Mitigation Office

Hazard mitigation is the cornerstone of emergency management. Mitigation is the ongoing effort to lessen the impact disasters have on people's lives and property through damage prevention and flood insurance.

Through mitigation projects, the impact on lives and communities is decreased. Such projects include:

• Building safely within floodplains.
• Removing homes from floodplains.
• Engineering buildings and infrastructures to withstand earthquakes.
• Creating and enforcing effective building codes to protect property from floods, hurricanes and other natural hazards.

The Mitigation Office manages all disaster loss reduction programs including the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Competitive Grant Program, the National Flood Insurance Program and the Flood Mitigation Assistance Program.

The State Hazard Mitigation Plan, developed by hazard-specific mitigation teams with direction from the Mitigation Office, identifies the major natural hazards that affect our state, assesses the risk that each hazard poses, projects the vulnerability of our people, property and infrastructure to the specific hazard and recommends actions that can be taken to reduce the risk and vulnerability to the hazard. The State Hazard Mitigation Plan also contains a description of programs, policy, statues and regulations applicable to hazard mitigation.

The Mitigation Office Director is Bill Brown. He can be reached at  (601) 933-6884. Additional information on mitigation programs and policies may also be obtained from the FEMA Web site at www.fema.gov.