Natural hazards have the potential to cause property loss, loss of life, economic hardship, and threats to public health and safety. Hazard mitigation is sustained actions taken to reduce long-term risk to life and property. There are things we do today to be more protected in the future. For example, elevating buildings in flood hazard areas, installing hurricane clips and storm shutters, relocating critical facilities out of hazard areas, using fire-resistant construction materials in wildfire hazard areas, etc. Hazard mitigation actions are essential to breaking the typical disaster cycle of damage, reconstruction, and repeated damage. With careful selection, they can be long-term, cost-effective means of reducing risk and helping to create a more sustainable and disaster-resilient community. 

A hazard mitigation plan describes an area’s vulnerability to the various natural hazards that are typically present, along with an array of actions and projects for reducing key risks. While natural disasters cannot be prevented from occurring, the continued implementation of mitigation strategies identified in the plan will gradually, but steadily, make our communities more sustainable and disaster-resilient.

The Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 (DMA 2000) requires all states and local governments to have a hazard mitigation plan in order to be eligible to apply for certain types of federal hazard mitigation project grants. Hazard mitigation plans must be: (a) implemented on an ongoing basis, and (b) updated every five years to ensure that they remain applicable representations of local risk and locally-preferred risk reduction strategies.