Supervisors authorize application for hazard and pre-disaster mitigation grants

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 August 6 to authorize the application of grant requests totaling $12 million and to accept those grants administered by the state Office of Emergency Services if accepted.

The submissions for the grant money provided by the Federal Emergency Management Association includes a grant request of $4 million to retrofit combustible wood roofs on homes in unincorporated San Diego County and $398,890 for a defensible space chipping program. Three other applications for site-specific programs in East County were also authorized.

FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program is administered through state agencies and provides grants to state and local governments to implement long-term hazard mitigation measures following the declaration of a major disaster.

The state Office of Emergency Services announced in April that $40 million is available for cost-effective fire mitigation projects or development of local multi-hazard mitigation plans intended to reduce or eliminate future damage.

The grants will require a 25 percent local match. The homeowners who benefit from the wood roof replacement project will provide that matching amount if the county receives the grant for the wood roof retrofit program, while county Office of Emergency Services appropriations available in the 2008-09 budget would be used for the chipping program.

The Board of Supervisors adopted a multi-jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan in October 2004, and FEMA approved the plan in February 2005. The plan identified numerous potential hazards including structure fires, wildland fires, earthquakes, foods, coastal storms and tsunamis, erosion, landslides, dam failures, and human-caused hazards such as technological or material hazards.

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