Hamilton County presents updated Emergency Operations Plan; discussion focuses on sirens, flood risk and grants

Hamilton County Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency Director Nick Crosley presented an updated Emergency Operations Plan to the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners, describing the plan's organization, recent changes and how the county coordinates with local, state and federal partners in large-scale disasters.

The update, which Crosley described as "a living document" that the agency fully reviews every five years and adjusts annually, lays out the county's basic plan, 15 emergency support functions, a hazards annex and a separate hazardous-materials annex exempted from public distribution under the Ohio Sunshine Law. Crosley said the process included more than four dozen planning meetings with more than 80 partner agencies over a multi-year review.

Why it matters: The revised plan defines roles for county and local elected officials, municipal staff and partner organizations during response and recovery, clarifies how the county will seek state and federal assistance when thresholds are reached, and highlights gaps the county is working to close — particularly public alerting, debris management, housing after disasters and underinsurance for flood risk.

Crosley told commissioners the Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) documents how Hamilton County will respond to large-scale emergencies and coordinate with state and federal authorities. He said most local incidents do not meet state or federal disaster thresholds and that the county handles the majority of events locally. He described the county's approach as a "whole community" response, citing partnerships with private-sector utilities such as Duke Energy, a county COAD (coalition of community organizations active in disasters) and dozens of nonprofit and municipal partners.

The plan's organization and key elements Crosley summarized the EOP's parts: a basic plan, 15 federal-style emergency support functions (ESFs), a hazard-specific hazardous-materials annex and several supporting plans — a damage-assessment plan, debris-management plan, donations-management and volunteer-management plans, a mass-casualty plan and a mass-fatality plan coordinated with the coroner's office. He said the hazmat annex is withheld from public distribution because of sensitive content.

Crosley described county resources and partners the plan assigns coordination roles to, including the Hamilton County Communication Center, the county engineer, Environmental Services, Job and Family Services, Hamilton County Public Health, Cincinnati Public Health, the Sheriff's Office, and the Hamilton County USAR (urban search and rescue) team. He said the county uses the National Incident Management System and Incident Command System for resource management and has a formal process to activate the Emergency Operations Center and request disaster declarations through county administration and the Board of Commissioners.

Recent changes, grant programs and data cited Crosley said the update increases emphasis on risk and vulnerability, equity and language access, and the use of FEMA community lifelines to describe incident impacts. He listed grants and programs tied to preparedness and mitigation discussed in the presentation: Hazard Mitigation Grant funds, the Emergency Management Performance Grant, Homeland Security grants, and the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program (BRIC). He said the county has used hazard-mitigation grants for buyouts and other projects and that staff are routinely watching for federal and state grant opportunities.

On grants for the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) project, Crosley said the county has an awarded grant for equipment that is under environmental review by FEMA Region 5 and that the portal for that grant is open. He said he did not anticipate the federal review affecting the EOC equipment grant and that construction of the facility is county-funded.

Examples and exercises Crosley cited the county's response during the styrene release and the COVID-19 pandemic to show how the office posts monitoring and testing results and coordinates public information. "We created [an emergency page] immediately and posted every piece of information that we got, every single air monitoring report, every single water report," he said, adding that transparency helped responders and residents access the data.

Concerns raised by commissioners and follow-ups Commissioners and the county administrator asked for detail about how the EOP ties to county investments and local infrastructure projects. Crosley said emergency management participates in infrastructure discussions, works with Metropolitan Sewer District and water providers on flood and stormwater projects, helps jurisdictions identify mitigation needs, and assists partners applying for mitigation grants.

Commissioners also pressed on two recurring public concerns: outdoor warning sirens and flood insurance coverage. On sirens, Crosley described the system as older infrastructure that still has a role for some outdoor venues but that cell-phone-based alerts and other modern systems are generally more precise: "A phone notification can give you a polygon — here's where you're at — whereas a siren goes off by zone and can be imprecise," he said. He said the county is working with Facilities to perform a full-condition assessment of the siren network (Crosley noted about 195 sirens in the county and four trained staff who maintain them) and recommended a public conversation about future investments and redundancy so residents without cell phones or other alerting remain covered.

On flood insurance, Crosley said he is compiling data on policies and exposure: roughly 500 active flood-insurance policies in the county and an estimated 10,000 properties at risk, pointing to an underinsurance concern for flood-prone areas. He said Job and Family Services (JFS) plays a key role in scaling assistance and expanding programs after a declared disaster.

Quantitative clarifications mentioned during the meeting included: 49 jurisdictions within Hamilton County are assigned responsibilities in the EOP; the county conducted more than four dozen planning meetings with over 80 partner agencies; the debris threshold for state consideration was described as roughly $4,000,000 in uninsured losses for the county, with a cited state-declaration threshold of about $12–13 million; and the county maintains roughly 195 outdoor warning sirens.

Board response and next steps County Administrator Jeff Alito thanked Crosley and the office for preparedness work and exercises, noting the agency's role in post-event reviews and improvements. "Nick is a trusted confidant with all of that," Alito said.

Crosley said the agency will continue training, grant support and community outreach, and he offered to share the COAD partner list and language-access arrangements with commissioners. Commissioners asked to be notified of any special meeting dates related to the EOP or EOC funding items.

The presentation concluded with the board moving to an executive session to consider the employment and compensation of a public employee. No formal vote on adoption of the updated EOP was recorded in the meeting transcript.

Ending: Crosley's office described the current update as the most comprehensive in the agency's history and said it will continue regular trainings, community outreach, and grant pursuit to support implementation of the plan.