Overview
Emergency management authority for Utah’s local governments derives principally from the Emergency Management Act, codified at §53-2a of Utah State Code (as amended). Utah’s Statewide Mutual Aid Act is intended to streamline the process for emergency assistance due to disasters. Communities that participate in the mutual aid act are required to develop and maintain emergency preparedness plans (i.e., emergency operations plans, emergency response plans, etc.) in a format that is provided by state and federal agencies.
Not every community in Utah is alike. To evaluate potential disasters and hazards that could potentially affect your community, it is imperative that your community conduct its own study (i.e., risk assessment). In addition to analyzing the typical environmental hazards (i.e. floods, tornadoes, wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.), your community should also consider technological accidents (i.e. toxic chemical releases, nuclear power plant accidents, etc.) as well as deliberate incidents (i.e. sabotage, cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, or terrorist attack involving chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, explosive/flammable agents).
Under §53-2a-208, a chief executive officer of a municipality or county may declare a local emergency by proclamation upon a finding that a disaster has occurred or is imminent, and that the jurisdiction requires assistance beyond its own response and recovery capacity. That declaration carries specific legal effects:
- It constitutes official recognition of a disaster, providing the legal basis for requesting mutual aid or state and federal disaster assistance; and
- Activates the response and recovery aspects of any and all applicable local disaster plans or EOPs.
The Statewide Mutual Aid Act also prescribes the escalation chain (i.e., cities and towns declare to the county, counties declare to the state, and the state declares to the federal government), reflecting and reinforcing Utah’s home-rule or bottom-up model of disaster response.
As most Utah municipalities and county’s follow the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG) 101 structure which includes a basic plan supplemented by hazard specific annexes (including emergency support function (ESF) annexes), built on National Incident Management System (NIMS) principles and the Incident Command System (ICS), it’s no wonder why planning for an array of disasters can quickly become a very daunting and tedious or arduous task.
For the planning profession specifically, EOPs intersect with land use authority in several respects worth noting:
- Local hazard mitigation plans (required under the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000, as a condition of certain FEMA mitigation funding) inform of the natural hazards and resiliency considerations. These natural hazards and resiliency considerations should inform and/or be cross-referenced with relevant elements of general or master plans.
- Shelter-in-place or evacuation planning also has direct implications for the physical design of a community’s built environment, such as subdivisions designs, access and circulation standards, even densities in special areas of concern (i.e., wildland-urban interface, floodplain overlay zones, or similar.)
Content Contributors: Jones and DeMille Engineering, Inc, Hansen Planning Group, LLC / Rural Community Consultants
Special Note: This material was developed by civiclinQ for the Land Use Academy of Utah (LUAU). Funding for the development of this material was provided by through the Land Use Training Fund, which is administered by the Office of the Property Rights Ombudsman , utilizing a portion of the 1% surcharge on all building permits in the State of Utah.
The role of this organization in administering funding is primarily administrative and should not be viewed as legal advice. Always consult your legal representative when addressing land use activities.
Use the ‘Materials’ tab above to view related course materials, including printable pass-along card and PDF version of this online course.
