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<br />Preface <br /> <br />There will continue to be flood disasters in Colorado in the future. Their impacts will <br />depend largely upon where they occur. In areas of large population, the potential for damage is <br />generally greater while in less populated rural areas the damages are usually smaller, at least in <br />dollar amounts. <br /> <br />In the past, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Colorado Water <br />Conservation Board (CWCB), the Colorado Office of Emergency Management (OEM) and other <br />organizations have responded to disasters, providing much assistance to people in terms of food, <br />shelter, clothing and restoration of public and private facilities. Since these efforts are vitally <br />important, they will continue. <br /> <br />If we do no more than than respond to disasters, the problems will come back and we will <br />not have learned from our mistakes or made anything better. Mitigation means that we are going <br />to learn from past mistakes and that we aren't going to repeat them. FEMA's newly created <br />Flood Mitigation Assistance Program (FMAP) will go a long ways to accomplishing just that. <br />The program fund will allow communities to develop Pre-Disaster Flood Hazard Mitigation <br />Plans. The plans will contain strategies, approaches, actions and recommendations for projects <br />which, when implemented, will mitigate and reduce future flood losses. Long range planning is <br />one of the key ways to break the disaster-recovery-disaster cycle. It will insure that once a <br />Colorado community has implemented pre-disaster flood mitigation measures, it will be able to <br />withstand the kind of economic distress, endangerment to life and environmental degradation that <br />we have seen all too often in the past. <br /> <br />Acknowledgement: Parts of the information contained in this document were excerpted <br />from the Flood Hazard Mitigation Planning Manual, Northeastern Illinois Planning <br />Commission, 1995. This draft document was presented in a classroom setting by Mr. French <br />Wetmore at the 19th Annual Conference of the Association of State Floodplain Managers in <br />Portland, Maine on May 26, 1995. Participation in the ASFPM provides other States and <br />agencies the opportunity to cross-share information and data to achieve the ultimate goal of flood <br />hazard reduction in the United States. We gratefully acknowledge the use of this document in <br />preparing Colorado's manual and the benefits which will be afforded our citizenry. <br />