EAST PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — Officials from Tazewell and Woodford counties joined forces for the second meeting of four that are being offered by the Hazard Mitigation Advisory Committee.
This meeting focused mainly on risk assessment and how municipalities can lessen the damages that severe storms can cause. The goal of the meetings is to educate people about natural hazards such as thunderstorms and floods and how communities can protect themselves in a better way. Committee member Ken Runkle said that developing an action plan is the goal of these meetings.
“A hazard mitigation plan finds ways that communities and entities, municipalities and participating jurisdictions in the two county area can develop projects to help mitigate hazards within the community,” Runkle said.
Runkle also discussed the research that was needed for putting together the plans.
“To be able to mitigate those hazards, we need to know what those hazards are, and so this meeting is about where we have gone back and looked at historically, we’ve looked at storms and once we’re able to identify what the different hazards are, the communities can then look at ways to mitigate those hazards,” Runkle said.
The first committee meeting went over the orientation and the beginnings of discussing mitigation projects. The next meeting will discuss the approval of final plans and will be held in a few months.
