Phases of Disaster

What is Disaster Mitigation?

Disaster mitigation is a way of minimizing the damage from a disaster that cannot be prevented entirely. Mitigation requires weighing and managing risks to ensure loss of life and economic damage is as little as possible. Similar to disaster prevention, mitigation requires permanent measures that are taken before disaster strikes to ensure the community is as safe as possible. Mitigation measures, like prevention measures, can take numerous forms. They can also be applied at the household or community level.

Hazard Mitigation Plans

Communities can draft a hazard mitigation plan, which is subject to an approval process through FEMA. Having a hazard mitigation plan makes a community eligible for certain non-emergency grants from FEMA. FEMA estimates that as much as 85% of U.S. residents live somewhere that has a hazard mitigation plan, but some plans are expiring soon or have already expired. For more information on hazard mitigation in your community, see FEMA’s status tracker.

Hazard Mitigation Techniques

The City of Los Angeles’s Emergency Management Department gives a list of potential hazard mitigation techniques, which include:

• Property protection: Buildings and homes can be modified to make them as resistant as possible to potential natural threats. Properties can be structurally retrofitted with technology such as shatterproof glass to minimize the threat to property in the case of disaster.
• Natural resource protection: Natural ecosystems can be critical to the health and livability of an area, so it is important that communities take steps to protect them. These steps can include protection against soil erosion, watershed management, and wetland restoration.
• Structural projects: These include infrastructure that is aimed at preventing disasters from destroying property or causing loss of life. Examples of such projects include dams, levees, and floodwalls.