02/11/2013 County's pre-disaster plan ready for review By CHUCK CLEMENT, Staff Reporter Don Thomson Local officials from across Lake County and members of the public can review the plans created to deal with large-scale emergencies during a local community hazard workshop to be held in Madison on Thursday night. Don Thomson, county emergency management director, has scheduled a meeting to display the first revision of the Lake County's Multi-hazard Pre-disaster Mitigation Plan at 7 p.m. on Thursday in the lower level of the Public Safety Building. The building, on the north side of the courthouse, houses the Sheriff's Department and 911 Dispatch facility. The workshop will start with a briefing and then continue with a question-and-answer session. According to Thomson, officials and other interested persons can look over the plans and offer suggestions to help complete the document. The original plan was developed five years ago and its scheduled review, which started last winter, was a program requirement. Thomson said the Federal Emergency Management Agency also requires that officials make the document available for review by area residents. "This is an initial update to the original, and it's supposed to make our emergency preparations current," Thomson said. Some of the hazards that the document deals with include floods, severe winter storms, wildfires and windstorms. The pre-disaster mitigation efforts are intended to help local officials reduce or eliminate the damage caused by natural or manmade disasters. The mitigation plans that are created by agencies such as Lake County Emergency Management are supposed to help communities reduce their vulnerability to disasters. The document includes an inventory of the assets that Lake County possesses to deal with disasters. Other parts provide profiles of hazardous events and risk analysis. Thomson said that the mayors and city officials from Madison, Chester, Ramona, Rutland, Nunda and Wentworth were invited to Thursday's workshop. Other invitations were sent to planning and zoning boards, the county Highway Department, city Public Works Department, and groups that work on community development. Groups involved with first-response efforts such as fire departments, ambulance service, and Search & Rescue would also have an interest in attending the meeting. "I'm hoping that a lot of those organizations will show up," Thomson said. "Any organization or any person can provide input to what should go into the plan." The section on flooding in the pre-disaster mitigation plan should contain some information collected by the LEPC subcommittee which has worked on flood prevention and mitigation since last summer.

©Madison Daily Leader 2013