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The Colorado County Hazard Mitigation Plan is in the required review process that occurs every five years as the policies in place are reviewed and determined if they provide the most appropriate preventative measures for potential hazards or disasters.
“The Hazard Mitigation Plan has been in place over 15 years to my knowledge,” Emergency Management Coordinator Charles Roger said, “It has to go through a review and meet the approval of FEMA and the state every five years. Within this plan is every identified threat or hazard that our county usually faces.”
The Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 set the legislation in place to require proactive planning for potential disasters and made the adoption of a mitigation plan to be a prerequisite to receive certain grant funding in response to disasters. The review process starts in-house with the Office of Emergency management as they discuss which of the previous policies still apply to the county’s current needs.
The process includes identifying potential risks specific to the area, assessing the impact and cost of risk to physical, social and economic assets, finding vulnerable places to hazards and then the inclusion of the public’s perspective on their own personal experiences.
“Not every threat has a mitigation answer,” Roger said, “But we can change our building codes, maybe how we change how we install things.”
According to the most recent Hazard Mitigation plan available on the county website, there is a wide variety of hazards that are reviewed and planned for in Colorado County. Flooding, hail, hurricanes, tornados, dam failure lightning are some of the natural hazards that have caused concern in the area. Things like the severe winter weather experienced in the 2021 Winter Storm Uri were also part reviewed as part of the most recent hazard plan.
Most recently, drought, extreme heat and wildfire have been the most prevalent hazards after one of the hottest summers on average in Texas history. Due to the heat, expansive soil is also an issue as the cracked earth due to dry soil can damage building foundation and other structures like pipelines.
“It’s just a myriad of subjects that are identified threats because: either we identify the threats, or we have past experiences,” Roger said.
Each recommended measure to address these hazards is given a mitigation action ranking, a department responsible for overseeing its enaction as well as the potential cost and funding sources for the action.
While many of the details regarding the plan are discussed within the committee, the impact of the public comments cannot be overstated. Understanding how the hazards impact residents at a personal level is truly at the heart of what the HMP is intended to accomplish. The goal is to reduce the risk of hazards to residents’ physical property, livelihood or personal health.
“The public provides those personal experiences that maybe didn’t get reported, but they had some damage,” Roger said, “We gather that and put it into the plan which helps us to validate requests for grants and funding.”
The Office of Emergency Management highly recommends that county residents partake in the review survey to leave their experiences for review by the committee. Residents can visit www.surveymonkey. com/ r/ ZPH3RL6 to leave their comments. The public is also invited to attend a series of future meetings to discuss the mitigation plan and to include their comments in person. The date of those meetings will be reported as they are selected.
