The flooding that accompanied Hurricane Florence last month is bringing renewed attention to the lack of a federal flood risk management standard as well as to the tenuous state of the National Flood Insurance Program.

State and local governments are stepping into the void by strengthening their building codes and looking for new ways to fund predisaster mitigation, but much more needs to be done at every level of government to prepare for future catastrophes, experts say.

Florence made landfall on Sept. 14 and stalled across North and South Carolina, dropping record-breaking rainfall.

“This is the latest example, unfortunately, that our communities and our infrastructure just aren’t built to withstand the current levels of rainfall and flooding that continue to pose risks throughout the country,” said Forbes Tompkins, officer with the flood-prepared communities initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington. “Florence is just another example that we need to have more of a concerted effort governmentwide to make sure that we’re prepared for these storms.”

Efforts to pass federal legislation to boost disaster recovery and mitigation efforts, including a bill to reintroduce a federal flood risk management standard, have stalled in Congress, but some experts hope the devastation wreaked by Florence will focus attention on rising U.S. flood risk.

In August 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order revoking the establishment of a federal flood risk management standard - developed by an executive order signed by former President Barack Obama in January 2015 to encourage federal agencies to consider current and future risk when taxpayer dollars were used to build or rebuild near floodplains. A few days after the revocation, Hurricane Harvey devastated the Houston area, quickly followed by Hurricane Irma’s attack on Florida and Hurricane Maria’s battering of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.

“If not now, when is going to be the right time to develop an updated flood standard?” Mr. Tompkins said.

In November 2017, the Disaster Recovery Reform Act was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives to, among other things, provide incentives to invest in measures that increase readiness for and resilience from a future major disaster.

The bill "has some really crucial elements related to investing before disasters, incentivizing states to adopt statewide building codes and advancing greater resilience,” said Roy Wright, president and CEO of the Tampa-based Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety and the former chief executive of the NFIP. “Clearly, making those investments before a disaster has a very rich payback. Congress will do what it will do, but these kinds of disasters tend to have a focusing quality to help us get all the way to the finish line.”

The flooding seen with Hurricane Florence also brought renewed attention to the tenuous status of the NFIP, which was hours away from another expiration before it was extended to Nov. 30 — the last day of the official hurricane season.

The NFIP “can become a political football game (of) who wants to keep it a government-sponsored program vs. who wants to move it off into the private sector,” said Michael Korn, leader of Integro Insurance Brokers’ property practice based in San Francisco. “I think it’s going to continue to be the same way.”

“We had the storms last year, and they were even larger, and that didn’t really move Congress very much on the issue,” said R.J. Lehmann, senior fellow for the conservative R Street Institute think tank in Washington.

Houston and Harris County, Texas, acted after Harvey dropped 52 inches of rain on the area in 2017, adopting requirements for new and substantially improved existing buildings within the 100-year and 500-year floodplains to be elevated a number of feet above the floodplain. In addition, Harris County voters on Aug. 25 approved $2.5 billion in bonds to finance flood damage reduction projects, with 85.6% of voters casting ballots in favor of the proposition.

“You have to applaud what Harris County and Houston have done in terms of driving future construction to be higher and stronger as well as the resilience bond that they passed,” Mr. Wright said.

But the rising frequency and intensity of extreme weather events require a solution, which may lead to either governments limiting or preventing future development in areas most vulnerable to flooding or people deciding that living in these areas is too risky, said Clark Schweers, BDO USA LLP’s forensic insurance and recovery practice leader in Washington.

“To date, the government hasn’t seemed willing to make that decision for the people and the people haven’t made that determination themselves,” he said.

Banning development in flood-prone areas, however, is likely not feasible, said John Heintz, a Washington-based partner with Blank Rome LLP. “That’s just an incredibly tough sell,” he said. “Houston didn’t develop in the floodplain until the population got to the point where it became necessary and economic. People have to go somewhere.”