Region 5 Health and Medical Mitigation Plan

Pierce County Department of Emergency Management has been contracted as of June 2009 to facilitate the development of a Hazard Mitigation Plan for the Health and Medical Organizations in Pierce County.

The nine organizations participating in this planning effort include:

Cascade Regional Blood Services
Community Health Care
DSHS/Western State Hospital
Dynamic Family Services
Franciscan Health System
Group Health
Madigan Army Medical Center
MultiCare Health System

Hazard mitigation planning is the process of determining how to reduce or eliminate the loss of life and property damage resulting from natural and human-caused hazards.

Plan Progress as of December, 2009:

The Planning Team has been meeting on a monthly basis and has completed the Profile Section of the the respective document. The Profile is a snapshot of the organization to include their mission or vision statements, summary of services, basic maps, history and other pertinent information about the organization. These are available for viewing by clicking here. In addition to the Profile, the group has begun work on their Infrastructure Summary and their Capability Identification. These two sections will take some time to complete. Please check back at this site for future progress reports.

The Benefits of mitigation planning include:

Averts loss of life and injury to people,
Reduces damage to public and private property,
Lessens expenditure of resources and exposure to risk for first responders,
Reduces costs of disaster response and recovery,
Accelerates recovery of communities and businesses affected by disasters, and
Enhances community resiliency.

For a brief history of this project, follow this link.

Developing the Plans

A mitigation planning team has been created with professionals from the planning organizations. To see the participants for each organization, please check the links to the individual pages above.

We are also accepting input from concerned community citizens by way of phone, fax and email. Please see the contact information below.

The planning partners have organized resources and are in the process of developing a profile section, capability assessment section, risk assessment section, vulnerability assessment section, mitigation strategy section, a plan maintenance section, and a process section.

The resulting plan will be made available for examination in a public setting and linked to this website. Public comment and suggestions are invited and encouraged. Two public meetings will be conducted prior to the plan's formal adoption.

For further information, comments or suggestions, please contact:

Diane M Schurr
Pierce County Emergency Management
2501 S 35th Street, Suite D
253-798-2217
dschurr@co.pierce.wa.us