IDENTIFIABLE HAZARDS RATINGS

Alexander County, and Taylorsville, following the intent of Senate Bill 300, and the Hazard Mitigation Act of 2000, have assessed their vulnerability to hazards.

The hazards identified include those listed below. Other natural or man made hazards that could occur in other parts of the country (i.e.: volcanoes, tsunamis, landslide, nor'easter, commercial aircraft accidents, etc.) were not analyzed because of (1) the location of our jurisdiction, (2) there was no history of any such occurrence and the likelihood of such an occurrence was less than .1% , (3) there was no indication in any researched document that such events were ever to occur, therefore, the Hazard Mitigation Task Force felt it appropriate that time and very limited resources be used to identify and analyze those realistic hazards listed below.

Research was conducted by the contractor that provided initial planning priorities. The contractor also researched the potential for occurrence from a number of sources, but the primary source was the "History of Hazards by County" from the NC Division of Emergency Management. Discussion was then held by the Hazard Mitigation Task Force / LEPC on May 1, 2003 during the initial kickoff meeting. Each hazard was discussed individually and included the hazard specific threat, the frequency of occurrence in history and the probability of future occurrences. The task force chose to add Hazardous Materials to the threat due to the large numbers of incidents in the county and the town, mostly from transportation accidents and the potential for future occurrence. Table 2 - Historical weather events, was provided as supporting information to gauge the potential for future incidents, based upon the number and types on incidents that had happened in the past. After considerable discussion the Hazard Mitigation Task Force/LEPC agreed and adopted the findings in Table 1. This table differs slightly from Table 3 - Local Natural Hazards potential for occurrence that was provided by the NCDEM Hazard Mitigation branch.

Table 1
Hazard Ratings

Also see Current Mitigation Measures. Also see Hazard Vulnerability Assessments.