Revised FEMA Flood Maps

Ocean County property owners have new information about their probabilities for flood damage - and the kind of insurance rates they can expect to pay as a result.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) released its revised preliminary flood-insurance rate maps Friday. The refined charts now include information about flood risks along rivers and tributaries as well as on the coast.

See the maps at FEMA's Preliminary FIRM Data Viewer.

Land and home owners who want to appeal the findings will have a 90-day comment period in which to do so, FEMA said, giving no official start date but indicating that it will begin "in Spring 2014."

Once the comment period ends and all appeals are settled, FEMA will issue a Letter of Final Determination (LFD) to affected Ocean County communities. The maps would take effect six months later.

Until the maps are finalized at some point in 2015, officals at FEMA and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection are urging compliance with higher building-performance standards and elevation.

Get more details about flood risk mapping and insurance here.