#Summit County #Colorado
What are the biggest dangers to living in Summit County, and how do people work proactively to lower the risk?
Those are the questions being put to community members as officials once again ask for public feedback in finalizing the Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan update — a comprehensive document meant to guide public safety policy and outline hazard mitigation projects over the next five years.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency requires each county to update its plan every five years. After five months of development, including an online community survey and input from numerous stakeholders, the Summit County Office of Emergency Management unveiled a draft of the new plan Monday evening.
“It’s a lot of work, and there are a lot of moving parts,” county Emergency Management Director Brian Bovaird said. “The benefit that we have is that our existing plan is very comprehensive, and it gave us a really good base to go off of. This will give us a really good description of what hazards we face and our exposure to them.”
The plan — a bulky 665 page document including separate annexes for the county’s towns and special districts — identifies and ranks potential hazards by severity and probably to happen, and provides insight on mitigation strategies for each.
Unsurprisingly, the most significant hazards noted in the plan deal with wildfires, floods, avalanches and severe winter weather.As the plan nears completion, officials are hoping to collect more public input before moving forward with adoption. Community members can access the draft plan on the emergency management page of the county’s website, along with another online survey to provide comments or suggestions through March 3.
Courtesy Summit Daily.
