Elevation Certificates in Fresno, CA

Fresno is named for the ash trees that lined the San Joaquin River, which runs along north Fresno, but most of the city's flood control story is about water coming the other way: from low foothill streams to the east. The Fresno Metropolitan Flood Control District, created by voters in 1956, controls storm water across a watershed of about 400 square miles between the San Joaquin and Kings rivers, called the Fresno County Stream Group. Its history page shows downtown Fresno flooding in 1925 and a canal bank overwhelmed by foothill runoff in 1958.

The district runs two linked systems. In the urban area, its Storm Drainage and Flood Control Master Plan divides the Fresno-Clovis area into 158 drainage areas, each served by storm drains and, in almost every developed area, a retention or detention basin that also recharges groundwater. On the rural side, it is the local sponsor of the Army Corps' Redbank-Fancher Creeks Flood Control Project, operates a system of nine major flood control facilities (the Fancher Creek and Big Dry Creek reservoirs were built in the early 1990s to relieve flooding), and lists floodplain management among its responsibilities for the stream group, coordinating with FEMA. For a property owner, that history means the FEMA map in Fresno reflects a lot of built infrastructure. We keep claims about specific neighborhoods out of this page; the effective FIRM panel at msc.fema.gov is the place to start.

If your building is in a special flood hazard area, an elevation certificate lets your insurer rate the policy on real numbers. We tie to a published benchmark with GNSS on the FIRM's vertical datum, then use a Trimble S3 total station to measure the lowest adjacent grade, highest adjacent grade, lowest floor, garage slab, crawlspace and vents, and the HVAC and other machinery. We photograph each side of the building and deliver a signed FEMA EC. If the ground at the structure is at or above the base flood elevation, the data can support a letter of map amendment, filed through eLOMA where eligible. Fresno is the far end of our range, so work there is scheduled as a mobilization from our base in Lotus. See the elevation certificate service and the Merced page.