(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson county board of supervisors Tuesday signed off on a hazard mitigation plan for the county and its cities. Mike Ehret, the county’s Emergency Management Coordinator, tells KUOO news the Federal Emergency Management Agency requires counties have such a plan in place and that it be updated every few years…(click here for comment.) “FEMA requires the counties to have that plan in place. It addresses the issues that are most commonly the cause of a federal disaster declaration to be issued, whether it’s a winter storm, a severe weather or wind storm, tornado, what have you. So it addresses those issues. What we did is the cities and the county got together and we went through each of those different items and looked at ways you could mitigate those disasters or lessen the impact, so went through and identified all those. Northwest Iowa Planning down in Spencer put the plan together for us. It’s been to Des Moines, it’s been to FEMA. They’ve all signed off on it so now it’s up to the cities and the board of supervisors to formally adopt the plan, which they did this morning.”
Ehret says having the plan in place is important for another reason...”What that plan also opens for the door for is to use any mitigation funds that might come available when there’s a federal disaster declaration made. For example the 2008 and 2010 floods in Iowa. There was a lot of mitigation funds that came into the state. It was actually those funds that allowed Superior and West Okoboji to get their siren paid for. The cities only had to pay 15 percent of the total cost because they had the plans in place and they were up to speed on those. So it does benefit us to have this plan in place, definitely.”
Dickinson county contracts with the Sioux City Fire Department for any hazardous material clean-up. So far, Ehret says he hasn’t had to call for that service and he hopes it stays that way.
