Hazard Mitigation Plans

[neiowa]

I need to develop/write a Hazard Mitigation Plan for out small town. With Katrina DHS grant funding for hiring this is gone. The "stuff" our local COG was cranking out for neighboring communities using the DHS $ is worthless canned BS anyhow. Big surprise that a COG is a black hole where gov't grant $ go to die.

Anyone have links to some decent smaller size community Hazard Mitigation Plans?

[Dalmatian190]

LOL...

Sorry I can't help NEIOWA...

You did make me chuckle because our Local Community Emergency Plan is the same thing -- 700 or whatever pages of nearly irrelevant boiler plate BS filtered through the Word search-and-replace feature on a computer at our local Council of Governments.

(Well, anyway here's my speculation...

Without having looked at a "Hazard Mitigation Plan" I would look at stating the primary hazard anticipated for a small, rural community is a natural disaster -- earth, wind, water, or fire event.

Earth -- not sure how they rank earthquake risks; I know from the paper a small town in MA was looking to by a defunct store as their new Police building and scrapped it since Federal regulations where calling for the PD building to be earthquake hardened (I assume tied to a grant to fund the builidng).

Wind -- Certainly tornadoes & microbursts should be planned for. Can't stop them, but what can ease the response -- things like station / shelter generators; fuel for apparatus; community notification; hardening of critical buildings like town hall, schools, firehouse, shelters with hurricane windows and like construction stuff.

Water -- do you have flood hazards; and certainly in Iowa you could have an ice storm or isolation caused by blizzard conditions.

Fire -- Wildfire is certainly an event nature is in control of...is there any risk for large grassland or similiar event? Perhaps a risk of wildfire (like wind or ice) cutting power lines into town?

Can our buildings keep our equipment safe? Anyone we evacuated?
Can we independently provide power to those buildings for ______ or more? (Blank being how long your power company estimates "worse case" for your area).
Can we pump fuel into our trucks without utility power?
Do we have drinking water without utility power?

I know if I had my station standing, my trucks running, power on to run everything from radio chargers to resident's Oxygen generators to the well, and potable water...I'd be thinking we're in pretty good shape.