After the recent flooding in Western Maryland, Montgomery County sent a team of six fire and rescue staff members and two swift water boat teams to Allegany County to assist. By midday Wednesday, the teams had returned to Montgomery County.
Kati Kenney, communications director for Allegany County, told 91欧美激情 the focus on Tuesday was on damage assessment and assuring the safety of residents in the community. The town of Westernport was hit the hardest.
“The majority, if not all of those structures, have severe water damage and the crews there are now doing some structural assessments to figure out if they’re even safe to go back in,” Kenney said, referring to damage along the town’s Main Street.
Kenney said severe flooding is not frequent, but has happened in the past, with the most recent damaging floods occurring in 1996.
“So this isn’t a first for them, but it’s been quite a few years since we’ve experienced anything quite like this,” she said.
Last month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced it was ending the program that provided funding for communities to reduce the likelihood of damage from natural disasters. FEMA officials called the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, program “wasteful” and “politicized” in an April news release announcing the end of the program.
But hazard mitigation projects, according to an expert from the University of Maryland, are vital to communities that are at risk for natural disasters.
Ben Yelin, the program director for public policy at the university’s Center for Health and Homeland Security, noted the efforts in Ellicott City, which had been devastated by flooding first in 2016 and then again in 2018.
“They’ve made significant investments in resilience. They have a new warning system for Old Town Ellicott City,” he said, adding there are projects underway to mitigate the effects of future storms.
“They have not faced a similar incident in the past seven years,” Yelin said.
Kevin Kinnally, with the Maryland Association of Counties, said the flooding in Allegany County, where two schools were evacuated, underscores the challenges faced by counties hit by natural disasters.
“These are not events that states and local governments can budget for, and so hopefully, we’ll see that partnership moving forward, including with this event in Allegany County,” he said.
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