Flood Prep Planning Starts Early This Year

A flood pre-planning workshop is scheduled for next week in Casper.

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After reviewing runoff forecasts for Central Wyoming, Natrona County Emergency Manager, Stu Anderson, says they decided to pull everyone together and coordinate.  For the meeting, he expects statewide representation.

"We'll have the federal agencies, the Weather Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, Army Corp of Engineers, FEMA at this meeting.  It's kind of a planning meeting, or a pre-planning meeting, if you will, on the potential for the high runoff this spring."

He says the idea is to start the planning process early and to look at what they can do now to lessen the impact of high waters should they arrive.

"So we just want to get everybody together, we want to get talking about ideas.  We want to get input from the Bureau of Rec, input from the hydrology folks at the Weather Service so we can look at worst case scenarios."

Anderson says last year Community Emergency Response Team  volunteers took on much of the effort in preparing for rising water in the Casper Area. Fortunately major flooding was averted and the sand bag supplies went unused.

Fremont County was not so lucky.

The planning meet next Thursday takes place at the Ramada Inn.