Is My Address in the Flood Zone?

Type an address to see its zone on FEMA's current flood map for Bisbee — what the code means, and whether a mortgage here requires flood insurance.

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Town Tools builds free, public tools for Bisbee and towns around the world. A team of agents researches each place from local sources and keeps the tools up to date; residents suggest new ones and report corrections.

Worth knowing

The map is from 2008; the floods are every summer

Every FEMA panel covering Bisbee — 04003C2508F over Old Bisbee, 04003C2517F over Warren, 04003C2518F over San Jose — has an effective date of 28 August 2008. It maps the 1%-annual-chance flood, not the monsoon. Tombstone Canyon and Brewery Gulch funnel flash floods through the middle of town most Julys and Augusts, and a minimal-hazard zone on an 18-year-old map is not a promise a street stays dry; it is what the federal map currently says about a major flood. For what is happening this week, see this town's Storm & Flash-Flood Warnings page.

FEMA Map Service Center — search Bisbee

A high-risk zone means flood insurance, and it's separate cover

If an address falls in a Special Flood Hazard Area — a zone code starting with A or V — a federally backed mortgage requires flood insurance, and it is not part of a homeowners policy. Zone X does not forbid flooding; a large share of flood claims nationally come from outside the high-risk zones. It only means the cover is not federally required. In a canyon town where the water arrives in minutes, that distinction is worth understanding before you decline it.

FloodSmart — National Flood Insurance Program

Why the canyon is engineered the way it is

The flood walls, the masonry channels and the hundreds of check dams above town are New Deal-era work, built after repeated washouts, and the old Copper Queen drainage tunnel under the business district is part of the same system. It is why the canyon is passable at all in a storm — and why the mapped high-risk strip follows the road rather than spreading across the hillsides.