The Hazard Mitigation Plan in Hays

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Table of Contents

The Mitigation Plan of Hays County
Chief Resilience Officer (CRO) Responsibilities
Measures of the Hays County Mitigation Plan
Analysis of Mitigation Plans
What People Expect from the Mitigation Plan?
Strengths and Weaknesses of The Hays County’s Plan
Areas for improvement
FEMA: hazard mitigation planning process
Reference

The Mitigation Plan of Hays County

Hays developed its first mitigation plan in 2003. The reason why it should exist is the high risk of natural disasters in certain regions. Those are hurricanes, hailstorms, tornadoes, floods, droughts, earthquakes, and others; those mentioned are the most common for Hays county. Despite being not very common, the population should be ready for them and, in case of any, act quickly. Otherwise, the harm can be extremely high, and the neglect of mitigation measures will cost both human lives and money.

Four phases of the mitigation plan can be specified. First is the organizing phase: it is fully described here, as it is the initiatory phase. CRO should organize the necessary meetings and develop strategies. Especially important is the outreach strategy, aimed at informing and educating the population about how to react in case of emergency. The second is the phase of risks assessment associated with possible natural disasters; based on it, planners develop the mitigation strategy at the third phase. The fourth phase is the direct implementation of measures developed in the three other phases, as well as the maintenance and update of the whole plan.

Chief Resilience Officer (CRO) Responsibilities

The chief resilience officer manages all four phases of mitigation plan creation. CRO is responsible for the mitigation plan content, its implementation, and reviewing and the contacts between planners, stakeholders, and the population. Planners are those responsible for plan creation, reviewing, and implementation: in Hays, it is the Mitigation Planning Committee, which members are elected or appointed by the officials. Stakeholders are companies, which will be involved in case of disasters: those include, but are not limited to, water companies, fire departments, interned providers, community services, government services. They are directly involved in the mitigation process, for example, by water supplying or fire extinguishing.

One can see the risk assessment process steps here, which is the Phase 2 of the mitigation plan. It is one of the primary tasks of CROs. They should describe hazards precisely and identify all community assets which can be used for mitigation and stakeholder companies associated with them. Then, CROs should analyze hazards and risks precisely and be ready to interview people and learn archives of previous disasters. Lastly, they should summarize all information and use it for the mitigation strategy development with the Mitigation Planning Committee.

Measures of the Hays County Mitigation Plan

After the risk evaluation, description, and analysis, CRO should meet with planners and develop the mitigation strategy. It is the heart of the plan: the actual instruction of what should be done in the case of a disaster. First, planners should set clear goals based on a risk assessment: what should be done for mitigating and preventing the catastrophic outcome. Second, specific actions should be identified and described, including their implementation to prepare, prevent, and mitigate the disaster. Then, all resources and capabilities should be evaluated: what can be done, for example, by different officials and stakeholders to prevent the disaster. For example, the sheriff can help with the evacuation, and the civil engineer can reduce the damage to infrastructure. In Step 4, specific actions are defined, described; they are integrated in the plan in Step 5. The whole strategy is implemented in the Phase 4 of the mitigation plan.

Analysis of Mitigation Plans

To see whether the plan is good or not, one should evaluate how it can be implemented in case of disaster. Table 3 from the study of Horney et al. shows the mean scores for 84 mitigation plans analyzed in rural areas in the Southeastern United States and compares them with 175 mitigation plans from six different states (2016). They have calculated the scores by analyzing whether a given plan contains items associated with a plan quality.

One can see that mitigation plans have, in general, low quality. They have well-established goals, and planners are well in risk analysis and organizational activity. However, they are mostly bad at implementing their strategies in practice. In addition to that, their policies are usually weak and fail to organize the coordination between different organizations. That means that, despite planners being good at gathering and analyzing risks, setting goals, and developing strategies, they are bad at directly implementing their strategies. The communications between different groups of population – planners, stakeholders, and communities, are poorly established. It creates a disconnect between them: as a result, they cannot prevent destructive outcomes efficiently.

What People Expect from the Mitigation Plan?

In that way, people are usually not very interested in mitigation measures: training, education, and mitigation plan reviewing. Due to the disconnect, the public feels uninvolved in mitigation planning and prefers not to think about disasters, despite being concerned by their vulnerability. In the research of Horney et al., researchers have interviewed people from the rural regions of the Southeastern United States (2016). People are concerned with overall vulnerability, which they feel in life. According to the study, most people have no knowledge about the content of the mitigation plan and how they should implement it: that is a significant problem. Planners can reduce it by presenting clear steps and instructions on how to reduce vulnerability. Overall, despite mitigation plans being a great tool to prevent destructive outcomes, additional actions are needed to solve the problems with disasters.

Strengths and Weaknesses of The Hays County’s Plan

Now, after analyzing mitigation plans in general, one can elucidate the strengths and weaknesses of Hays County’s Plan. First, the Hays County Mitigation Plan has a clear, well-developed structure consisting of four phases. It is a great advantage, as a good-structured plan is more reliable and easier to implement. The second advantage is that the Mitigation Planning Committee creates connections with stakeholders by sending them emails with invitations to their meetings. Third, the Planning Committee uses newspapers extensively to inform the population about the mitigation plan: the example is the excerpt from the newspaper San Marcos Daily Record. It helps in solving the problem of disconnection.

The main weakness of the Plan is the absence of explicit instruction on how to act. They should be created and presented to the public to decrease the gap between it and the Planning Committee. Another weakness is the lack of proper education and training; it is not appropriately implemented despite it being mentioned in the plan. Without instructions and adequate education, people will barely be able to act properly during the disaster.

Areas for improvement

Here one can see the scheme used to review, organize and update the mitigation plan. There are four stages of reviewing, corresponding to the four stages of the plan. The improvements for each stage are based on the strengths and weaknesses of the Hays Mitigation Plan and the analysis of mitigation plans in general.

In the first stage, planners review the plan and confirm whether all information is actual. Encouraging the community members to participate in meetings will be an advantage for plan development: it will decrease the disconnect between the mitigation plan and the population. In the second phase, where CRO and planners collect the hazard history and check for the assets, the plan can be improved by interviews with the stakeholders and community members interested in the mitigation process.

More connections between stakeholders, planners, and the public should be created in the third stage when updating the mitigation strategy. For example, planners should conclude agreements about resource usage with stakeholders. It will allow to prepare more efficiently and to reduce expenses and losses during the disaster.

In the fourth stage, implementing clear and mandatory public instructions will be a great improvement. They will allow acting more efficiently during the critical situation and, again, will decrease the disconnect between the mitigation plan and the public. They will involve the population in solving the disaster issues directly.

FEMA: hazard mitigation planning process

Local communities’ planners create mitigation plans on the scheme, which can be seen here. At first, they create a plan based on their own data, as was described in the presentation. Then, they coordinate it with the consultant team, and then they together send the final draft to the state officials. After their approval, the plan comes to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), which should approve the plan based on their criteria. One can find them on its official site. Then, the plan should be signed and adopted; after that, FEMA finally approves it. The plan starts to perform its function in preventing catastrophic outcomes right after that. In that way, improving the planning process at the federal level will automatically lead to improving local mitigation plans.

Reference

Horney, J., Nguyen, M., Salvesen, D., Dwyer, C., Cooper, J., & Berke, P. (2016). Assessing the quality of rural hazard mitigation plans in the Southeastern United States. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 37(1), 56–65.

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