Old Orchard Beach, ME Coastal Insurance Guide

January 9-13, 2024: The Goosefare Brook Dune Breach

A multi-day storm in January 2024 pushed a storm surge through eroded dunes near Goosefare Brook, flooding more than 75 homes in the Ocean Park neighborhood, with some houses taking on four feet of water, per WGME's reporting on the town's recovery effort. Ocean Park is the historic Free Will Baptist Chautauqua-retreat neighborhood within OOB, and this was the specific location where the town's dune line failed.

Town Manager Diana Asanza put the near-miss in context afterward: those dunes protected hundreds of homes and businesses from more severe flooding, she said, meaning the damage would have been considerably worse without the dune system that was already in place. That framing matters for anyone evaluating flood exposure here: OOB's dunes are functioning infrastructure, not just scenery, and this storm is the clearest evidence of both their value and their limits.

The Federal Response: Major Disaster Declaration ME-4764-DR

The January 2024 storm damage triggered a federal Major Disaster Declaration, ME-4764-DR, issued March 20, 2024, covering eight Maine counties including York County, where OOB sits. That declaration authorized FEMA's Individuals and Households Program and related recovery assistance, processed through DisasterAssistance.gov and through York County Disaster Recovery Centers, per OOB's own town website.

That federal declaration is the funding backbone behind the dune-rebuild work described below. It is a real, dated, confirmed federal action, not a proposal, and it is specific to this storm event rather than to the separate flood-map story that follows.

A Separate, Concurrent Story: FEMA's Appealed Flood Map Update

Running alongside the storm-recovery effort, but genuinely distinct from it, is a flood-map regulatory story specific to OOB. The town's prior Flood Insurance Rate Maps dated from 1984-85, and its floodplain-management ordinance had last been updated in 1986. FEMA issued a letter dated January 17, 2024, declaring updated flood-hazard determinations final and requiring OOB to adopt new maps and a new ordinance by July 17, 2024, to remain in the National Flood Insurance Program, per the town's own FEMA flood-maps page at oobmaine.com.

The town appealed the initial proposed maps and won a real reduction: the appeal achieved a smaller extent of regulated flood zones and lower base flood elevations in some areas than FEMA had originally proposed, meaning fewer OOB properties ended up newly regulated than the initial maps would have required. Do not conflate this with the January 2024 storm above; the two events shared a calendar year and a general subject, flooding, but one is a regulatory mapping process with an appeal outcome, and the other is physical storm damage to homes near Goosefare Brook. A buyer should treat both as real and current, and as two separate things.

The 2025-2026 Dune Rebuild: Two Phases, Still Not a Permanent Fix

A dune-restoration project of more than $1 million, funded primarily through federal and state disaster assistance tied to ME-4764-DR, is underway in two phases. Phase 1, at the Goosefare Brook area where the January 2024 breach occurred, began the week of January 13, 2026, placing 1,400 cubic yards of sand across 400 feet of beach. Phase 2, covering the northern beach section more than half a mile north of the Pier, followed the next week, placing 4,500 cubic yards of sand sourced from a quarry in Dayton, Maine, along with sea-grass planting for dune stabilization, per WGME's coverage of the project.

Town officials are explicit that this is not a permanent solution. Much more sand will need to be brought in or dredged as sea levels rise, per the same reporting, and the town is preparing for the possibility of future 100-year flood events. Treat the completed 2026 work as a real, current, partial rebuild of dunes that failed once already, not as a resolved flood-risk problem.

What This Page Cannot Tell You About Zones and Rates

This research did not find a specific FEMA flood-zone breakdown for OOB, meaning there is no confirmed count of how many parcels sit in FEMA's VE coastal high-hazard zone versus its AE standard floodplain zone town-wide. That is a genuine gap, not an oversight, and it should be closed at the parcel level rather than assumed from a town-wide estimate.

The two places that will actually answer a specific address are FEMA's own Flood Map Service Center at msc.fema.gov, checked against that parcel, and OOB's own FEMA flood-maps page at oobmaine.com, which documents the appealed map outcome described above but does not itself substitute for a parcel-specific lookup.

What Historical Hurricane Records Do Not Confirm

No well-documented, OOB-specific damage account tied to a named hurricane landfall, such as the 1938 Great New England Hurricane or 1991's Hurricane Bob, was confirmed in this research. That gap is disclosed here rather than filled with an assumption. The January 2024 winter-storm sequence, not a named hurricane, remains the strongest current, sourced storm-damage narrative available for OOB, and any claim of hurricane-specific damage here needs direct NOAA primary-source verification before publication.

It is also worth separating OOB's own story from its neighbor's. Immediately south, the Camp Ellis section of Saco has a long-documented, federally studied severe erosion problem tied to a 19th-century Army Corps jetty that redirected sediment along Saco Bay, and a new Camp Ellis jetty project began construction as recently as 2023. Camp Ellis shares the same regional Saco Bay sediment system as OOB's beaches, which makes it a relevant regional factor, but it is Saco's own infrastructure and erosion story, not an OOB landmark or an OOB-specific problem.

Shoreland Zoning Still Applies

Maine's statewide Mandatory Shoreland Zoning Act, administered by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, applies to OOB the same way it applies to every Maine coastal municipality, governing setbacks, vegetation clearing, and development near the shoreline. This page confirms that general applicability but did not extract OOB's own specific setback distances or the current text of its 1986-era floodplain ordinance, which the town was required to update as part of the flood-map process described above. Anyone planning new construction, a rebuild, or dune-adjacent work on an OOB lot should pull the town's current ordinance directly rather than assume a generic statewide setback number applies to a specific parcel.

Before You Budget an Insurance Number

This page has not priced a policy for any OOB property, and it has not confirmed a parcel-specific FEMA flood zone, a base flood elevation, or a Community Rating System class for any given address. What is confirmed: the January 2024 storm breached dunes near Goosefare Brook and flooded more than 75 Ocean Park homes; a federal Major Disaster Declaration, ME-4764-DR, followed on March 20, 2024; FEMA separately finalized updated flood maps that OOB appealed and narrowed; and a two-phase, $1 million-plus dune rebuild ran through January 2026, explicitly framed by town officials as a partial fix rather than a permanent one.

Two concrete next steps will actually answer what this page cannot: look up the specific parcel's flood zone directly through FEMA's Map Service Center at msc.fema.gov, and get a written quote from a Maine-licensed insurance agent who can price that exact address under current flood maps and current underwriting rules. Also pull oobmaine.com's FEMA flood-maps page directly, since it documents the appealed outcome in more detail than this page can summarize. Do not assume a neighboring town's numbers, whether it is Wells's dune-rebuild figures, Ogunquit's Marginal Way storm story, or a premium quoted elsewhere on this coast, apply here without checking. This page is independent research and general information, not insurance, legal, or financial advice; confirm every figure with a licensed Maine insurance agent, and where relevant a financial advisor, before making a purchase decision.