The world is a dangerous place, but Clarion County is prepared for emergencies with a hazardous mitigation plan.
“The hazardous mitigation plan is one we review every five years,” said Clarion Mayor Brett Whitling, the county’s homeland security planner. “We submit an annual review to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency reviewing all of our projects. Those are projects that we are working on to mitigate future hazards.
“Those hazards could be infrastructure or it could even be ordinances that would make things safer. The hazard could even be replacing a boiler in a building or plugging abandoned wells.”
“A new requirement from both PEMA and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is the inclusion of public schools in the plan,” he said. “This decision was made before the COVID-19 pandemic.”
He said there is a section in the plan for pandemics, which has been updated. There also is a section in the plan for hazards on the interstate.
“One section deals not only with the major roads in the county, but every few years we do a commodity load study,” Whitling said. “We go out and count the (hazardous) placards on the truck. The concern is for some sort of spill of hazardous materials.”
This is Whitling’s first year as homeland security planner, and he is making a few changes that have been recommended by PEMA.
“I am trying to include pictures to make it a more lively presentation, graphs for better organization and update the maps in the plan,” he said. “The plan will include maps of each of the flood hazards in the county.
“We will really begin working on the new plan in 2022 and it will be adopted in 2023.”
The county, municipalities and the schools will adopt it, and then it will be sent to PEMA and FEMA for final approval, according to Whitling.