Hazard Mitigation

Hazard Mitigation is the sustained action taken to reduce or eliminate long-term risk to people and property from hazards and their effects. The purpose of hazard mitigation planning is to identify policies and activities that can be implemented over the long term to reduce risk and future losses. 

Mitigation Plans form the foundation for a community’s long-term strategy to reduce disaster losses and break the cycle of disaster damage, reconstruction, and repeated damage. The planning process is as important as the plan itself. It creates a framework for risk-based decision-making to reduce damages to lives, property, and the economy from future disasters.

Kaysinger works with the Missouri State Emergency Management Association, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and local governments to develop local mitigation plans for our seven-county region. A current HMP allows your county and the included communities to be eligible for financial funding from FEMA for both pre-and post-disasters and is designed to help the participating communities become more sustainable and disaster-resistant through selecting the most appropriate mitigation measures. Hazard Mitigation Plans must be updated every five years. Kaysinger works closely with the counties and communities to ensure their HMP is current and up-to-date.
You can click on the links provided below for the most recently published plans.

Most Recent Published Plans

You can click on the links provided below for the most recently published plans.

 

A County Hazard Mitigation Plan is a multi-jurisdictional plan that identifies major hazards such as floods, thunderstorms, tornadoes, etc. that impact the jurisdictions within the county, and actions that can be taken to mitigate the negative consequences of those hazards. This plan must be updated every five years and reviewed annually. This is a requirement of federal law. Any participating jurisdiction is then eligible to apply for funding through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant programs. These grants can fund projects such as flood buyouts, tornado safe rooms, low water crossing replacements, structure elevation, and retrofitting of existing buildings.

Mitigation is the effort to reduce the loss of life and property by lessening the impact of disasters. For mitigation to be effective, we need to take action now before the next disaster to reduce human and financial consequences later (analyzing risk, reducing risk, and insuring against risk). It is important to know that disasters can happen at any time and any place and if we are not prepared, consequences can be fatal.

Without mitigation actions, we jeopardize our safety, financial security, and self-reliance. Disasters can happen at any time and in any place. Human and financial consequences are hard to predict. What we can change is the way we act to reduce the effects of these natural events on our families, our homes, our schools, our places of worship and learning, and the whole community. Without taking action, we can be sure we’ll get zero results, but by knowing the risks we face, and by taking appropriate action to reduce those risks, we’ll significantly better our chances of surviving the event and recovering more quickly.

Provide your input and participate in actions! Now is the opportunity to weigh-in on what hazards you view as a risk to your community and what actions should be taken to help mitigate negative impacts. Contact your local elected officials or Kaysinger Basin Regional Planning Commission, the office facilitating the update of the plan to provide your comments. Continue to check back here for a list of upcoming meetings in your county.

FEMA and SEMA have a significant amount of information on Hazard Mitigation. Check out the following websites for more details:

MOSEMA: Mitigation Management

FEMA: What is Mitigation

The following natural hazards have been identified as posing potential risks in the KBRPC area:

  • Dam Failures
  • Drought
  • Earthquake
  • Extreme Heat
  • Flood (includes ravine flooding, flash flooding, and stormwater flooding)
  • Levee Failure
  • Land Subsidence/Sinkhole
  • Severe Winter Weather (Snow, Ice, and Extreme Cold)
  • Tornado and Thunderstorm (Lightning, Hail, and High Winds)
  • Wildfire
  1. Prevention
  2. Preparedness
  3. Response
  4. Recovery
  5. Mitigation

The planning process for County Hazard Mitigation Plans is underway for Benton and St. Clair counties. The plans are in different stages of the process but will be completed in 2021. Every five years, the State requires each County to update its plan to mitigate natural hazards, such as flooding, tornadoes, wind, ice, etc. Throughout the process, participants work to identify the type of natural hazards occurring within St. Clair and Benton Counties, analyze the monetary and physical impacts of these hazards, and identify action items to reduce the county’s vulnerability to these hazards. The planning teams have identified a Mitigation Strategy, a list of action steps taken today to reduce the loss of life and property in the future. By including actions into this plan, such as storm shelters, safe rooms, or even culverts, funding through FEMA and SEMA becomes available to cities, counties, not-for-profits, and school districts to address these actions. However, any non-participating jurisdiction becomes ineligible to apply.   The groups believe this plan addresses the county’s most pressing mitigation needs. If you have any additional questions about this process, please contact us at (660) 885-3393.