OTTUMWA — A plan for what to do when bad things happen is a valuable tool for Wapello County and its communities, especially if the plan is the key to federal assistance.

Numerous officials in the county have created such a plan. It’s called the “Wapello County Multi-Jurisdictional Multi-Hazard Pre-Disaster Mitigation Plan.” The plan pertains to Ottumwa, Agency, Blakesburg, Chillicothe, Eddyville, Eldon, Kirkville and all county areas in between.

Officials from each area have worked since early in 2006 to determine which hazards — whether natural or manmade — have occurred in Wapello County, to prioritize those hazards and to develop a plan to handle them.

The Ottumwa City Council this week unanimously approved the plan, which is also approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The council’s OK makes the city eligible for FEMA mitigation funding should disaster occur.

Fire Chief Steve O’Connor is also Wapello County’s emergency management coordinator. He told the council Section 322 of the Federal Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 requires local governments to develop an all-hazards plan in order to get future mitigation funding.

O’Connor said the last stage of the process is to have all the local governments in Wapello County adopt the lengthy plan, which is bound in a large three-ring binder.

Citizens can view the plan at either Central Fire Station, Fourth and Wapello streets, or the Wapello County Auditor’s office in the courthouse, 101 W. Fourth St.

O’Connor’s resolution offered some background on plan development and so did the Courier’s computer archives.

In March 2005, the Wapello County Board of Supervisors submitted the grant application to FEMA for the hazard mitigation plan grant.

By April 2006 the Wapello County Emergency Management Commission received a $30,000 grant to develop a federal mitigation plan and Area 15 Regional Planning Commission administered it.

O’Connor said then that the EMC already had a state-approved mitigation plan, but it didn’t satisfy federal standards. To obtain federal dollars after a major incident, the EMC needed a plan with more detail.

The EMC now has one and each Wapello County city or town has its own page in the table of contents and its own appendix in the plan. The table of contents shows the same headings for each town.

For example, Ottumwa’s table of contents sheet notes these headings: Plan adoption, planning process, community profile, risk assessment, mitigation strategy and plan maintenance process.

With Area 15’s help, city officials discussed all the hazards they could recall and researched a lot of records to determine what had affected Ottumwa during the city’s lifetime.

Officials chose the following hazards and ranked them: Tornadoes, windstorms, floods, severe winter storms, energy disruption/failure, fixed haz-mat incident, highway transportation incident, rail transportation incident, dam failure and levee failure.