Pre-Disaster Mitigation Plan Update
Read the "News Feed" section for explanations to some of the top responses in the survey, and come to a pre-disaster mitigation workshop from 5-7 p.m. Wednesday, June 21.
From wildfires and blizzards to floods and drought, Missoula County experiences its share of hazards. The Office of Emergency Management is updating the local Pre-Disaster Mitigation Plan to better help the County and its residents prepare for and mitigate potential disasters. The survey to better inform our planning process about the hazards that concern you most has now closed. Click "Selected Results" under the Documents tab on the right-hand side to see some of the top five responses to survey questions.
Staff have preliminarily provided explanations to some of the top responses in the survey in the "News Feed" section below. The next opportunity for public engagement will be a Pre-Disaster Mitigation Planning workshop on Wednesday, June 21. This workshop will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. in the South Room at the Elections Center Building at 140 N Russell St, Missoula. Members of the public from throughout Missoula County are encouraged to attend. Public input is critical because your engagement will help prioritize future mitigation strategies. Mitigation strategies are wide-ranging and include everything from elevating or removing existing infrastructure from flood-prone areas to educating residents on how to prepare their homes for a disaster.
The pre-disaster plan, a federal requirement that’s updated every five years, goes through a detailed process of analyzing, ranking and profiling all natural hazards in a geographic area. Through this analysis, Missoula County and City can gain a better understanding of the probability of certain natural disasters and the impacts of past disasters. This analysis helps local government and the public better understand not only what is most likely to occur, but also what potential impacts those disasters could have on critical infrastructure, private property and our communities. The most important component of the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Plan is developing mitigation strategies that aim to minimize the impacts of these disasters.
Updating the existing Pre-Disaster Mitigation plan will take eight to 10 months. Missoula County has hired Integrated Solutions Consulting to update the plan. One of the first steps of this process is getting public input on hazards within all areas of Missoula County and within the city limits. Integrated Solutions is currently doing a formal scientific analysis of local hazards, but we need public input to validate these findings. Take the survey below, then click “Follow Project” to stay up to date on the survey results and future engagement opportunities.