Prepare Your Community for Winter Flooding Risks

The arrival of cold weather doesn't mean that the risk of flooding is over. In fact, winter often brings severe conditions such as snow, heavy rains, melting, and ice jams, which can pose major problems for home and business owners in your community. In coastal areas, winter storms such as Nor’easters often generate high winds that can cause widespread beach erosion and coastal flooding.

Some communities in western states face days and even weeks of rain during the winter months, and others face an increased risk of flooding because of wildfires that burn away vegetation and leave the ground barren and unable to absorb water. Near the end of the season, melting snow can flow into lakes, streams and rivers, causing excess water to spill over their banks or overtop levees.

Now is a good time to ensure that residents of your community are protected by flood insurance. Encourage them to visit FloodSmart.gov to learn about their flood risk and find an agent who can protect them with a flood insurance policy. In addition, visit FloodSmart’s new partner section at

www.floodsmart.gov/floodsmart/pages/partner/partner_index.jsp to learn about the wide variety of communications tools that are available to you, such as:

• Testimonials from home and business owners impacted by flooding.
• Shareable interactive tools that you can post on your own websites.
• A Map Updates Toolkit and links to information about map changes around the United States, which will help residents of your community better understand their flooding risks.
• A Flood Outreach Toolkit, which provides resources to help the audiences you communicate with on a regular basis (other community officials, the public and the media) understand the importance of flood preparedness and protection. The materials are designed to support your outreach to victims of flood disasters. The materials include core messages and information about flood risk and flood insurance that are appropriate for use in most areas of the country. Find this toolkit online at www.floodsmart.gov/toolkits.

Two-Year PRP Eligibility Extension Working Well Two-Year PRP Eligibility Extension Continues to Benefit Policyholders

On January 1, 2011, FEMA launched a new rating option called the Two-Year Preferred Risk Policy Eligibility Extension that enables property owners who find themselves newly mapped into high-risk areas to save money on their policies. To help launch the new rating option, FEMA used the FloodSmart campaign to reach out to the public, agents, WYOs, community officials and other stakeholder groups.

The purpose was to inform them about the new cost-savings option and how property owners could apply. The various stakeholder groups showed great support by sharing the information.

FEMA recently updated a WYO industry committee on its progress and reported that 40,000 PRP Extensions are currently in force (through August 2011), with up to 100,000 expected by year’s-end. FEMA complimented and thanked the WYOs, agents, and community officials for helping make this a successful launch!

Make sure as your county or community goes through a mapping change that you are promoting both grandfathering and the 2-Year PRP Extension as well. For more information, go to FloodSmart.gov/prpextension.

AnnouncementsNFIP Extended Until December 16 - With the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) facing expiration on November 18, 2011, Congress passed on November 17th (and the President then signed) a short-term funding bill that included an extension of the NFIP. This extension expires on December 16, 2011. It is important that insurance agents and WYO companies continue to monitor the status of the NFIP. Should the Program lapse, FEMA has issued updated guidance for agents and WYOs in NFIP Bulletin W-11084

(www.nfipiservice.com/stakeholder/pdf/bulletin/w-11084.pdf).

Share your thoughts on this newsletter - As part of our continuing effort to ensure that our newsletter is meeting your needs, we are soliciting input on its content, frequency, and subject matter. Please let us know what you think by emailing us at info@femafloodsmart.com.

Tornado touches down in Aumsville

Salem, Ore. — Within one hour of a tornado touch down in Aumsville, officials at Oregon Emergency Management, a division of the Oregon Military Department, were in touch with Marion County and Clackamas County Emergency Managers.

Oregon Emergency Management is the initial point of contact for the Oregon Emergency Response System and is on stand by to assist the counties if additional resources are necessary.

Currently, the state emergency coordination center is on limited activation and is monitoring weather. Local emergency management officials are assessing damage. Residents are encouraged to stay away from damage and debris, especially any downed power lines.

Amateur radio operators fi ll communication gaps and provide situational awareness to emergency managers

In Oregon, about 1,800 RACES volunteers are authorized to work in state and county EOCs facilitating communication during disasters. For example, during the Great Coastal Gale of 2007 that knocked out communications to the state’s Columbia, Clatsop and Tillamook counties, hammessaging system called Winlink to transmit the counties’ requests for assistance to the state’s Office of Emergency Management.

“Monday morning the governor came in and we were briefing and later on
called amateur radio operators ‘angels’ because that was the only source of communication we had to the coast,” said Marshall McKillip, the Emergency Management Office’s communications officer.

Following the storm, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski funded improvements to the state’s amateur radio infrastructure with a $250,000 grant for Winlink systems in each of the state’s 36 county-level EOCs. “We bought the appropriate equipment and then
organized the delivery, the set up, the training and everything with amateur radio resources,” McKillip said. “It was quite a task for the amateurs to take on,
but they did a great job.”

See the entire article at http://digitalmag.govtech.com/EM/EM_Mag_May10.pdf

Governor's $250,000 Grant to Amateur Radio Goes Online as Oregon Hams Install New Winlink System

This month, Oregon ARES® members will complete the state-wide installation of Winlink, thanks to a $250,000 grant from Governor Ted Kulongoski. In 2007, the governor was impressed by the hams' ability to handle emergency communications when severe winter storms wreaked havoc on Oregon's North Coast and flooded the City of Vernonia, knocking out 911 services, Internet and phone service for an extended period of time.

The Oregon Office of Emergency Management said that during the storms, the radio operators were "tireless in their efforts to keep the systems connected." When even state police had difficulty reaching some of their own troops, ham radio worked, setting up networks so emergency officials could communicate and relaying lists of supplies needed in stricken areas.

"I'm going to tell you who the heroes were from the very beginning of this...the ham radio operators," the governor said at the time. "These people just came in and actually provided a tremendous communication link to us." Because of the service rendered by Amateur Radio operators in providing communications support, the governor allocated funds for the installation of a Winlink system to integrate Amateur Radio with the Internet.

The equipment will be installed in the Emergency Operating Center in each of Oregon's 36 counties. Once the monies were distributed, ARES® members researched and purchased the equipment that would be needed, formalized and signed contracts between the state, counties and ARES®, and allocated space to install the antennas and equipment within each EOC. The project is scheduled to be completed in time for the 2009 ARRL Simulated Emergency Test (SET) scheduled for October 3-4.

"Using Winlink equipment and other amateur equipment already in place at the EOCs, ARES® teams will have to quickly create a communications network, in some instances without depending on other infrastructure such as telephones or Internet," said ARRL Oregon Section Public Information Coordinator Steve Sanders, KE7JSS. "Many will not use commercial electric power. Despite these limitations, the ARES® teams should not only be able to quickly pass local messages, but also communicate with other regions of the country. The ability to pass information in and out of disaster areas is crucial to the effectiveness of emergency responders."

When Oregon's State Office of Emergency Management was activated on December 3, 2007, hams over the course of the next four days used Winlink to pass message traffic. "The Winlink system performed perfectly, and the ARES® team at the OEM was able to pass approximately 200 messages into and out of the State of Oregon Emergency Operations Center," said Marion County ARES Emergency Coordinator Dean Davis, N7XG. "The only mode of communications for several Oregon counties for the first two days of the storm was the Winlink system."