About

Mission statement

“Covington County Emergency Management Agency protects communities by coordinating and integrating all activities necessary to build, sustain, and improve the capability to mitigate against, prepare for, respond to, and recover from threatened or actual natural disasters, acts of terrorism or other man-made disasters. Covington County Emergency Management Agency works closely with Law Enforcement, Fire Services, Emergency Medical Services, Public Works, and other agencies, both local, state, and federal, to achieve the goal of protecting Covington County.”

Emergency Management Cores

Covington County Emergency Management Agency takes an all-hazards approach to addressing natural and man-made disasters. With the approach, the 4 core principles are applied to each disaster, regardless of what it is:

Mitigation: Preventing future emergencies or minimizing their effects

Includes any activities that prevent an emergency, reduce the chance of an emergency happening, or reduce the damaging effects of unavoidable emergencies. Mitigation activities take place before and after emergencies.

Preparedness: Preparing to handle an emergency

Includes plans or preparations made to save lives and to help response and rescue operations. Evacuation plans and stocking food and water are both examples of preparedness. Ensuring equipment and responders are prepared to respond to all hazards. Preparedness activities take place before an emergency occurs.

Response: Responding to an emergency

Includes actions taken to save lives and prevent further property damage in an emergency situation. Response is putting your preparedness plans into action. Covington County Emergency Management Agency can respond to a number of incidents to include, but not limited to; weather events, flooding, tornados, missing people, major traffic accidents, hazmat scenes, drownings, large fires, and any numerous other events. Response activities take place during an emergency and are to assist with other agencies.

Recovery: Recovering and rebuilding from a disaster

Includes actions taken to return to a normal or an even safer situation following an emergency. Recovery includes getting financial assistance to help pay for the repairs, rebuilding infrastructure, assisting government entities, and private citizens. Recovery activities that take place after an emergency, are often a long process to restore communities back to how they were prior to the disaster.

Addressing

Covington County Emergency Management Agency serves as the 911 Addressing agency for the county. Citizens can fill out an application form to begin the address process. See the link on our website for more details.

Floodplain

The Covington County Emergency Management Agency Director also serves as the county floodplain administrator. Covington County participates in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) as a way to better serve the community and citizens. The (NFIP) is the primary source of flood insurance coverage for residential properties in the United States. The NFIP has two main policy goals: (1) to provide access to primary flood insurance, thereby allowing for the transfer of some of the financial risk of property owners to the federal government; and (2) to mitigate and reduce the nation’s comprehensive flood risk through the development and implementation of floodplain management standards.

A longer-term objective of the NFIP is to reduce federal expenditure on disaster assistance after floods.As a public insurance program, the goals of the NFIP are different from the goals of private sector insurance companies. It encompasses social goals to provide flood insurance in flood-prone areas to property owners who otherwise would not be able to obtain it and to reduce the government’s cost after floods. The NFIP also engages in many “noninsurance” activities in the public interest: it identifies and maps flood hazards, disseminates flood-risk information through flood maps, requires community land-use and building-code standards, contributes to community resilience by providing a mechanism to fund rebuilding after a flood, and offers grants and incentive programs for household- and community-level investments in flood-risk reduction.