Here in Louisiana, we are often exposed to hazards or disasters – flooding, hurricanes, and wildfires, just to name a few – hazard mitigation techniques can help minimize the resulting impacts on your client’s family, property, and surrounding community.
The Mayor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness initiative, Red Stick Ready: Reduce Your Risks, offers a wealth of information on hazard mitigation strategies that empower homeowners to reduce recovery costs, save lives, and minimize the impact of disasters on their homes.
Learn more about hazard mitigation, community-wide mitigation efforts, and how to reduce your risks at brla.gov/reduceyourrisks.
What is hazard mitigation and why is it important?
Hazard mitigation involves strategies and actions taken to minimize the impact of disasters on people, property, and the environment. It’s crucial as it helps in reducing recovery costs, saving lives, and ensuring a more resilient future against future disasters. Hazard mitigation breaks repetitive cycle by taking a long-term view of rebuilding and recovering following disasters. The implementation of such hazard mitigation actions leads to building stronger, safer and smarter communities that are better able to reduce future injuries and future damage.
What are examples of mitigation?
- Enforcement of building codes, floodplain management codes and environmental regulations.
- Public safety measures such as continual maintenance of roadways, culverts and dams.
- Acquisition of relocation of structures, such as purchasing buildings located in a floodplain.
- Acquisition of undeveloped hazard prone lands to ensure no future construction occurs there.
- Retrofitting of structures and design of new construction, such as elevating a home or building.
- Protecting critical facilities and infrastructure from future hazard events.
- Planning for hazard mitigation, emergency operations, disaster recovery, and continuity of operations.
- Development and distribution of outreach materials related to hazard mitigation.
How does East Baton Rouge Parish address community-level risk reduction and mitigation?
East Baton Rouge Parish engages in a multitude of risk reduction activities, such as establishing and enforcing building codes, enhancing public awareness, upgrading infrastructure, and implementing projects like flood barriers, to safeguard the community from hazards.
