“Obviously we don’t have all the information that we need. Citizens live there — they know what the hazards are,” said Mary George, assistant planning director of Catawba County.
As a planner, George’s role involves incorporating the public in decisions, while the emergency managers focus on day-to-day issues. The emergency management officials felt that including a planner in the process would be beneficial because George is accustomed to holding community meetings to garner citizen input.
“We don’t know what’s out there, we don’t know what’s on the ground, we don’t know what programs people are doing on their own,” George said. “And we need to get that information so we can all work together, because obviously during a disaster we will work together, so we need to know ahead of time in order to put those plans into place.”
George said about 10 people attended the first meeting in May and about 15 people participated during the second meeting in July. An additional way for citizens to share their thoughts is through a survey posted on the county Web site. George said the survey will be active until mid-August and so far about 100 people have participated. “The last time we did this was five years ago, and we actually had more than 200 surveys, so we’re trying to make one last push here to get some input through those surveys,” she said.
One of the county’s participants was a 7-year-old boy who saw fliers advertising the meetings in a library and asked his mom to take him. George said this showed how important it is to include children in disaster planning. “They came to that community meeting, and he was really interested about this and about all the different events and what would happen and what could happen,” she said. “I thought that was really fantastic.”
The 7-year-old boy and other participants attended a county meeting to learn about and give comments on the new hazard mitigation plan. Photo courtesy of Catawba County, N.C.
The county also developed a connection with the Contingency Planning Association of the Carolinas (CPAC), which is a professional peer group that shares information, education and resources in contingency planning in North and South Carolina, according to its Web site. A CPAC representative attended the meeting to develop a relationship with the county. “We now know that there’s a liaison, and we can incorporate a strategy that would include the business community in some of the strategic planning measures that we’re doing,” George said. She said CPAC wants to start a local group in the county and since the local government already has some working committees to help businesses in place, the groups can help each other.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requires that local plans be updated every five years. George said the county received a $30,000 FEMA grant to complete the update and is working with private consultant AECOM. The county plans to finalize its mitigation plan in October and then send it to the state emergency management agency and FEMA for comments. George said it will probably be around January 2010 before the county gets the plan back with comments from FEMA.
