Educating your community and increasing awareness about potential emergencies are other ways Task Force 7 can offer assistance. Avoiding unneccessary remediation and unwanted recovery efforts are just some of the immediate benefits.
Education and Awareness
Public and Individual Assistance Plans
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Emergency Watershed Protection Program
The program is designed to help people and conserve natural resources by relieving imminent hazards to life and property caused by floods, fires, windstorms, and other natural occurrences. EWP is an emergency recovery program. All projects undertaken, apart from the purchase of floodplain easements, must have a project sponsor. NRCS may bear up to 75 percent of the construction cost of emergency measures.
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Hazard Mitigation Grant Program
Provides grants to states and local governments to implement long-term hazard mitigation measures after a major disaster declaration. The purpose of the HMGP is to reduce the loss of life and property due to natural disasters and to enable mitigation measures to be implemented during the immediate recovery from a disaster.
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Flood Mitigation Assistance Program
Provides funds for projects to reduce or eliminate risk of flood damage to buildings that are insured under the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) on an annual basis. There are three types of FMA grants available to applicants:
a) Planning Grants to prepare flood mitigation plans
b) Project Grants to implement measures to reduce flood losses, such as elevation, acquisition, or relocation of NFIP-insured structures
c) Management Cost Grants for the grantee to help administer the FMA program and activities -
Community Assistance Program
This program provides funding to states to provide technical assistance to communities in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and to evaluate community performance in implementing NFIP floodplain management activities.
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Disaster Assistance
Provides money or direct assistance to individuals, families, and businesses in an area whose property has been damaged or destroyed and whose losses are not covered by insurance.
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Disaster Unemployment Assistance
Provides unemployment benefits and re-employment services to individuals who have become unemployed because of major disasters.
Climate Change Adaptation Planning
Task Force 7 breaks this down into two categories.
1) Comprehensive Adaptation Planning - The assessment of vulnerabilities across a broad range of government services as an effective approach to anticipate, plan for, and adapt to changing climate.
2) Sector Based Adaptation Planning – Awareness can vary across different industries and sectors of the community. Sector Based planning allows the planning efforts to be focused within a specific department or sector.
Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Planning
Provides flexible grants to help cities, counties, and States recover from Presidentially declared disasters, especially in low-income areas, subject to availability of supplemental appropriations. In response to Presidentially declared disasters, Congress may appropriate additional funding for the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program as Disaster Recovery grants to rebuild the affected areas and provide crucial seed money to start the recovery process.
Hazard Mitigation Plans
Hazard Mitigation Planning reduces loss of life and property by minimizing the impact of disasters. This begins with state, tribal, and local governments identifying natural disaster risks and vulnerabilities that are common in their area. After identifying these risks, they develop long-term strategies for protecting people and property from similar events. Mitigation plans are crucial in “breaking the cycle” of disaster damage and reconstruction.
Prevention, Mitigation, and Resilience Planning
Typically, this is a part of the five phases of emergency management.
1) Prevention - The stopping or limiting of hazard occurrences regardless of their origin (Man-made, Technological, Natural, or hybrid)
2) Mitigation - Plans to address a wide range of or community specific, natural, man-made, technological, or hybrid disasters. This is performed in 4 phases.
a) . Risk assessment.
b) Capabilities assessment.
c) Mitigation and strategy.
d) Plan Maintenance.
3) Preparedness
4) Response
5) Recovery (Can incorporate resilience planning to strengthen the affected communities from future occurrences.)
Education and Awareness
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Public Health Plans
An expansion to the Hazard Mitigation Plan, Community officials use a hazard mitigation plan to identify resiliency goals, risks, and potential mitigation projects. Though public health issues have not historically been addressed through mitigation projects, people in the health field also plan proactively to make populations more resilient. By bringing public health and community officials together, they can work together toward the common goal of minimizing the impacts of disasters. Public health experts can offer important insights in areas such as: a) Physical and mental health challenges b) Environmental hazards and communicable disease c) Public health data
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Strategic Planning
Mission, goals and strategies employed to keep personnel safe, safe secure, and resilient. A common framework to analyze and inform managements decision, including strategic guidance operational requirements performance reporting and mission guidelines.