What does FEMA recommend for agencies to do?
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recommends five ways agencies can mitigate losses from volcanic eruptions. • Define hazard zones to guide development through land-use planning. The US Geological Society has such a map for the Island of Hawaii – it needs to be updated, however. • Establish detection and monitoring systems to enhance forecasting of impending eruptions and provide warning. • Develop disaster preparedness plans with hazard-zone maps showing the relative severity, extent, and effect of specific volcanic eruptions. • Institute emergency communication systems to warn and inform the public of potentially hazardous events. • Effective and economically feasible diversion or control lava flows, pyroclastic flows and debris flows generally is NOT possible. • Risk assessment, especially coupled with land-use planning, provides a strategy for reducing losses from volcanic hazards. Source: FEMA. Multi-Hazard: Identification and Risk Assessment; A Cornerstone of the Nat
