HAZARD MITIGATION is best described as a sustained action taken to reduce or eliminate long-term risk to people and property from hazards. EPTEC, Inc. offers a number of services to help manage your hazard mitigation efforts.
Benefits of Mitigation
There’s no doubt that hazard mitigation saves businesses and institutions millions in the long term. Here are some facts to put things into perspective:
A recent study by the Multi-Hazard Mitigation Council shows that each dollar spent on mitigation saves society an average of four dollars.
The rigorous building standards adopted by 20,000 communities across the country are saving the nation more than $1.1 billion a year in prevented flood damages.
Hazard mitigation plans and projects reduce overall risks to the population and its structures while also reducing reliance on funding from actual disaster declarations.
Since 1993, more than 400 declared disasters have occurred in the United States. Communities in all 50 states have been affected, costing the country over $500 million dollars per week and killing over 24,000 people.
How EPTEC Inc. Can Help
Floods, ice storms, tornadoes, forest/wild fires, etc. — they are all functions of the natural environment that become hazardous when they threaten our “built” environment with destruction. These hazards will occur one day … but EPTEC can help you create a plan so that when these hazards come to fruition, the results can be appreciably different from past outcomes.
Mitigation plans form the foundation for a community’s long-term strategy aimed at reducing disaster losses and breaking the cycle of disaster damage, reconstruction and repeated damage. EPTEC Inc. can help in the following ways:
COMPLIANCE — State, tribal and local governments are required to develop a hazard mitigation plan as a condition for receiving certain types of non-emergency disaster assistance. EPTEC, Inc. has experience leading communities through the process of complying with the current regulations for planning (i.e., The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act [Public Law 93-288], as amended by the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000).
PROCEDURE — Our planners recognize that the planning process is as important as the plan itself. It creates a framework for risk-based decision-making to reduce damages to lives, property and the economy from future disasters.
FINANCE & FEASIBILITY — We will help you with the grant application/close-out, budgeting, finding matching grant items and ensuring that the time you and your community partners put into the plan are as efficient as possible.
If you would like to reap the benefits to your community from having a FEMA-approved, pre-disaster mitigation plan (PDM) — new or updated — please contact EPTEC, Inc.