AP analysis: FEMA rejects appeals worth $1.2 billion over a decade

This Jan. 8, 2009 file photo shows Interstate 5, bottom, partially covered by floodwaters from the Chehalis River in Chehalis, Wash. In early 2009, heavy rains and melting snow caused flooding in parts of Washington, leading to a leak in the earthen abutment of the Howard Hanson Dam. Officials in King County and several cities placed giant sandbags atop downstream levees, erected flood guards around facilities such as a jail and sewage treatment plant, and temporarily relocated the county election office. “FEMA staff told us, ‘We understand why you did what you did, and it was a reasonably prudent thing to protect the public,’” said Mark Isaacson, King County’s wastewater treatment director who at the time led its flood control division. But “it didn’t fall within their definition of imminent flooding.”