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Mid-Missouri Regional Planning Commission Introduces Changes to Boone County Hazard Mitigation Plan

Lisa Jacobs
/
Flickr

 

Officials from the Mid-Missouri Regional Planning Commission are making major changes to Boone County’s Hazard Mitigation Plan. 

Regional Planners presented a draft for the county’s plan at a public meeting Wednesday at the Boone County Fire Protection District in Columbia. 

This year, officials are expanding the plan into an “All Hazards” plan, which would include response strategies for human-made and technological hazards.  The commission last updated the plan in 2010, and it only included responses to natural disasters.  This plan is regularly updated every five years and the current plan will expire on Nov. 8. 

Regional Planner Susan Galeota says writing extra plans for human-made and technological hazards has been a time-consuming process.

“It’s a large change, mainly because we’re needing to write these sections of the plan pretty much from scratch,” says Galeota.  “So it’s a matter of getting together a lot of people that have the information and trying to consolidate all that information.”

The ‘All Hazards” plan will include the usual standards for responding to natural disasters such as earthquakes, tornados and sever winter storms.  As a major change, the plan will also include response strategies for more hazards, including cyber-attacks, communicable disease pandemics and active shooter situations.

Josh Creamer, the Deputy Director for the Boone County Office of Emergency Management, says the “All Hazards” plan will help prepare Boone County for a wider range of hazards.

“Really all hazards share similar characteristics, so rather than having a thousand little individual plans, let’s just plan overall,” says Creamer. “If something bad happens, this is an ‘All Hazards’ approach. No matter what the hazard is, no matter what happens, this is how we’re going to respond to it.”

Creamer says it is tough to estimate an exact amount of funding for the new response procedures because they have never been implemented before.  He says most of the funding for hazard mitigation becomes available after a natural disaster or other incident occurs.

“We will be in a position with the plan, both from the natural hazards perspective and then also the technological and man-made, that if something happens, we have a package ready to go to the state,” says Creamer.

Creamer says city governments, public school districts, universities, and other municipalities in Boone County have given input on the new and existing hazard response plans.

Galeota says they will hold one more public presentation in May before submitting the plan to the State Emergency Management Agency in June.  After approval, SEMA will forward the plan to FEMA for federal approval.