone areas can be particularly dangerous as the region's flood maps are relatively outdated compared with those for the surrounding areas. As a result, homes that are not required to have flood insurance based on flood maps produced by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) might still be at risk or could now be part of the floodplain as river paths and weather patterns change.
The federal flood maps that decide who must buy flood insurance in the Centralia area are nearly 20 years old.
According to the City of Centralia’s website, the city has roughly 6,640 households, but current numbers from the Office of the Insurance Commissioner show there are just 416 federally-backed residential flood insurance policies in that same area.
Centralia has the largest number of NFIP insurance policies in the county for any kind of structure, likely because it is the largest city in the area and it is closely situated against the Chehalis and Skookumchuck rivers in addition to streams such as China Creek, which flood frequently. According to numbers from the Office of Chehalis Basin, the city has 451 NFIP policies total, including both residential buildings and all others as of July 2024. The numbers from the same assessment also show there are more than six times that many structures, 2,775, in the City of Centralia that fall within the 100-year floodplain.
An even smaller number of properties in the City of Chehalis are protected by flood insurance policies. There are 188 NFIP flood insurance policies in the Chehalis area, according to the Office of Chehalis Basin. Most of those, 171, are specifically for residential properties.
However, because of a smaller population and having fewer buildings in the 100-year floodplain, the city actually has a greater percentage of its at-risk structures protected by insurance policies. There are 424 structures in Chehalis estimated to be within the 100-year floodplain.
All of unincorporated Lewis County has around the same amount of flood insurance policies as the county’s largest city. The rural parts of the county have 637 NFIP residential flood insurance policies.
According to another report from the Office of Chehalis Basin, moderate floods are at times helpful for boosting flood insurance protection. An official report and analysis of the Chehalis Basin’s 2007 flood credited a smaller flood just months earlier at the end of 2006 for boosting insurance protection ahead of the catastrophic 2007 disaster.
Much like this year, the Cowlitz River flooded in 2006, inflicting significant damage to infrastructure in the Packwood and Randle areas but for the most part sparing the more populated areas on the west side of the county.
