DEM Mitigation Office Update - State Hazard Mitigation Plan

The Mitigation and Recovery Team hosted two planning meetings which moved the team closer to two objectives: the development of a practical and thorough recovery plan and updating the State Hazard Mitigation Plan for submission to FEMA; Both meetings took place during the morning of May 13 in the Tommy Grier Conference Room.

The Recovery Meeting, entitled Goal Leader, took a critical look at the previous recovery exercise which envisioned a tornado event in a metro area. Many snags and potential problems were discovered during the review of the exercise but, as it is the point of these exercises to discover potential problems before they are faced in a real situation the table top exercise can be considered a success. The table top exercise brought in partners who will be tasked with recovery in future disasters together and challenged them to come up with solutions to recovery problems.

The next Goal Leader meeting has been tentatively scheduled for July 22.

The Mitigation team then hosted their third meeting for the 2011 State Hazard Mitigation Plan update. This meeting focused on Consequence Analysis, a new element that has been added to the Mitigation Plan as CDEM complies with the standards of the Emergency Management Accreditation Program (EMAP), and Risk Assessment. Consequence Analysis is an attempt to discern the impacts a potential hazard would have on the state’s emergency response and examines such things as continuity of operations, delivery of services, environment and public confidence.

Those present were then given updates on the state wide risk assessment for drought and wildfire hazards by Jeff Brislawn of AMEC and Claire Brown of the Colorado State Forest Service, respectively. Last, a group activity was organized in which participants were asked to provide their expertise and “outside the box” thinking with regard to Consequence Analysis in relation to summer weather (tornado, hail, lightning, precipitation), winter weather, flood, fire and earthquake.

For questions regarding this post or for more information on DEM's mitigation office, contact DEM's Scott Baldwin.