This story was first published on Feb. 13, 2023 and has been updated.
The Hamilton County Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency is out with its draft Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan, which helps guide the county in being "more resilient to the impacts of natural and technological hazards."
The draft is open for public comment through July 11, 2023. It will then be submitted to FEMA for review.
"The mitigation plan is a document that helps Hamilton County and its jurisdictions identify priorities, goals and objectives in ways to reduce the impacts and risk of hazards, both natural and human caused," Assistant Director Ryan McEwan explains.
The document is revised annually and gets a complete update every five years.
"It's important to understand, one, what the risk are that Hamilton County faces, so part of the plan is a hazard identification and risk analysis. The second part of it is identifying projects to help community leaders and elected officials prioritize actions they can take to make Hamilton County a safer community for residents and businesses."
Earlier this year, county residents were asked to complete an online survey on a variety of questions about their personal level of preparedness and their perception of different hazards. McEwan offers this example of the types of questions asked: How do you receive alerts and warnings during an emergency?
RELATED: OKI wants your thoughts on regional transportation and land-use policies
"It's good for us to know that information because in addition to tools that we have like Alert Hamilton County, we also need to find out where residents are getting their information from so that we can put timely alerts out to those different devices and tools."
The survey was open through Feb. 24.
Could something like East Palestine happen here?
While the Hazard Mitigation Plan helps the agency understand risk assessments and identify hazards, the county also has what McEwan calls "a very robust" Hazardous Materials Response Plan.
"That's the plan that would really address what happened with the train derailment up there in East Palestine. The Mitigation Plan looks at other measures such as where are our vulnerable communities near rail tracks so that we can better understand evacuation priorities and things along those lines," he explains.
The Hazardous Materials Response Plan is part of the county's Emergency Operations Plan. McEwan says it also gets a complete overhaul every five years but, "because hazardous materials is so important, and there's a slightly different requirement, we make sure to update the hazardous materials response plan every single year."
Residents of East Palestine, Ohio, on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border were evacuated following a train derailment Friday, Feb. 3. Emergency agencies were concerned about one of the rail cars exploding during the response and performed a controlled release of the toxic chemical vinyl chloride.
RELATED: East Palestine evacuation lifted allowing residents to return home
Government and environment groups are monitoring the air and water near the town.
Locally, Greater Cincinnati Water Works, the Ohio EPA, the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO), and other water utilities are monitoring and sampling the Ohio River for contamination related to the East Palestine incident.
As WVXU has previously reported, Water Works can shut its water intake valves as a precautionary measure when needed to avoid the compound. Water Works also uses granular activated carbon, which can remove chemical contaminants.
ORSANCO has 13 monitoring stations along the Ohio River to detect and warn treatment plants downstream about spills.
