MEETING SUMMARY
Date of Meeting:
September 16, 2015
Subject:
Steering Committee Meeting No. 2
Project Name:
Clark County 2016 Hazard Mitigation Plan
In Attendance:
Steering Committee: Paul McGraw, Heidi Burkart, Jeff Sarvis, John
Wheeler, Joseph Gehlen, Ken Alexander, Lauren Hollenbeck,
Lynette Jackson, Mike Lewis, Melissa Tracy (for Mike Soliwoda),
and Stephen Eldred
*Phone
Non-Voting Alternates, Planning Partners and Stakeholders:
Avaly Scarpelli, Chris Griffith, Grover Laseke, Heidi Scarpelli
Planning Team: Kristen Gelino and Carol Baumann*
Steering Committee
Members (or alternate)
Not Present:
Carol Bua, Dan Krebs, and Lee Knottnerus
Summary Prepared by:
Kristen Gelino – 9/21/2015
Project No.:
103S3893
Quorum – Yes or No
Yes (11 members present)
Item
Welcome and Introductions
 John Wheeler the Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency
(CRESA) staff person charged with supporting the planning effort,
opened the meeting and facilitated group introductions.
 The Agenda was reviewed and no modifications were made.
 Handouts provided included: Agenda, August Steering Committee
Meeting Minutes, Draft Steering Committee Ground Rules (Handout
#1), Draft Volume I Table of Contents (Handout #2), Purpose and
Goals (Handout #3), Hazards of Concern (Handout #4) and Risk
Assessment Update (Handout #5).
 The August Steering Committee Meeting Minutes were reviewed and
approved by consensus.
 No members of the public made a request to provide comment.
 Kristen Gelino provided an administrative update regarding file
sharing software. She indicated that the planning team would be
sharing documents with the committee via dropbox, instead of
sharepoint to make it less cumbersome for committee members. Ms.
Gelino indicated that meeting materials would be kept in the shared
folder for the duration of the planning process.
Action
Ms. Gelino will distribute a
link to a shared dropbox folder
for
steering
committee
materials.
Steering committee members
should let Ms. Gelino know if
they have any difficulty
accessing the materials via
dropbox.
2016 Clark County HMP Steering Committee Meeting Summary
Item
Action
Steering Committee Composition and Ground Rules
Ms. Gelino introduced Handout #1. She indicated that the revisions to the
steering committee ground rules discussed at the August steering committee
meeting had been incorporated and distributed to the committee with revisions
in track changes. Mr. Wheeler indicated that unless there were any objections,
these rules would be considered finalized. There were no objections and the
ground rules were approved via consensus. Ms. Gelino reminded the
committee that if for some reason, the committee needed to amend the ground
rules, they could do so at any time.
Ms. Gelino requested that steering committee members check the final page of
the document where primary members and alternates were listed to ensure that
any designated alternates have been appropriately captured. Mr. Wheeler
provided an update on the follow up with the additional committee members
that had been suggested at the August meeting. He indicated that he had not
yet had a chance to do much follow up, but would do so in the next few days.
It was clarified that the Port of Vancouver may still sign-on as a planning
partner and/or participate on the steering committee. It was also clarified that
steering committee meetings are open to the public and planning partners are
encouraged to attend.
Document Review and Update
Ms. Gelino thanked the steering committee members for their participation in
the plan review survey. It was noted that several people had experienced
technical details with the survey and Ms. Gelino indicated she would look into
addressing the issues.
The planning team will
continue to seek the additional
steering committee members
suggested by the committee.
Ms. Gelino will look into
addressing the technical issues
with surveymonkey.
She reminded the committee members that this initial survey was a review at
about a 30,000 foot level and that the committee would be reviewing various
aspects in more detail throughout the planning process. Ms. Gelino indicated
that there were two major themes that came out of the general plan review
comments. The first was that the shorter, the better and that it would be
preferable to keep any extraneous information out of the main body of the
document. The second dealt with the level of simplicity versus technical details
in the plan document. Ms. Gelino indicated that although the main audience for
the document is FEMA and implementing agencies identified in the plan, the
planning team hoped that it would also be a useful reference for the general
public. Ms. Gelino indicated that the planning team is striving to achieve a
balance between providing technical information and being useful for the
public. She indicated that the planning team would look for feedback on this
issue from the steering committee as sections of the document are being
reviewed. It was requested that steering committee members be given
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2016 Clark County HMP Steering Committee Meeting Summary
Item
examples of other plans to compare the State and 2004 plans. Ms. Gelino
indicated that she would attempt to find interesting examples of the plans that
had addressed planning components in ways that may be of interest to the
committee.
Ms. Gelino introduced the draft volume I table of contents handout (Handout
#2). She reminded the committee that the final plan would be two volumes.
The first volume will include county-wide information and the second volume
will be mainly comprised of the jurisdictional annexes for each participating
planning partner. She indicated that the handout provided was the draft table of
contents for volume I. She indicated that the document will be divided into
three parts. The first part addresses the planning process, the second part is the
risk assessment and the third part is the mitigation strategy. The steering
committee will be reviewing all three parts over the course of the planning
process. The steering committee then discussed the table of contents and
determined that nothing immediately jumped out as extraneous. After
discussion the steering committee determined that they would like to organize
the hazards of concern alphabetically, but that they may wish to include the
risk ranking (e.g. high, medium, low) for each hazard in the table of contents
or very early on in the document. It was clarified that the draft table of contents
was laid out as the standard Tetra Tech approach to meeting FEMA
requirements, but adjustments can be made. A planning partner in attendance
indicated that making it through the review process was challenging, so the
committee would be wise to stick with a format that the reviewers are familiar
with. Ms. Gelino indicated that the planning team would let the steering
committee know if any of the suggested changes would be expected to make
the review process more challenging. It was recommended that an explanation
be provided early on in the document that the plan needs to meet certain
requirements to make jurisdictions eligible for grant funding and the document
is organized accordingly. It was also suggested that the document preparers
consider the utility of tables, charts etc. for other documents during the
document development process.
Ms. Gelino then passed around the phase I jurisdictional annex templates for
the steering committee’s review. She reminded the committee that the annexes
will be completed in 3 phases. The first phase will be distributed the week of
October 5th. After discussion the committee determined that the phase 1
annexes should be due 30 days from their distribution date. Ms. Gelino
indicated that if a planning partner missed the deadline it would not mean that
they were dropped from the partnership. She also informed the committee that
she would be available to assist planning partners that had questions about the
annex. A question was raised regarding the asset inventory on the special
purpose district annex template. It was decided that Ms. Gelino would provide
the instructions for the template to Hugh Findlay from CRWWD and he would
Action
The planning team will record
suggestions for the plan update
and implement as appropriate.
The planning team will
distribute
the
phase
1
jurisdictional annexes the week
of October 5th.
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2016 Clark County HMP Steering Committee Meeting Summary
Item
review them to see if additional clarification is needed before the templates are
sent to the planning partnership.
Purpose, Goals, Objectives and Actions
Ms. Gelino introduced handout #3. She reviewed the results of the plan review
survey and the committee discussed the three most popular example purpose
statements and the steering committee suggestions. After discussion the
committee agreed to the following purpose statement (note: slightly edited for
clarity):
Define natural hazard risk and establish strategies and actions for
reducing the impacts of disasters in Clark County.
The committee then reviewed and discussed the 2004 Clark County hazard
mitigation plan (HMP) goals and the Washington State 2013 HMP goals. After
discussion, the committee determined that the goals should be revisited. Ms.
Gelino indicated that she would distribute a goal setting exercise to the
committee and it would be discussed at the October meeting.
Action
Ms. Gelino will send the
special
purpose
district
instructions to Hugh Findlay
for his review and comment.
Ms. Gelino will distribute the
goal setting exercise to the
committee.
Committee members will
complete the goal setting
exercise by October 6th.
Risk Assessment Update
Ms. Gelino introduced the hazards of concern handout (Handout #4). She
indicated that several hazards of concern had been identified including:
drought, earthquake, flood, landslide, volcano and wildfire. Based on
committee feedback from the plan review survey, additional discussion was
needed on severe storm and/or tornado, dam failure and technological/humancaused hazards. After discussion, the committee decided that tornado would be
included in the severe storm profile, but the name of the hazard would be
changed to severe weather to be inclusive of extreme heat and, possibly,
extreme cold. Additionally, the committee decided that the plan would focus
exclusively on natural hazards, with the exception of dam failure. The dam
failure discussion will emphasize that the mitigation strategies are focused on
dam failure impacts, not dam operations. The committee indicated that they
would like the plan to discuss why the other hazards were not addressed and
include information on where to find information and/or existing programs that
address other hazards of concern. The committee determined that hazardous
materials could be adequately addressed through discussion of secondary
hazards for the primary hazards of concerns. Additionally, it was noted that the
committee membership did not include representation from stakeholders that
would be most useful in discussing the other hazards, such as law enforcement.
Further, the grant programs associated with the plan are natural-hazard
focused.
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2016 Clark County HMP Steering Committee Meeting Summary
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The committee then discussed whether or not the plan should address climate
change. The committee determined that climate change discussion will be
incorporated into chapters as relevant, (e.g. potential climate change impacts
on each hazard of concern) and that the focus would be on how climate change
has the potential to affect natural hazard risk reduction strategies.
Ms. Gelino then gave a brief introduction of HAZUS-MH, a GIS-based
modelling software that will be used to produce exposure and vulnerability
estimates for some hazards of concern: flood, dam failure and earthquake. Ms.
Gelino indicated that scenario events needed to be selected for each of these
hazards. After discussion, the steering committee confirmed the planning
team’s recommendations and the following scenario events will be modeled:
- Flood: 1 percent annual chance and 0.2 percent annual chance flood
hazards
- Dam failure: The Swift Dam spillway design flood scenario (note: the
planning team will follow up with the data providers to determine if
the scenario includes sequential overtopping of downstream dams)
- Earthquake: 100-year and 500-year probabilistic scenarios, Cascadia
M9.0 and Portland Hills M6.5
Action
The planning team will
follow up with the data
providers to determine if the
scenario includes sequential
overtopping of downstream
dams
Discuss Public Involvement
Due to time constraints the public involvement strategy was not discussed and
will be addressed at the October steering committee meeting.
Action Items for Next Meeting
The action items identified during the meeting were reviewed.
The meeting was adjourned at 12:00 PM. The next SC meeting is:
October 21, 2015 at 10:00 AM
Clark Regional Wastewater District
8000 NE 52nd Court
Vancouver, WA 98665
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