HAZARD MITIGATION
What is Hazard Mitigation?
Hazard mitigation describes actions taken to help reduce or eliminate long-term risks caused by hazards or disasters, such as flooding, tornadoes, wildfires, winter storms, or hurricanes. As the costs of disaster management and recovery continue to rise, governments and citizens must find ways to reduce hazard risks to our communities. While communities make plans and approve new developments and improvements to existing infrastructure, mitigation can and should be an important component of the planning effort.
While mitigations can and should be taken before a disaster occurs, hazard mitigation is also essential after a disaster. Often after disasters, repairs and reconstruction are completed in such a way as to simply restore damaged property to pre-disaster conditions. These efforts may get the community back to normal for a time, but the replication of pre-disaster conditions may result in a repetitive cycle of damage, reconstruction, and repeated damage. This recurrent reconstruction becomes more expensive as years go by.
Hazard mitigation breaks this repetitive cycle by taking a long-term view of rebuilding and recovering following disasters. The implementation of such hazard mitigation actions leads to building stronger, safer and smarter communities that are better able to reduce future injuries and future damage.
Somerset County Hazard Mitigation Plan
The 2022 Somerset County Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan was adopted by the Somerset County Commissioners, the Town of Princess Anne and the City of Crisfield. The purpose of the Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan is to prevent or reduce loss of life and injury as well as limit damage costs from various hazards through the development of mitigation methods which lessen or eliminate future damage.
This is accomplished by reviewing, assessing, and updating the County’s vulnerabilities to natural hazards. The result of the assessment will be short-term and long-term strategies that address hazards identified in the plan. These strategies aim to prevent future damage and loss of life to Somerset County’s residents and businesses.
In order to address the hazards and develop mitigation and resiliency strategies, the Somerset County Stakeholder Committee was formed. In addition, a Core Planning Team was formed to help guide the development of the plan, assess the project timeline, milestones, and establish agendas.
The 2022 plan is an update to the 2017 Hazard Mitigation Plan.
