EMHSA says it will hold a series of public meetings later this year to discuss information about the Hazard Mitigation Plan, including the hazards identified by survey respondents. Photo: Sum+It, Pexels

Within the past ten days, the military shot down a UFO over Lake Huron and a toxic train explosion rocked East Palestine, Ohio,  threatening part of the state’s water supply. Without pointing to these situations directly, Hamilton County Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency (EMHSA) has decided that now is a good time to revisit its Hazard Mitigation Plan.

According to a Feb. 13 press release, EMHSA is in the process of updating its Hazard Mitigation Plan, which assesses threats from hazards like “flooding, tornadoes, and hazardous material spills, and identifies actions that can be taken to reduce the long-term risk from disasters and lessen the impact to human life and property.”

EMHSA is asking Hamilton County residents and businesses to fill out an online survey about how prepared they are for a major emergency, including how thy seek out emergency information and how likely they are to flee in the case of a mandatory evacuation.  The survey also asks what kind of disasters residents think pose the greatest risk to the area, including:

  • civil disorder/riot
  • cyber attack
  • Incident dam/levee failure
  • drought
  • earthquake
  • extreme cold
  • extreme heat   
  • flash flooding
  • flooding: riverine
  • hazardous materials incident (example: chemical spill)
  • high wind and tornado
  • infrastructure and structural failure (example: bridge collapse)
  • land loss (example: sinkhole, subsidence, erosion)
  • landslide
  • mass transportation incident (example: train derailment)
  • public health emergency (example: pandemic disease)
  • severe winter storm (example: heavy snowfall, ice storm)
  • severe thunderstorm
  • terrorism / active assailant incident
  • urban fires
  • wildfires

Other questions included, “If a disaster (i.e., snowstorm) impacted Hamilton County, knocking out electricity and running water, would your household be able to manage on its own for at least three (3) days?” and “In an evacuation, would you or anyone in your household require special assistance?”

EMHSA says it will hold a series of public meetings later this year to discuss information about the Hazard Mitigation Plan, including which hazards concerned survey respondents the most. Click here to access the survey, which takes about ten minutes to complete.

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This article appears in Feb 8-21, 2023.