Hazard Mitigation Plan

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2024 Local Hazard Mitigation Plan Update

The City of Hermosa Beach is seeking input from the community as we update our Local Hazard Mitigation Plan to help us keep our community safe in future emergencies and disasters. To review the draft plan please click here.

To send feedback, please contact the Hermosa Beach Emergency Management Coordinator, at oem@hermosabeach.gov or 310-318-0340 by Monday, February 5, 2024.

What is a Local Hazard Mitigation Plan?

A Local Hazard Mitigation Plan is a framework that guides our community in making decisions and developing policies to reduce or eliminate risks to life and property. The plan identifies the types of hazards that threaten our community, evaluates our vulnerability to those threats, and outlines a strategy to reduce or eliminate the risk posed by those threats. This plan is required to be updated every five years.

Why is the Plan Important?

The Federal Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 requires that a community have an approved hazard mitigation plan to be eligible to apply for and receive certain types of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) hazard mitigation funds. Receipt of these funds can be critical to the implementation of identified hazard mitigation programs that break the cycle of disaster, damage, restoration, and repeated damage.

Community Meetings

Community meetings to discuss updates to the Local Hazard Mitigation Plan are happening in 2024. If you'd like to see a video recording of the presentation please click here.

Contact Information:

For questions or comments, please contact the City of Hermosa Beach Emergency Management Coordinator, at oem@hermosabeach.gov

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2017 Local Hazard Mitigation Plan Approval

The City of Hermosa Beach Office of Emergency Management submitted the updated 2017 Local Hazard Mitigation Plan to Cal OES on May 25, 2017 for review. Cal OES approved the plan and forwarded the plan to FEMA for review on December 12, 2017. FEMA deemed the plan eligible for approval pending City Council adoption on February 8, 2018.

The 2017 City of Hermosa Beach Local Hazard Mitigation Plan was adopted by the Hermosa Beach City Council March 27, 2018 by Resolution Number 18-7124. The plan was resubmitted to FEMA and approved on April 17, 2018. The 2017 City of Hermosa Beach Local Hazard Mitigation plan will be valid until 2022. The City will begin working to update the plan in 2020 to ensure that a new plan is adopted and approved prior to the expiration of the 2017 City of Hermosa Beach Local Hazard Mitigation plan. The City of Hermosa Beach would like the public to have access to the City Council adopted and FEMA approved 2017 City of Hermosa Beach Local Hazard Mitigation Plan.

Plan Development Process

While the plan was under development, the public was encouraged to review the plan and provide comments via email to oem@hermosabeach.gov and were accepted through May 15, 2017.

The City of Hermosa Beach Office of Emergency Management also held a Local Hazard Mitigation Plan Town Hall on Wednesday, May 3, 2017 at 7 p.m. in City Council Chamber located at 1315 Valley Drive.

The presentation included:

Overview of Hazard Mitigation Planning
Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (LHMP) Requirements
Hazards Review
Planning Team and Planning Process
Mitigation Priorities and Actions
Questions
Next Steps

Hermosa Beach recently prepared a Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (LHMP) in accordance with the Federal Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 (DMA 2000). DMA 2000 requires local governments to develop and submit HMPs as a condition of receiving Hazard Mitigation Grant Program and other mitigation project grant funding. This includes pre-disaster mitigation funding and post-disaster mitigation funding for existing Hermosa Beach facilities.

What is Hazard Mitigation?

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) describes hazard mitigation as “any action taken to reduce or eliminate the long-term risk to human life and property from natural hazards.” Although the requirement set by 44 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Subpart M Section 206.401 requires a planning area to describe only natural hazards that may affect the jurisdiction, most planning areas include technological and human-caused hazards in the HMP to represent the total risk from hazards to the planning area. In addition, the State of California SB 379, requires all local planning areas to assess vulnerabilities associated with climate change.

Hazards can result in death and destruction of property and infrastructure. The work done to minimize the impact of hazard events to life and property is called hazard mitigation. Often, these damaging events occur in the same locations over time (i.e. earthquakes along fault lines), and cause repeated damage. Because of this, hazard mitigation is often focused on reducing repetitive loss, thereby breaking the disaster cycle.

The essential steps of hazard mitigation are:

• Identify and profile hazards that affect the local area

• Analyze the people and facilities at risk from those hazards

• Develop mitigation actions to lessen or reduce the impact of the profiled hazards

What are the Requirements and Process for the Hermosa Beach Hazard Mitigation Plan?

The requirements for an HMP are described in 44 CFR Parts 201 and 206. FEMA has produced a Local Mitigation Plan Review Tool to demonstrate how the mitigation plan meets the regulation in 44 CFR § 201.6. The plan review tool has a regulation checklist that provides a summary of FEMA’s evaluation of whether the plan has addressed all requirements. Planners can also use the checklist prior to submitting the plan for approval to ensure they have addressed all the requirements.

The primary tasks that will take place during the planning process include:

1. Capability analysis

2. Vulnerability assessment

3. Hazard identification

4. Defining a hazard mitigation strategy through actions and projects

5. Implementing the hazard mitigation actions and projects

Public and Stakeholder Input

The LHMP planning process requires input from stakeholders and the public. Generally, project stakeholders include neighboring jurisdictions and their agencies and departments that might interface with Hermosa Beach during a disaster response. The public is represented by community members and community organizations that have an interest in City projects and actions to mitigate hazards and save lives and property.

Hermosa Beach will continue to update the LHMP website throughout the planning process. Documents will be made available on this webpage. Hermosa Beach will post updates on social media when documents are available for review.