Second threat and hazard meeting held

At 9 a.m. on July 9, John Zieger, Carbon County Emergency Management Coordinator, met to finish the last meeting needed to gain stakeholder input on a Threat and Hazard Identification Risk Assessment (THIRA).

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has a list of Core Capabilities that are considered during this scenario. There were 47 different Core Capabilities that needed to be ranked in terms of importance — high, medium or low priority.

There were five different categories that the capabilities were categorized in: prevent, protect, mitigate, respond and recover.

The first meeting that was held on THIRA was on June 11 where an open discussion was held about the impacts of a hypothetical scenario where bridge deckings at Fort Steele wash out; resulting in heavy traffic, 200 cattle dead beside the river and 13 people missing. How the county would respond to the emergency was the focus — taking into consideration every facet of the emergency response that would be needed.

The first meeting on June 11 went through parts one, two and three of the THIRA. The second meeting went through parts four and five.

According to Zeiger, he now has all of the information needed to write the report. There are now few additional meetings that he needs to have with stakeholders for the plan.

“The report is not done but the stuff that I needed to gather to finish up the report is done,” said Zieger. “I’ll probably sit down with county fire to get a better idea of what resources are available to respond as well.”