Emergency Preparedness & Response

Climate change will bring hotter summers, longer wildfire seasons, and more springtime flooding - all of which will stress our emergency preparedness and response community.

What can we do to prepare and build resiliency?

Our community identified several goals and strategies to address Missoula County's vulnerabilities in our emergency preparedness and response sector, given climate change. Each goal and their corresponding strategies are presented below, and you can find strategy-specific implementation details by clicking on its "status." Additionally, relevant resources to each goal are included throughout the page.

Implementation Highlights

While the goals and strategies are presented individually, we have prioritized a holistic implementation approach that advances many goals and strategies at once. A few highlights are:

Missoula's Office of Emergency Management co-hosted our first-ever Wildfire Smoke Ready Week in July 2021 with a variety of partners to help residents prepare for wildfire smoke events, including:
- Brewing a new beer, "Deep Breath," with Imagine Nation Brewing, and taste testing it against the beer of the future if we don't act on climate
- Airing a catchy jingle across the airwaves

Ensure "hard" infrastructure (roads, bridges, power lines, telecommunications, etc.) is resilient to climate change.

Strategy	Status (click for more information on implementation progress)
Assess infrastructure needs and vulnerabilities to inform infrastructure strategic plan (protect, enhance, develop redundancies).	COLLECTING INFORMATION. The strategies of Climate Ready are intentionally high level - we're still collecting information on the implementation details of this strategy.

Ensure "hard" infrastructure (roads, bridges, power lines, telecommunications, etc.) is resilient to climate change.

Strategy	Status (click for more information on implementation progress)
Enhance emergency communication capabilities and evacuation strategies, routes, and safety zones.	COLLECTING INFORMATION. The strategies of Climate Ready are intentionally high level - we're still collecting information on the implementation details of this strategy.
Connect with and support Invest Health, Missoula College, Missoula Emergency Services Inc., Missoula City-County Health Department, and partners regarding preventative health measures (upstream health response).	UNDERWAY.
Ensure public safety and emergency response communities have the necessary tools to provide care, outreach and/or referrals.	COLLECTING INFORMATION. The strategies of Climate Ready are intentionally high level - we're still collecting information on the implementation details of this strategy.
Ensure sufficient emergency response personnel within rural areas of Missoula County.	COLLECTING INFORMATION. The strategies of Climate Ready are intentionally high level - we're still collecting information on the implementation details of this strategy.