Newton County officials update hazard plan

An updated Newton County Hazard Mitigation Plan is under public review until Aug. 30.

Last updated in 2004, the plan expired at the end of 2009 and cities and entities from around the county have been submitting their input to get the plan finished and approved by the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

“This is an update of that [2004] plan,” said Gloria Bottom, hazard mitigation planner with the Harry S Truman Coordinating Council. “It is in a lot more in detail than we had with the last one.”

It is also thicker: The new plan numbers 380 pages to the old plan’s 84 pages. It details steps area cities will take to lessen the effect of a disaster. Participation is required if cities want to be considered for FEMA-funded tornado shelters, sirens, flood buyouts, storm water drain programs or federal flood insurance.

From tornadoes to severe thunderstorms and flooding, ice to heat waves and drought each city submitted in the plan not only what they would do in an emergency but how they plan to do it, and they rated each action and its cost benefit for the city.

“This has grown as people decided to get involved,” Bottom said.

Representatives from fire, police, sheriff, county commissioners, city administrators, the health department and schools participated in a series of meetings that began in January 2009.

Additions to this five-year plan include information about hail and severe storm winds, including risk maps and an upgraded wildfires risk section. New and more current NOAA events were added. The new plan also adds the definition of severe thunderstorm, a dam map of the 20 Newton County dams and information about sinkholes and karst formations was included along with a map and list of the 82 sinkholes in Newton County’s history.

The New Madrid seismic zone was already included, but information on the Nemaha fault zone was added to the earthquake risk information with a map, although the Missouri Seismic Safety Commission says aftershocks are the most likely seismic event for the area. The report states that there is no risk of the epicenter of an earthquake to be in or near Newton County.

It also includes historical data. The plan lists the May 10, 2008 EF-4 tornado as the most significant disaster to strike Newton County.

Tracking from Ottawa County, Okla. across Granby and Newtonia, the tornado killed 14 and injured 200. Of the 30 tornadoes recorded in Newton County, there have been 17 deaths, 239 injuries, $71,211,000 of property damage, and $5,000 in crop damage.

Another table needs to be added to the plan and a flood map, and then it will be in its final draft. Municipalities will receive a bound, color printed edition and a disc with the plan in several formats once it is finished. It will be reviewed by SEMA and FEMA and once the first entity votes to approve it, the plan will no longer be a draft. It will expire five years from that first vote.

The next FEMA grant cycle begins in October and Bottom hopes the process is done by then.
In December 2008, she started working on the plan and the first Harry S Truman Coordinating Council Area Hazard Mitigation Committee met to review the plan Jan. 28, 2009. The cities of Neosho, Diamond, Fairview, Granby, Joplin, Seneca and the villages of Cliff Village, Dennis Acres, Leawood, Loma Linda, Grand Falls Plaza, Newtonia, Redings Mill, Ritchey, Saginaw, Shoal Creek Estates, Shoal Creek Drive, Silver Creek, Stark City, Stella and Wentworth all had to submit individual emergency plans. The process moved forward slowly so it did not exclude cities that did not have their plans in place.

The committee’s last meeting was held on Aug. 19 and public hearings are being held around the area, including in Neosho, on Thursday afternoon.

“Everything we do in emergency services comes from the first level up,” said Gary Roark, Newton County Emergency Management Agency Director.

Families, he said, should do everything they can to be prepared, then cities and then the county. That way, he said, each level takes care of everything they can before they ask for help.

“We try in emergency management to get people to be prepared and to get by for 72 hours on their own, no matter what the disaster is,” he said.

It may take emergency services 72 hours to reach people, Roark said, and the importance of home emergency kits and evacuation routes are very hard to get people to understand.

“For the most part people don’t think about it,” he said. “Out of sight, out of mind, then when the time comes they think ‘Why didn’t we do this?’”

The mitigation plan’s purpose is to protect and improve public safety through preventative measures that keep a hazard risks from getting worse.