What is your town’s Mitigation Plan?
Decide on a town to research. We prefer that you use your hometown, if possible. As someone from the town, you will better understand town dynamics, town threats, town government, and maybe even town politics.
Find a copy of your town’s mitigation plan, if there is one, and analyze the plan.
Refer to APA FEMA Hazard Mitigation: Integrating Best Practices into Planning Chapter 2, page 19, which discusses the problems with town mitigation plans. In this section are specific criticisms of these types of plans.
Refer also to Drabek’s “Managing the Emergency Response” where he reviews town responses to a variety of disasters.
- Provide a short background analysis of your town’s location, population level, key industries, etc. (You might make use of census data and maps for this section of your report).
- Describe the mitigation plan:
- What possible threats has the town/city identified?
- What natural hazards and man-made hazards is the town preparing for in the mitigation plan?
- Are there warning systems included in the plans?
- Is there an emergency operations center?
- Are there community disaster exercises?
- What communication plans has the town created?
- Who is in charge when an emergency happens?
- Who does the pre-planning before a disaster happens?
- Who does the post-disaster planning after a disaster?
- Analyze the Plan:
After you have described the key points that the plan, put on your analysis hat. Does this plan seem to be a viable plan to follow during an emergency? Explain. Does this plan create a process for handling an emergency? Is this plan a product that sits on a shelf?
Think about the cycle of disaster that we have discussed in class: Mitigation➔Preparedness➔Response➔Recovery. Can you identify steps of emergency planning in your town’s mitigation plan? Does the mitigation plan recognize and touch on each aspect of the cycle of disasters? Explain.
Your memo should be no more than 5 pages, single-spaced, excluding tables, charts, and graphics.
A draft version of your memo is due Session 6. It’s OK if your draft exceeds the page count – more to work with!
The final version of the memo in proper formatting should be uploaded to the class website by Session 8.
