Public review of mitigation plan ends Dec. 13

SENECA COUNTY — There is still time to review the new Seneca County All-Hazard Mitigation Plan. The plan will be available for the public to read and suggest any edits until Dec. 13 at both the Tiffin and Fostoria public libraries, senecacountyema.org and the EMA office at the Seneca County Fairgrounds in Tiffin. Seneca County Emergency Management Agency Director and 911 Coordinator, John Spahr says the purpose of the plan is to "reduce or eliminate risks to people and property from natural and human-made hazards, assess the vulnerabilities of the community and outline strategies to mitigate the effects of disasters before they occur." The last mitigation plan was adopted in 2020 and must be re-evaluated every five years. Because data changes so much during that time, Spahr said that updating the plan is more about starting over rather than editing. "We had a federal census since the last plan was published and the numbers have changed," he said. He also attributed the rewrite to the changing needs and goals of "political subdivisions." The plan was written and researched by Resource Solutions Associates with assistance and input from Spahr and other county, city and township officials and organizations in just four months, a timeline he says was ambitious, but needed due to "the timing of grant funding." The creation of the plan was funded through the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant from both the state and federal emergency management agencies. Having a mitigation plan in place is important to "help communities prepare for, respond to and recover from disaster in a more effective and cost-efficient manner," according to Spahr. On a more in-depth level, Spahr later said having a mitigation plan not only identifies hazards and vulnerabilities and implements strategies to reduce the impact of disasters on a community, it also helps strengthen grant applications and complies with state and federal regulations. The plan has six sections, first detailing the planning process, hazard identification and risk assessment, mitigation strategies, plan adoption, statistics and a risk index, defining where Seneca County is most vulnerable. The second and third sections are of the most interest to the community with both identification of hazards and strategies to combat potential threats. Section two, the HIRA, gives statistics of each village and city in the county, identifies important infrastructure and gives an overview of both potential and past threats to the area. The section provides a detailed assessment and analysis of natural disasters in the county, listing the possible frequency, severity and outcomes of potential disasters. In the last 25 years, Seneca County has experienced a pandemic, flooding, winter storms and tornadoes. Looking forward, Spahr says the county is most likely to experience "tornadoes and severe wind events followed by flooding." A report from the Storm Events Database in section five of the plan states there have been 57 severe weather events between January 2019 and July 2024, listing wind and thunderstorms as the most common. Section three, Mitigation Strategies, then examines how the county might respond to each disaster, a timeframe of when the mitigation strategy could be adopted, which jurisdiction is responsible for mitigation goals and identifies a potential funding source to address each goal. If disaster were to strike the area, the plan says the county isn't likely to get significant funding from FEMA. Spahr says this is because "Ohio is a 'home-rule' state and assistance is requested from the smallest jurisdiction to the larger based on resource availability." This means that funding to rebuild and return the area to normalcy would come from the county first before resources were allocated from the state or federal government. As Spahr says, this helps keep control local. If needed, funding would come from local government, insurance, and nonprofit organizations. In section six, a Nov. 13 National Risk Index report from FEMA rates risk in Seneca County as very low while community resilience is very high. While Ohio EMA and FEMA both produce mitigation plans, it is the Seneca County plan that would be the most effective help to the community before a disaster. It doesn't take a serious disaster for the mitigation plan to be used. "The plan is used all the time, not for response but rather for planning, research and most importantly, grant applications," Spahr said. Having an approved mitigation plan in place makes the county eligible for BRIC funding, the Hazard Mitigation grant program and Flood Mitigation Assistance as well as a variety of other funding and grant opportunities. While the mitigation plan seems like it may be all doom and gloom, outlining all the ways the community could be threatened, some passages explain how and why Seneca County can persevere in the event of a disaster. "In Seneca County, people all tend to know one another and take their neighbor in when disaster strikes because outside resources are limited," reads a section of the plan. "While they may be limited in equipment or goods, they are filled with the desire and willingness to help one another. They have the abillity to improvise, adapt and overcome."