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Santa Monica council adopts updated hazard-mitigation plan, prompting debate over evacuation analysis
Summary
City Council adopted an updated Local Hazard Mitigation Plan on Nov. 18, 2025; staff said FEMA approval will follow and the plan opens eligibility for mitigation grants, while residents urged a quantitative evacuation-capacity study under AB 747 and SB 99.
The Santa Monica City Council adopted an updated Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (LHMP) on Nov. 18, 2025, after a presentation from the Office of Emergency Management and a lengthy public exchange about evacuation-route capacity. The plan, which staff said is designed to meet FEMA’s standards, lays out a five-year set of mitigation actions and is intended to unlock eligibility for federal hazard-mitigation grants once FEMA completes its review.
The plan’s author, Lindsay Coll of the Office of Emergency Management, said the LHMP inventories local hazards, identifies priorities for mitigation work and focuses on prevention and planning rather than day-to-day emergency response. "This plan is not a response-focused plan; that is not what FEMA requires of this plan," Coll told the council during her presentation. She described modeling work using FEMA’s Hazus tool, tsunami inundation mapping and a Stone Canyon dam failure scenario, and cited updated…
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