Emergency managers cannot prevent hurricanes, wildfires, floods, or other severe weather events — but they can control how prepared their community, agency, or organization is when disaster strikes.
Preparing for a natural disaster involves a repeatable process: assessing hazards, coordinating with partners, planning for vulnerable populations, and building communication systems that reach everyone before, during, and after an event.
This guide walks through seven procedural steps that county, state, and local emergency management agencies use to prepare for severe weather and other hazards — from conducting a formal hazard assessment (THIRA) to understanding how disaster recovery funding works. Each step below includes the specific actions emergency managers take, along with insights from practicing emergency management professionals at Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, Fairfax County Emergency Management, and FloodMapp.
1. Conduct a THIRA (thorough hazard identification and risk assessment) as part of your Hazard Mitigation Planning
A thorough hazard identification and risk assessment (THIRA) is a critical component of any disaster planning process. It provides a foundation for additional planning efforts and is an essential first step in the process of creating an emergency management plan.
Jenny Demaris of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office explains that “integrating THIRAs and mitigation planning into recovery is important to create greater resilience. Many of us emergency management professionals know the cycle is continuous. Being able to recognize and document what is needed to better mitigate disasters helps greatly so when something does happen, you have a plan.”
By conducting a THIRA, you’ll be able to identify the types of hazards that might impact your community, including extreme weather events, natural disasters, and man-made hazards, and then plan accordingly.
How to conduct a THIRA: Step-by-step
- Identify the threats and hazards relevant to your jurisdiction — hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, wildfires, earthquakes, and man-made hazards — using historical data, local geography, and community input.
- Give the threats and hazards context by describing when, where, and how they could occur, including worst-case and most-likely scenarios.
- Establish capability targets — the specific outcomes your agency needs to achieve for each hazard (e.g., evacuate X residents within Y hours).
- Apply the targets to the community by estimating the resources — personnel, equipment, shelters, transportation — needed to meet each capability target.
- Document the results in a THIRA report that feeds directly into your Hazard Mitigation Plan and is reviewed annually or after major incidents.
- Repeat this cycle on a recurring basis, since hazards and community risk profiles change over time.
2. Identify and work with partners
When preparing for severe weather and other hazards, it is important to identify and work with partners.
A partner can be anyone in your community who is likely to be involved in or impacted by a disaster, as well as government agencies. Partners can include faith-based organizations, businesses, community organizations, schools, doctor’s offices, state and local agencies, and other jurisdictions.
Paul Lupe from Fairfax County Emergency Management shares how he and his team develop relationships with partners: We look for “those opportunities to develop relationships with our external partners that aren’t necessarily emergency management specialists but work in coordination with our agency as a part of the county to help with a significant event. For example, the Red Cross is a big partner of ours, a lot of our utility companies, our gas companies, etc. and we’re in contact with them semi-regularly in the event that something happens.”
Partners can play an important role in your emergency management efforts, including providing assistance during an actual emergency and helping distribute critical information to the public. For example, local governments, community organizations, schools, and workplaces can make sure that people are properly prepared and trained to deal with a severe weather event.
3. Plan for those with accessibility or functional needs
When planning for hazards, it is important to recognize and plan for people with accessibility or functional needs who may be at greater risk during or after an emergency or disaster.
According to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), people with access or functional needs are defined as “individuals who need assistance due to any condition (temporary or permanent) that limits their ability to act. To have access and functional needs does not require that the individual have any kind of diagnosis or specific evaluation” (FEMA, 2021). For example, this may include individuals who are seniors, have disabilities, have limited English proficiency, lack access to transportation, or lack financial resources.
In order to prepare effectively, these community members must be identified. Then, when a disaster does happen, it is crucial that these people are notified in a way that is accessible to them. For example, providing alerts in multiple languages can help with accessibility.
In the case of Lincoln County, Jenny discusses how they run their “special needs registry through Everbridge. The health department helps verify the need people are registering for. When there is an incident, calls and messages can go out to poll people and understand how to prepare them. You’re able to also use the information from that to actually map out transportation routes, if they need transportation assistance.”
With the right Critical Event Management (CEM) platform, it is possible to reach all those who need to be contacted in a disaster, including people with accessibility or functional needs.
4. Create a communication plan that fits your community
Communication is an important part of emergency management. It involves effectively relaying critical information to the public and helping people be prepared, respond to hazards, and recover after an event.
To prepare for a severe weather event, you can begin by creating a communication plan that fits your community. This includes determining where you will get your information, who will disseminate it, and through what channels. It can also involve partnering with other organizations that can help you get critical information to the public.
Make sure you have the necessary tools and are using channels that are accessible for everyone in your community, such as a mass notification or emergency alert system.
5. Use communication channels to your benefit
Communicating effectively with your community is essential to preparedness efforts, but it is also important to recognize ways in which other entities are communicating with your community. Other entities, including the media, non-governmental organizations, and businesses, may play a crucial role in informing the public during a severe weather event or other disaster.
James Podlucky, Industry solutions expert for SLED (State and Local Government Education) at Everbridge and former Emergency Manager of Sarasota County, discusses the importance of “having a streamlined way of communicating and using multimodal communications, because many people communicate or receive information through a variety of ways such as email, social media, a mobile phone, or a landline,” but not everyone may use all of these forms. To reach the most people, all forms of communication must be utilized.
You can use these communication channels to your benefit to convey critical information. For example, during COVID, with so much being done virtually, organizations have been able to hold webinars and virtual meetings through which they provided updates on the pandemic. The agencies distributed information through media channels, which allowed them to reach many people who would otherwise not have seen the information.
6. Amplify communications
After your initial communication efforts, it can also be helpful to amplify communications with the public. Amplifying communications involves distributing information from other entities, such as the media, through your communication channels.
For example, using social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter has been essential in reaching more people and alerting them when disaster strikes. It is also possible to use social media to encourage employees or citizens to sign up for alerts and messages through Critical Event Management (CEM) platforms. Spreading the word about opting in to these kinds of communications enables emergency managers to reach people with critical updates more immediately.
It is important to make sure critical information about preparing for a disaster is available for as many people as possible. Paul Lupe from Fairfax County Emergency Management made sure they have hard copies as well: “We have created a community emergency response guide, where we share a written plan to the community at large, with the steps they can take, and resources that they could leverage to prepare for any hazard. We print copies of it to leave in our libraries, but mostly we leverage it through our website.” By making it accessible in print and on the web, more people will know what to do in case disaster strikes.
7. Understand what funding is available and who pays for damages
In your preparations for and during a severe weather event, it is important that you understand what funding is available to you, as well as who will pay for damages. Understanding what funding is available to you can help expedite response to and recovery from hazards and diminish impact.
A crucial part of mitigation efforts includes obtaining funding for projects like infrastructure that will prevent future disasters from happening. For example, this could include making sure a building can withstand a hurricane or additional reinforcements in a landslide area. Ultimately, this will save lives and money.
When an incident happens, the question of who pays for what when is important. This is where local jurisdictions can help communicate with the public about how to navigate the process of obtaining funding to pay for damages. Mark Slauter of Floodmapp emphasizes that “a key word with funding is navigate. Navigating through the process and helping others with funding and the recovery process. It’s critical for those of us who are on the recovery side of this, particularly in the public sector, to be able to walk people through that process.”
What to look for in emergency management technology: A capability checklist
- Mass notification and alerting systems — send SMS, voice, email, app, and social alerts simultaneously to residents, employees, or responders.
- Hazard and weather monitoring feeds — real-time data on storms, floods, wildfires, and seismic activity to trigger alerts before impact.
- Geolocation and mapping tools — visualize hazard zones against population, asset, and personnel locations to prioritize response.
- Incident and resource management dashboards — track deployed personnel, equipment, shelters, and open tasks during response and recovery.
- Accessibility-compliant communication channels — multi-language alerts, TTY/text options, and registries for residents with access or functional needs.
- After-action and funding-tracking modules — document response actions and expenses to support FEMA reimbursement and future mitigation grants.
When evaluating a platform, confirm it can perform all six functions in a single workflow — fragmented tools slow response time during the first critical hours of a disaster.
How a Critical Event Management platform can help
Severe weather events, as well as other hazards, can impact any community at any time. By implementing the above seven practices, emergency managers can proactively build resilience across their departments, organizations, and communities.
To put the importance of severe weather preparedness in perspective, “in 2021, the U.S. experienced 20 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, putting 2021 in second place for the most disasters in a calendar year. Damages from the 2021 disasters totaled approximately $145 billion. (All cost estimates are adjusted based on the Consumer Price Index, 2021)” (Climate.gov, 2022).
While it is impossible to completely avoid all impacts from threats, emergency managers can instead focus their efforts on promoting resilience to best protect their people and assets. A Critical Event Management (CEM) platform can help emergency managers better implement the above practices, which protects people and operations while reducing financial impact of disasters. Furthermore, CEM platforms can help organizations manage and respond to all kinds of critical events, not just severe weather, and build a culture of preparedness throughout your organization.
To learn about Response and Recovery when dealing with a severe weather event, you can view the final two segments in the 4-part webinar series hosted by Everbridge.
Frequently asked questions
Emergency managers prepare for natural disasters by conducting a THIRA (thorough hazard identification and risk assessment) to identify local risks, building partnerships with government agencies and community organizations, planning for residents with accessibility or functional needs, and creating a multi-channel communication plan. These steps feed into an ongoing cycle of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.
A THIRA (Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment) is a FEMA-defined process for identifying hazards, estimating their impact, and determining the resources needed to respond. To conduct one, agencies identify relevant threats, describe likely scenarios, set capability targets, estimate required resources, and document findings to guide mitigation planning.
Agencies communicate during natural disasters by using multimodal channels — SMS, voice calls, email, mobile apps, and social media — so information reaches people regardless of how they prefer to receive it. They also amplify messages from trusted sources like local media and partner organizations, and provide alerts in multiple languages and formats for accessibility.
Safety tracking starts with a pre-incident roster of people to account for, followed by automated check-in requests sent via SMS, app, or call when a disaster is declared. Location data is cross-referenced with the hazard zone to identify at-risk individuals, and any non-responses are escalated to a live dashboard for follow-up by response teams.
Communities plan for accessibility by first identifying residents with access or functional needs — often through a voluntary special needs registry verified by a local health department — then ensuring alerts are delivered in accessible formats, such as multiple languages or TTY-compatible channels, and using registry data to plan transportation or evacuation assistance.
Funding sources vary by jurisdiction and disaster type, but typically include FEMA disaster assistance, state emergency funds, private insurance, and local mitigation grants. Emergency managers help residents and businesses navigate this funding process, from filing claims to applying for infrastructure mitigation grants that reduce future damage.
