Last updated: · Scores from FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025)
Somerset is Maryland's second-smallest county by population, and it carries the state's largest modeled coastal flood loss: $7.0 million of $16.9 million in expected annual losses. It has also applied for mitigation money more often than any Maryland county except Baltimore County. FEMA lists 16 funded projects here, though together they come to just $2.4 million.
What drives the risk
Coastal flooding and hurricanes account for about 70% of expected losses, at 41% and 29%. The county's hazard plan says Crisfield took the worst of Hurricanes Isabel and Sandy because it sits just off Tangier Sound at near sea level, and it lists Smith Island among the shorelines with very high erosion rates. A coastal storm in October 2021 brought the highest water since Sandy, put most of Smith Island and Deal Island under some water and left Crisfield's roads all but impassable.
FEMA rates Somerset's social vulnerability relatively high, at 72.1, the third highest in Maryland after Allegany County and Baltimore City. A very high community resilience score of 91.9 offsets part of that, and the overall risk rating is relatively low.
Where the mitigation money has gone
About 91% of the federal share went to flood projects such as home elevations, tide gates and floodgates, and Crisfield received about 80% of it. The largest grant, $1.2 million, pays for 11 tide gates, culvert repairs and two stormwater pumping stations in the city. OpenFEMA shows Crisfield applied for similar tide gate and drainage work in fiscal 2017 and 2018 without success. The Hazard Mitigation Grant Program accounts for 8 of the 16 projects but only $888 thousand, including $517 thousand to elevate flood-prone homes in Crisfield after Sandy.
The mitigation plan
The Somerset County 2022 Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan Update covers the county, Crisfield and Princess Anne. The county commissioners adopted it on March 14, 2023, the day FEMA approved it, and approval runs through March 13, 2028. The plan ranks shoreline erosion and sea level rise as a high risk and counted 87 repetitive-loss properties in 2022, 61 in the unincorporated county and 26 in Crisfield, only six of them mitigated. The county also keeps a nuisance flood plan for high-tide flooding, dated November 2024.
What we'd look at next
Somerset has shown it can write and resubmit applications; the harder problem is scale. Two proposals from the county's long-term recovery committee to elevate 14 flood-prone buildings were not selected in fiscal 2015 and 2016, and 81 repetitive-loss properties were still unmitigated in 2022. We'd use the plan update due before March 2028 to turn that list into a ranked queue of elevations and buyouts, starting with the communities the plan rates most exposed to storm surge, such as Crisfield, Smith Island and Deal Island.
Hazards ranked by expected annual loss
What FEMA expects each hazard to cost Somerset County in an average year, in damage to buildings and crops and in the dollar value it puts on deaths and injuries. Coastal flooding leads at $7M a year.
- Coastal Flooding$7M41%
- Hurricane$4.9M29%
- Inland Flooding$2.3M14%
- Cold Wave$867K5%
- Wildfire$602K4%
- Drought$337K2%
- Strong Wind$289K2%
- Heat Wave$165K1%
Of the $16.9M total: buildings $11.2M, people $1.6M, agriculture $4.2M.
All 18 hazards FEMA scores
| Hazard | Expected annual loss | Loss rating | Risk rating | Events on record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coastal Flooding | $6.95M | Relatively High | Relatively High | — |
| Hurricane | $4.95M | Relatively Moderate | Relatively Moderate | 74 |
| Inland Flooding | $2.31M | Very Low | Very Low | 13 |
| Cold Wave | $867K | Relatively Low | Relatively Low | 20 |
| Wildfire | $602K | Relatively Low | Relatively Low | — |
| Drought | $337K | Relatively Low | Relatively Moderate | 126 |
| Strong Wind | $289K | Relatively Low | Relatively Low | 41 |
| Heat Wave | $165K | Very Low | Very Low | 53 |
| Tornado | $145K | Very Low | Very Low | 5 |
| Earthquake | $111K | Very Low | Very Low | — |
| Hail | $67K | Very Low | Very Low | 51 |
| Lightning | $63K | Very Low | Very Low | — |
| Ice Storm | $58K | Relatively Low | Relatively Low | 18 |
| Winter Weather | $35K | Relatively Low | Relatively Low | 88 |
| Landslide | $7 | Very Low | Very Low | — |
| Avalanche | — | Not Applicable | Not Applicable | — |
| Tsunami | — | Insufficient Data | Insufficient Data | — |
| Volcanic Activity | — | Not Applicable | Not Applicable | — |
FEMA hazard mitigation grants
Projects FEMA has funded in Somerset County through its Hazard Mitigation Assistance programs, as OpenFEMA lists them. Grants to towns and cities inside the county count here; statewide grants don’t.
- Funded projects
- 16
- Federal share
- $2.4M
- Fiscal years
- 1999–2020
By program
- BRIC · Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities$1.3M · 3 projects
- HMGP · Hazard Mitigation Grant Program$888K · 8 projects
- PDM · Pre-Disaster Mitigation$134K · 3 projects
- FMA · Flood Mitigation Assistance$71K · 2 projects
Most recent projects
FY2020 · HMGP · Approved$92K
Elevation of Private Structures - Coastal
Somerset (County)
FY2020 · BRIC · Awarded$30K
Somerset County Hazard Mitigation Plan Update
County of Somerset
FY2019 · BRIC · Obligated$1.24M
Stormwater Management - Flapgates/Floodgates; Other Major Structural Projects
City of Crisfield
FY2019 · BRIC · Closed$52K
Elevation of Private Structures - Riverine
Somerset County Emergency Services
FY2018 · FMA · Closed$25K
Local Multijurisdictional Multihazard Mitigation Plan - NEW
Somerset County Emergency Services
FY2016 · HMGP · Closed$61K
Elevation of Private Structures - Coastal
Somerset (County)
FY2016 · HMGP · Closed$7K
Warning Systems (as a Component of a Planned, Adopted, and Exercised Risk Reduction Plan)
Somerset (County)
FY2016 · PDM · Closed$30K
Local Multijurisdictional Multihazard Mitigation Plan
Somerset County
| FY | Project | Recipient | Federal share | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Elevation of Private Structures - CoastalHMGP · DR-4491-0027-R | Somerset (County) | $92K | Approved |
| 2020 | Somerset County Hazard Mitigation Plan UpdateBRIC · EMP-2020-BR-005-0012 | County of Somerset | $30K | Awarded |
| 2019 | Stormwater Management - Flapgates/Floodgates; Other Major Structural ProjectsBRIC · PDMC-PJ-03-MD-2019-015 | City of Crisfield | $1.24M | Obligated |
| 2019 | Elevation of Private Structures - RiverineBRIC · PDMC-PJ-03-MD-2019-005 | Somerset County Emergency Services | $52K | Closed |
| 2018 | Local Multijurisdictional Multihazard Mitigation Plan - NEWFMA · FMA-PL-03-MD-2018-001 | Somerset County Emergency Services | $25K | Closed |
| 2016 | Elevation of Private Structures - CoastalHMGP · DR-4261-0028-R | Somerset (County) | $61K | Closed |
| 2016 | Warning Systems (as a Component of a Planned, Adopted, and Exercised Risk Reduction Plan)HMGP · DR-4261-0012-F | Somerset (County) | $7K | Closed |
| 2016 | Local Multijurisdictional Multihazard Mitigation PlanPDM · PDMC-PL-03-MD-2016-007 | Somerset County | $30K | Closed |
What the money paid for most often
- Elevation of Private Structures - Coastal ×4
- Stormwater Management - Flapgates/Floodgates ×2
- Local Multihazard Mitigation Plan ×2
- Local Multijurisdictional Multihazard Mitigation Plan ×1
Hazard mitigation plan
Somerset County 2022 Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan Update
Adopted by the Board of County Commissioners on March 14, 2023, the day FEMA approved it, and later by Crisfield and Princess Anne. FEMA requires an update every five years for the county to stay eligible for its mitigation grants.
- Adopted
- March 2023
- FEMA approval runs to
- March 13, 2028
Frequently Asked Questions
Neighboring counties
About this data
Scores. FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025 release) ranks every U.S. county against all the others. A score is a percentile: a risk score of 82 means a higher value than 82% of counties. The risk index is the expected annual loss scaled up for higher social vulnerability and down for stronger community resilience. FEMA groups risk and loss into five ratings by natural breaks, and vulnerability and resilience into national fifths.
Expected annual loss is FEMA’s modeled average yearly loss from 18 natural hazards to buildings (at replacement value), crops and livestock, and people, whose expected deaths and injuries FEMA converts to dollars. It is an average, not a forecast: a low-risk county can still have a bad year.
Vulnerability and resilience. Social vulnerability comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Community Resilience Estimates. Community resilience is FEMA’s version of the University of South Carolina’s Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (2020), which counts past mitigation spending among its inputs. Vulnerability scores bottom out: 334 of the 3,144 counties scored, 8 of them in Maryland, share the lowest score, 10.6. Population is the 2020 Census count.
Grants are FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Assistance awards in Maryland that are closed, approved, obligated or awarded: the projects in OpenFEMA’s older project file, which FEMA froze on August 31, 2026, plus the grants FEMA has managed in FEMA GO since fiscal 2020, from HMA Subapplications (both retrieved September 30, 2026). Projects FEMA now lists as withdrawn or denied are left out unless money was obligated to them. Amounts are the federal share obligated. Each grant counts toward the county it serves; 103 statewide grants ($24.1M) count toward none.
FEMA describes the index as one source for risk-reduction decisions, to weigh alongside benefit-cost analysis and local knowledge.
National Risk IndexRisk Index data (OpenFEMA)HMA Subapplications (OpenFEMA)Risk Index FAQ (FEMA, PDF)
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