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News you can use
Havre Public Schools Grounds and Transportation Director Jim Donovan, from left, Havre Public Works Director Dave Peterson and the Rev. William "Mac" McGrew of the Greater Havre Area Minesterial Association listen during a predisaster mitigation update meeting Tuesday in the Hill County Justice Center. Various officials and members of the public attended the meeting Tuesday in a process to update the Hill County predisaster mitigation plan. This plan is required to be updated every five years for the county to be eligible for federal disaster assistance.
Predisaster mitigation planning continued Tuesday in the Hill County Justice Center, as county and city leaders discussed critical facilities and the various hazard areas.
Hill County has about 90 critical facilities - such as fire stations, sewer lagoons, schools, medical facilities - and multiple hazard areas like the wildfire, flood, dam inundation, landslide and hazmat incident areas, the officials said.
During the meeting, critical facility sites were added, including North Havre Pump Station, Rocky Boy Fire Department, Cool Spring Colony School, Main Fuel Distributors, and repeater and radio sites.
The meeting was attended by representatives of city, county and federal law enforcement, Disaster and Emergency Services, Havre City Public Works, Hill County Commission, county health, among others.
Counties are required every five years to update their predisaster mitigation plans, the purpose being to make communities more resilient and resistant to the damages caused by natural and man-made hazards.
Tetra Tech is the company contracted by the county to help update the mitigation plans and Senior Project Manager Daphne Digrindakis has been the planning liaison. Digrindakis spoke to county and city leaders via speaker phone Tuesday.
Pipeline analysis were also added to the hazmat notes, but per requests, not on the map.
Havre City Public Works Director Dave Peterson told Digrindakis he was worried about who would have access to some of the critical information.
"I'm concerned how all this information is being compiled and where it sits," Peterson told Digrindakis.
Digrindakis said in an email this morning, "I think where this was going is there are certain inherent risks of publishing the locations of critical facilities. ... If the information were obtained by malicious individuals it could be used to target an act of sabotage. I have heard this from counties before and how we've dealt with it is not including the figures in the plan showing the name and location of critical facilities. The data will be used for the risk assessment but we will just show dots on the maps instead of having the facility name called out."
The predisaster mitigation update projects have 12 months to be completed. By mid-May, the counties will have complete draft plans and hold a second public meeting to review the draft risk assessment and mitigation strategy.
A 30-day review period will take place from mid-May to mid-June during which people will be encouraged to comment. At the conclusion of the comment period, Tetra Tech will complete a plan revision and submit the updated plan to Montana DES and FEMA for review and approval. During this period, July to August, people will have a second opportunity to review the plan and provide comments.
The next meeting is scheduled for Feb. 13. At this meeting, Digrandakis said, the group will discuss implementation details for the severe weather and drought mitigation strategy, which she said the grow didn't have time for during Tuesday's meeting, and consider mitigation projects for the transportation accident/hazmat incident hazards and the flooding/dam and levee failure hazards.
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