Flooding is a hazard that affects most parts of the world, and it usually leaves behind its wake a lot of destruction. The destruction may be damaged houses or infrastructure and the death of livestock and human beings. Floods are can, therefore, be classified as natural hazards that are initiated by the force of nature. The planning committee will involve the local leaders, especially county leaders who are attached to the water section, environment, disaster prevention and FEMA. Floods can be mitigated.
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Mitigation is important in lessening the effects of floods because one cannot wish away floods. Floods are an occurrence that are sometimes hard to predict and even prevent. The only option for floods is to act on their effects and lessen the impacts (Bubeck et al., 2012). Governments have tried as much as possible to lessen the gravity of floods. Weather forecasts have been used largely in determining whether floods will occur or not. Though some of the predictions by weather forecasts may not be accurate, they may provide a window, where people can get to safe areas and, therefore, be safe even as the floods takes place. The increase in technology has given weather forecast more accuracy, and thereof people can be warned earlier and thus prevent loss of life and extreme damage to property. Governments should thus focus on dealing with the floods and ensure that property is not damaged the year in or the year out by coming up with measures that will help reduce the damage caused by the floods even if it means relocating communities to safer grounds or helping the communities build houses that can adapt to flood conditions. Therefore, a lot of research should be carried out to come up with methods that will help increase protection of the people in flood-prone areas.
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Planning Committee Members
The stakeholders will thus include government ministries involved with both at the local and state level. Flood prone communities are another part of stakeholders that would help in contributing their predicament over time and how they have been keeping safe or how the floods have affected them over time. Other communities in the flood basin, especially those who are upstream can determine the various effects of floods downstream and, therefore, should be included. Scientific instruction should be included to improve on decision making especially through research to help deal with the flood mitigation. The non-governmental organization will help especially at the local level by dissemination the necessary information and increasing awareness of floods in the affected communities. Furthermore, voluntary organizations help in providing help during emergency operations that help in response and recovery after the flood has occurred. The private sectors help greatly since the floods may affect their business operations.
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Components of the Plan
The plan involves the strategies that are going to be implemented at the community level that help in reducing the death, trauma and injury. A good plan comes up with various responses to the flood that will help find out the necessary solutions to be used to mitigate the effects of the flood. A flood mitigation plan ensures that there a speedier recovery, more efficient and more effective response, and a quicker solution to the flood problems. The components of the mitigation plan are going to include risk analysis, vulnerability assessment, system recommendations, zoning and planning, objectives of the plan, outreach and education, emergency services, funding, plan monitoring, infrastructure, and goals.
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The goals of the plan are to minimize floods, reduce damages on the private and public property and ensure that the public health is controlled to safe levels (Bubeck et al., 2014). The plan aims to increase confidence in the public and promote a positive image to the community. Another goal is to create a plan that is flexible to the various changes in the values of the community and advancement in technology.
Participating Agencies
The national flood insurance program will be greatly involved especially involved in the mitigation phase. The program helps in lessening the impact of floods on public and private structures. The program provides insurance that is affordable to many people in flood-susceptible areas (Bolt, 2013). The organization helps a community about flood management in floodplains and the enforcement of rules and regulations along the river.
Subject Matter Experts
National flood insurance program (NFIP) has subject matter experts that can be valuable in providing information regarding insurance. Therefore, they should be included in the process especially of providing insurance to the affected communities. The subject matter experts especially those of NFIP give more accurate information that will help insurance agencies and planner to determine to what extent people can be insured against (Vormoor, 2014). Such a measure will have to fall under mitigation in the plan. Bringing subject matter experts, therefore, ensures that information that is more accurate is provided, and proper decisions are made to deal with the floods.
Emergency Management
Preparedness is important in emergency management as it includes the actions that are guard towards the recovery and response of to an emergency. The various activities include the organization of assets to be used in dealing with the floods and coming up with actions and interactions that will help in recovery and response efforts. Preparedness encompasses the training of the individuals to make them more prepared for dealing with the flood before and after it occurs. The actions in preparedness of floods involve building of levees, locks, dams, reservoirs among many others structures. Preparedness for the flood entails their various and constant study of the forecasts and weather patterns to determine the probability of a flood occurring. The pressures and temperature are some of the parameter used to measure the precipitation and most importantly the cloud cover. Such information may help determine storms and thus precipitation thus will helping the formation heavy and torrential rains that can cause floods. Preparedness, therefore, involves the use of various strategies that ensure that people of certain community that tis near a flooding zone are safe and can safeguard their property too largely.
Mitigation
Mitigation is another step in emergency management that helps in coming up with various procedures that help lessen the impacts that the flood causes on the environment. Therefore, mitigation encompasses activities that help reduce the effects of the flood on an area. The gravity of the floods is usually determined to come up with various activities that will help in flood mitigation (Smith, 2013). Activities involved with flood mitigation are setting up rescue centers, building provide lifesavers to the people especially those that have been affected by the flood. Mitigation involves many of the activities that take place in response and recovery.
Response and Recovery
The activities that help in dealing with the flood while it is taking place or when it has the past is response action. Most of the response actions are emergency actions. They include activities such as medical emergencies, rescue efforts, and responding to people who may be trapped in buildings (Haddow et al., 2013). Recovery actions include the search for items especially those that may have drifted downstream or items that are deposited on the roads or trees by the floods. Most response and recovery activities should involve volunteers and the local community-based organizations to help in collecting and recovering items and rescuing people in the respective community. Health care professionals are the important part of the responding team that helps treat the people who are injured in the process.
Challenges that Responders Encounter
The various challenges that responders will encounter are many since the flood has to take place to determine the damages left in its wake. The challenges may involve rescuing people who are trapped in either cars or houses. Some vehicles are usually dragged down in the process. Therefore, the responders need to have better gear to wade through the floodwaters to ensure that they rescue the people. Electric shocks can be evidenced by the destroyed electric wires especially where the storms destroyed various electric poles. Communication can be cut due to the lines of communication being affected by the floods. Some areas may have more water that makes it difficult to access them. Another challenge is the lack of enough personnel to help in dealing with the floods especially in recovering various things that have been swept downstream or left scattered on the roads.
Solutions to Challenges
Solutions to the challenges of flooded areas required boats to access them. Therefore, the people should have boats at standby especially in areas where floods occur, cover a large area, and further take some time before subsiding. Other people who may be of great help are volunteers, government agencies, contract services and security agencies that help maintain security while the different operations take place. Other machinery to clear roads and ensure that debris, soil and trees that are strewn all over the road are taken out of the way. Healthcare professionals could help in dealing with the various injuries and reaching out to the people in the flood-prone area.
Short and Long-Term Goals
Short-term goals on flood management are to ensure that items of each household are marked to ensure identification should a flood occur. Other strategic are increasing transportation networks to deal with accessing higher grounds should floods occur. Flood prone areas should have communication gadgets installed to improve on safety alert should floods be eminent. Long terms goals will entail the building of reservoirs, changing the direction of rivers where necessary, a building of dams. Such long-term goals will help mitigate the impacts of floods since most of the water will be directed to reservoirs and dams in the end and prevent further flooding. The short-term recovery goals will be to build nets that prevent movement of solids into the river.
Conclusion
Local and state governments should ensure that they have the right strategies in the mitigation of floods. More research as stated above should be carried out, and innovations encourage coming up with structures that greatly reduce damage to the houses in place. Mitigation is thus a measure that should be researched greatly to increases chances of recovery and response to flood-prone areas. Floods are thus hazards that can be mitigated and further effort put into collaborating with other places that have successively dealt with flood to come up with concrete steps and measures to further alleviate the impacts of flooding.
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