Data brief
Flood Claims in Charleston, by ZIP: 48 Years of FEMA Data
Since 1978, the National Flood Insurance Program has paid more than $337 million on 20,684 flood claims in the Charleston metro, per FEMA’s public claims dataset. Downtown’s 29401 leads with 3,217 claims; the median paid claim is $10,930. The map and tables below break it down by ZIP.
Updated · Sources linked in place
The map: every metro ZIP, sized by its claims
Each circle is one ZIP code, sized by the NFIP claims filed there. Tap a circle for the numbers. Drag the year slider, or press play, and the series tells its own story: Hugo detonates in 1989, then the 2015–2017 wave arrives without a single Hugo-class storm.
Campus and PO Box ZIPs are counted in the metro totals but have no mappable area, so they are not drawn.
Circles are placed at Census ZCTA centroids. Data: OpenFEMA NFIP Redacted Claims v3, retrieved September 3, 2026. Basemap © OpenStreetMap contributors.
The ten ZIP codes that carry the series
The top ten ZIPs account for roughly 85% of all metro claims. What sorts them is elevation and tide exposure: downtown and the barrier islands (Isle of Palms, Folly Beach, Sullivan's Island) sit at the top while far larger inland ZIPs barely register.
There are also two different problems hiding inside the ranking. Johns Island floods often but shallow, with a median paid claim of $4,127. Sullivan's Island floods less often and expensive: $18,131.
| ZIP | Area | Claims | Total paid | Median paid claim |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29401 | Downtown Charleston | 3,217 | $78.5M | $15,878 |
| 29451 | Isle of Palms | 2,691 | $65.8M | $17,846 |
| 29412 | James Island | 2,454 | $23.0M | $7,418 |
| 29407 | West Ashley | 2,261 | $26.1M | $7,926 |
| 29464 | Mount Pleasant | 1,783 | $19.7M | $6,110 |
| 29439 | Folly Beach | 1,213 | $17.6M | $11,072 |
| 29414 | West Ashley | 1,209 | $18.9M | $14,535 |
| 29455 | Johns Island | 1,026 | $4.2M | $4,127 |
| 29403 | Charleston — Upper Peninsula | 994 | $9.2M | $5,787 |
| 29482 | Sullivan's Island | 894 | $22.2M | $18,131 |
Five events produced most of the claims
Hurricane Hugo alone accounts for 46% of every claim in the series: 9,516 claims in 1989, $181 million in the dollars of that year.
The more useful pattern for a homeowner is recent. 2015, 2016, and 2017 each rank among the top years, three years in a row, from three different kinds of event — a rain-driven October flood, then Matthew, then Irma. It no longer takes a Hugo.
| Event | Year | Metro claims | Paid (nominal) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hurricane Hugo | 1989 | 9,516 | $181.4M |
| October severe storms ("thousand-year rain") | 2015 | 2,471 | $35.8M |
| Hurricane Matthew | 2016 | 1,620 | $39.3M |
| Hurricane Irma | 2017 | 1,547 | $40.1M |
| Hurricane Debby | 2024 | 161 | $5.1M |
Case file: what one of these looks like on the ground — the North Charleston flash flood of August 22, 2026, a rain-driven flood the claims data barely sees.
The tide is doing more of the work every year
The claims series has a second engine besides hurricanes. NOAA's Charleston Harbor gauge, the same one behind the coastal flood event record kept since 1921, counted an average of 0.8 days per year at or above the minor flood threshold in the 1990s. Across 2016–2025 that average is 9.8 days per year, with a record 21 days in 2023.
More flood days mean more of the small, sunny-day claims. They also mean more days when water finds the crawl space before anyone sees it on the floor.
What the numbers mean for a Charleston homeowner
The median paid flood claim here is $10,930, about triple the national average restoration project of $3,868 that cost-data firms publish. That gap is context for what restoration work costs in Charleston when the water came from outside.
Every dollar in this dataset was paid under a separate flood policy. Most homeowners insurance does not cover rising water; the two claim paths are walked through in how water damage claims work in SC.
And of 20,684 claims filed, roughly three in ten closed without payment. Documentation, covered in what to do after a house floods, separates the two outcomes more often than the size of the loss does.
Where these numbers come from, and their limits
Source: FEMA's OpenFEMA NFIP Redacted Claims dataset (v3), retrieved September 3, 2026, filtered to Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester counties and aggregated by reported ZIP code.
Four limits to read the numbers honestly:
- Dollar amounts are nominal, so older events read smaller than they were.
- The data covers NFIP policies only. Uninsured losses and private flood policies are invisible to it.
- The ZIP code is the one reported at filing.
- A claim's presence says nothing about any individual property.
Nothing on this page is a coverage determination or an estimate for any specific home.
Asked on Google
People also ask
01 Which Charleston ZIP code has the most flood insurance claims?
Downtown Charleston’s 29401, with 3,217 NFIP claims and $78.5 million paid since 1978 — more than any other ZIP in the metro. The barrier islands follow: Isle of Palms (29451) with 2,691 claims and Sullivan’s Island (29482) with 894, and James Island (29412) and West Ashley (29407) round out the top five. Elevation and tide exposure drive the ranking far more than property count does.
02 What is the average flood insurance payout in Charleston?
Across the 14,306 metro claims that closed with a payment, the median was $10,930 and the mean $23,592, in the nominal dollars of each year. Severity varies sharply by ZIP: the median paid claim on Sullivan’s Island is $18,131, against $4,127 on Johns Island. Figures are historical NFIP data, not an estimate of any current or future claim.
03 Does homeowners insurance cover the flood damage in this data?
No — every claim in this dataset was paid under a separate NFIP flood policy. Most homeowners policies exclude rising water from outside the home, which is exactly what these claims are. How the two policies divide a Charleston loss, and how each claim path works, is covered in the water damage insurance claims guide on this site.