Pre-Disaster Mitigation Planning

Pre-Disaster Mitigation Planning
The South Whidbey School District is participating in a pilot project with the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to create a Hazard Mitigation Plan for our school district as part of the first statewide K-12 Facilities Hazard Mitigation Plan. Hazard mitigation pertains to measures that can be taken to reduce risks form natural disasters. Natural disasters in our area include: Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Volcanic Events, Floods, Wildland/Urban Fires and Landslides.

Once completed, our plan will be submitted to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for possible funding that would be used to improve the ability of school buildings to resist a "natural disaster". The funds are limited such that building replacement is most likely not an option; however, if the district were successful in acquiring the funds, building improvements could be accomplished.

Input Received

As part of our planning process, the district received input from staff and community members at committee meetings, board meetings and also in the form of an online community survey during February, 2015.  The survey items and results are available below:

Community Survey from 2015 (pdf)  (printable version)

Community Survey Results 2015-02 (pdf) (printable version)

Hazard Mitigation Plan - Draft Chapters:

Our draft plan was submitted to OSPI for review and for consideration for a FEMA grant application. Our plan was selected to continue forward and we are now working with OSPI and WSU to complete the FEMA grant process. OSPI has selected the LMS main gym for the focus of our grant. WSU engineers have been on site to inspect the gym structure and to review the design plans. We have also gathered occupancy data for their analysis. Some minor changes have been made to the draft plan and the goals section was moved to chapter 4.

The plan is still in draft form pending input from FEMA.  Our draft plan was submitted to the state in June 2016 and will be submitted to FEMA in the fall.  Once input (if any) is received, the plan will be finalized and brought to the board for final approval. Funding selection is scheduled to be complete in the fall with awards given later this year.