Emergency Management

The Fire Department is tasked with the responsibility of Emergency Management, which comprises organized analysis, planning, decision making, and assignment of available resources to mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from the effects of all hazards.

Emergency Management for the city has responded to a multitude of events that have affected our jurisdiction. These events range from severe storms, river flooding, hurricanes, tropical storms, tornados, and even an earthquake. Our job is to coordinate resources in order to respond to and mitigate large scale events. Additionally we work with other city departments, regional localities, and the state to identify potential hazards that could adversely impact the infrastructure and people in our area and to coordinate actions to minimize the hazards.

Fredericksburg Alert

This program is a major part of our emergency notification system. We encourage every citizen to sign up for this service as it allows city staff to notify you of emergencies. Fredericksburg Alert can be used to send either text messages and/or email notifications to you of major events, river flooding, weather watches & warnings, or for any other situation that warrants the need for mass notification. It is not restricted to citizens only, if you work or travel to Fredericksburg routinely you can also sign up. All you need to do is create an account and select the alerts you would like to receive. This is one of the city's primary methods of notifying people of a potential or real emergency.

Areas of Responsibility

Some areas of responsibility for emergency management include:

  • COOP - Continuity of Operations Plan
  • EMAC - Emergency Management Assistance Compact
  • Emergency Sheltering
  • EOP - Emergency Operations Plan
  • Evacuations
  • Flooding
  • HMP - Hazardous Mitigation Planning
  • HSG - Homeland Security Grants
  • Severe Weather
  • IFLOWS - Integrated Flow Observing and Warning System
  • LCAR - Local Capability Assessment for Readiness
  • LEMPG - Local Emergency Management Performance Grant
  • Pandemic Flu
  • R911 - Interactive Community Notification System
  • Terrorism

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StormReady

The City of Fredericksburg is recognized as a StormReady Community by the National Weather Service (NWS) and the StormReady Board. In order to achieve this recognition Emergency Management worked diligently to ensure weather radios were placed in many of the public buildings around the city; that policies were in place to respond to weather related events; dispatchers were trained in weather event questioning and able to relay the information to the NWS; and that the city maintains multiple methods for notifying the public of an anticipated weather event. Those are just a few of the items that needed to be in place to meet the Storm Ready Opens in new windowguidelines for a StormReady Community. But following an inspection by the NWS, an independent review of all weather related policies, and a vote by the StormReady Board the City of Fredericksburg joined the growing number of communities across the country as being StormReady in 2012.