In a year in which flooding has become a major concern in our area, a study published by the Pew Charitable Trust analyzes whether public schools could be susceptible to floods. It finds no Indiana County school buildings at risk.
There are 24 public school buildings in the county. None of them are in flood zones. Among our neighboring counties, Westmoreland County has four in flood zones, Cambria, Clearfield, and Armstrong counties each have two, and Jefferson County has none.
The five counties in Pennsylvania with the most public schools in flood zones are Wyoming, Cameron, Bucks, Columbia, and Bradford, but still those counties do not have a significant risk.
The study used three indicators to determine a school’s susceptibility to flooding: its location within a designated flood zone, the percentage of homes in its zip code that are in a flood zone, and the number of historical flood-related federal disaster declarations in its home county.
