LIBERTY — Amite County Supervisors agreed Monday to participate in a regional hazard mitigation plan at Monday’s meeting.
County Emergency Manager Grant McCurley said the county is required to rewrite its hazard mitigation plan every five years to coordinate a response to emergencies such as hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding and wildfires.
“This plan covers the possibilities and the effects and outlines ways that the community could possibly prohibit or reduce the likelihood of natural and manmade disasters and helps us mitigate those effects of those disasters,” McCurley said.
He contrasted the differences in responding to tornadoes and hurricanes.
“Tornadoes are a little bit more shorter of an alert time, but hurricanes we usually have a little bit more heads up as to when it’s going to affect us and a good estimate as to how severe it’s going to be and we work with the county supervisors to inform them so that they’re prepared to possibly put a road wave if there’s large amounts of trees that are knocked down,” he said. “As far as tornadoes are concerned, we have purchased a smartphone application that, once downloaded, to notify the folks who have downloaded the application of inclement weather and it gives the severity of the weather along with a trajected path from the National Weather Service.”
McCurley said the hazard mitigation plan could create other opportunities.
“This plan does open up the opportunity for hazard mitigation grants through the federal government so based upon the identified hazards, there are programs that the federal government will support to reduce the impact of a disaster,” he said.
