2026 Multi-Jurisdictional All Hazard Mitigation Plan
About
Union County Emergency Services is updating the County’s 2021 Multi-Jurisdictional All-Hazard Mitigation Plan (HMP), which expires in 2026.
This HMP is required by state and federal agencies in order for communities in Union County to be eligible for certain types of state and federal disaster relief funds after a disaster occurs.
This website will be used throughout the planning process to post information, collect comments, announce meetings, and to post draft plan documents.
Public Input
We want to hear from you!
Throughout the 2026 plan update, you may contact the project team with questions and/or comments.
Documents
Hazard Mitigation
The term “Hazard Mitigation” describes actions that can help reduce or eliminate long-term risks caused by hazards, or disaster, such as floods, hurricanes, wildfires, landslides, tornadoes, earthquakes, dam failures, or terrorism. Hazard mitigation focuses on long-term strategies that help governments and citizens find ways to reduce hazard risks and disaster-related costs to communities. Efforts made to reduce hazard risks should be compatible with other community goals; mitigation is most effective when it is a part of the larger responsibility of the government, individuals, private businesses, institutions, and non-profits. As communities plan for new development and improvements to existing infrastructure, mitigation can and should be an important component of the planning effort.
While mitigation activities can and should be taken before a disaster occurs, after a disaster, hazard mitigation is essential. Oftentimes after disasters, repairs and reconstruction are completed in such a way as to simply restore damaged property to pre-disaster conditions. These efforts may “get things back to normal,” but the replication of pre-disaster conditions may result in a repetitive cycle of damage, reconstruction, and repeated damage. Hazard mitigation breaks this repetitive cycle by producing less vulnerable conditions through post-disaster repairs and reconstruction. The implementation of such hazard mitigation actions leads to building stronger, safer and smarter communities that are better able to reduce future injuries and future damage.
When the same kind of disaster occurs in the same place, like flooding along the coast, it can cause repeated damage and require repeated reconstruction. This constant reconstruction becomes more expensive over time. Hazard mitigation breaks this expensive cycle of recurrent damage and increasing reconstruction costs by taking a long-term view of rebuilding and recovering following disasters – hazard mitigation builds a safer community from the beginning.
Workshops
The County of Union is hosting two public workshops.
Workshop #1 – Tuesday, July 30, 2024 4pm to 5pm at the Union County Fire/EMS Academy in Linden 1075 Edward Street
Union County, alongside consultant Michael Baker International, Inc., will host a series of public workshops during this plan update.
The purpose of the workshops is to provide an update on the project and to gather input from residents. Public input will help the project team better understand risks, vulnerabilities, and impacts of natural hazards to the community and identify potential mitigation actions to reduce that risk.
Workshop #2 – Date and Location TBA Early 2025
The Project Team is engaging with the public via a workshop to understand unique assets that should be protected, the hazards we face, and findings from the risk assessment.
Questions we may discuss include:
- Where are the hazards experienced?
- What are your biggest concerns?
- What are your recommendations for hazard mitigation?
For information on Public Workshop #2, please click here for our flyer from our first workshop.
Sign up to be notified when we confirm details for our second workshop