Escambia County Local Mitigation Strategy Group

Stephania Wilson, Chair: 850-497-6282
George Rogers, Vice Chair: 850-475-5230
Charley Taylor, Secretary: 850-438-9661
Tim Haag, Board Member: 850-476-5110
Trudy O‘Brien, Board Member: 850-432-1596
Peter Robinson, Board Member: 850-474-2435
Sandra Woodbery, Board Member: 850-497-7024

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT Opening Doors for People with Developmental Disabilities Since 1954 ARC Gateway is a private not-for-profit organization that serves over 900 children and adults with intellectual and physical disabilities, and their families in the Pensacola Bay Area and employs over 200 people. ARC programs include: the Pearl Nelson Child Development Center which provides early intervention, special instruction, family resource and occupational, speech and physical therapies.  Discovery Gateway, an inclusive developmental center is also located here. In addition to Children's Services, our services include two adult day training programs, community-based employment, work enclaves at Armstrong World Industries and 1-10 Welcome Station, employment services, supported living, in-home support, six residential group homes, a senior adult program at Bayview Senior Center, recreation and transportation. Our Mission:  ARC Gateway is committed to increasing the opportunities for persons with, or at-risk of, developmental disabilities, to choose where, how and with whom they live, learn, work and play. Core Values:  Respect, integrity, commitment to choice and unity. We are sponsored by the State of Florida Agency for Persons with Disabilities, Department of Education and Vocational Rehabilitation and the United Way of Escambia County. See also our previous member spotlights.

In 1998, Escambia County, the City of Pensacola, the Town of Century, and the Santa Rosa Island Authority were provided a federal grant through the Florida Department of Community Affairs to develop a Local Mitigation Strategy (LMS). This was a State of Florida initiative that was implemented to help reduce the spiraling costs of disasters. The LMS identifies specific hazards, man-made, natural, and technological, that could negatively impact our community, and as such, have created a strategy to try and mitigate our community against those disasters.

What is mitigation?

Mitigation is the effort to reduce or eliminate the risks of injury and damage, to both people and property, against potential disaster events. This mitigation can be through mitigation construction type projects or through an educational outreach program to our community and its residents.

Some types of mitigation construction:

• Hurricane shutters for a home, business, or government building.
• Hurricane roof clips or re-enforcement.
• Installation of tornado safe rooms
• Elevation of a flood vulnerable building or home.
• Flood proofing a home or business.
• Small drainage improvement projects that reduce or eliminate local flooding.
• Educational programs to educate our community on things they can do to protect and mitigate their families, their employees, and their property against potential disaster.

The LMS established a group of public and private members of our community that have evaluated Escambia County and its potential hazards and created a guiding document that identified it’s strategy to mitigate our community against the identified hazards. From that guiding document, a prioritized project list was created that attempts to mitigate our community against our hazards.

The guiding or planning document is just that, a guiding document. The LMS plan has no regulatory authority, but clearly identifies a strategy to mitigate our community from future natural disasters.  The LMS plan provides suggestions and recommendations on how the County could improve regulatory standards in planning documents such as the Comprehensive Growth Management Plan, which could include mitigation concepts and ideas all in the effort of building “better” moving forward into the future and accomplishing what we have defined in our county mission statement; “To provide efficient, responsive services that enhance our quality of life, meet common needs, and promote a safe and healthy community.”

Since 1998, the LMS group has implemented several projects over the years and is proud of what it has accomplished in protecting and mitigating our community infrastructure. We maintain our completed project list to promote our successes and our efforts and to garner continued support in our efforts to mitigate our community moving into the future.

In 2000, the Federal Government passed what is now 44 CFR 201 & 206 (Code of Federal Regulations) that requires local communities across the country to formally create LMS’s similar in concept to what the State of Florida created in 1998. However, the requirement is a voluntary requirement where communities must create/update their LMS documents and processes to continue to remain eligible for various pre- and post-disaster grant program-funding opportunities. Should communities not wish to participate, they will merely not be eligible to receive a piece of what is projected to be $50 million each year in a nationally competitive grant program. However, FEMA has created very detailed criteria that directs how the planning/guiding document will be created and maintained, as well as, the detail of included data identifying the entire planning process. With these new requirements, the State of Florida and Escambia County have decided to participate in this process to remain eligible for various disaster grant programs. This update process will be very time consuming, which will hopefully produce a very comprehensive mitigation strategy taking advantage of current mapping technology with the Global Positioning System (GPS). The final product will better identify our hazards geographically and allow us to better estimate damages from a disaster event before disaster ever strikes. This will allow us to target our strategy on the most vulnerable infrastructure areas first.

The LMS group is made up of seven members including three officers, the chairperson, vice-chairperson, and a secretary, which are elected by the LMS members for a staggered two year term and each with voting authority.

The LMS group has six technical support groups (TSGs) - working groups - that take on specific efforts to help the LMS board with guidance and concepts to the betterment of the community. The TSGs are seeking people to be a part of the LMS experience and process. The TSGs that are part of the process are as follows:

• Project Prioritization and Review Technical Support Group
• Hazard Identification and Vulnerability Technical Support Group
• Private Industry Technical Support Group
• Public Awareness Technical Support Group
• Planning/Plan Review Technical Support Group
• Utilities Technical Support Group

Our primary LMS members are those government and quasi-government, non-profit, agencies who are eligible to apply for grant program funding as defined by the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, 44 CFR 201.2. Those agencies are:

• Unincorporated Escambia County
• City of Pensacola
• City of Century
• Santa Rosa Island Authority
• Escambia County Utilities Authority
• Escambia County School District
• Northwest Florida Water Management District
• Non-Profits and For-Profit Businesses

However, our meetings are open to the general public and anyone and everyone wishing to attend the meetings are welcome to do so. The general public is also welcome to join our technical support groups or LMS board if they so desire, and assist in our community mitigation efforts. We will have two public forums during the plan update process for general public input, comments, and suggestions, as well as soliciting them at our general LMS meetings. We also have on this site, a method to provide comment utilizing our electronic comment form, which will be e-mailed directly to the County Emergency Management Office for presentation at the next scheduled LMS meeting.