Bighorn Basin Residents Asked To Prioritize Potential Disasters

To prepare the Bighorn Basin for anything, the Park County Office of Homeland Security asks locals to take a hand in their community’s safety.

The Park County Office of Homeland Security sends out a call for public input. In this case, the opinions needed involve the safety of northwest Wyoming and any potential calamity that could affect the Bighorn Basin.

Wyoming Region Six is updating its Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan this year. Plans like these are updated every five years – a requirement of FEMA and the Federal Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000.

Wyoming Region Six encompasses the entire Bighorn Basin. Big Horn County, Hot Springs County, Park County, and Washakie County will benefit from the results of this “community” survey.

The Hazard Mitigation Plan “analyzes each County’s vulnerabilities to natural hazards and identifies mitigation actions that can be taken to minimize property damage and reduce the loss of life by lessening the impacts of disasters.”

To ensure the plan has guidance from local communities, a survey has been created for public input. The entire survey has only 10 pages and should take five to ten minutes to complete.

The purpose of this survey is to collect information from the public to “better understand vulnerabilities” within Wyoming Region Six. Participants are asked which county they live in and the nearest community to them. Then, particpants are asked to rank several potential catastrophes based on their “significance” to their location – either Low, Medium, or High.

The full list of hazards is listed below. No potential catastrophe has been overlooked.

• Avalanche
• Dam Failure
• Drought
• Earthquake
• Expansive Soils
• Extreme Cold
• Flood
• Hail
• Lightning
• Landslide
• Mine Subsidence
• Tornado
• Wildfire
• Wind
• Winter Storm
• Hazardous Materials Incidents
• Volcano
• Epidemic/Pandemic

Participants are also asked to submit their own potential hazards that the survey may have been overlooked. A planning committee will review these suggestions along with the rest of the responses.

Residents are also asked to prioritize mitigation efforts in the event of any catastrophe. Some of the potential options are participation in national flood insurance, wildlife fuels treatment, and ongoing mitigation of landslides, rockfalls, and other hazards.

Pre-planning is often crucial in the event of a real disaster – and northwest Wyoming isn’t the same place it was in 2016.

Major events like the Fishhawk Fire and COVID-19 have literally and figuratively changed the landscape of the basin. More hazards like these will require more attention and resources from responding agencies in the years ahead.

Residents are asked to finish and submit the brief survey by June 17.