The Lee Board of County Commissioners voted Tuesday to approve a resolution adopting the Lee County Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan, which details the policies and procedures the county will use in managing large-scale emergencies and disasters.

Lee County’s plan must be revised and adopted on an ongoing basis. It is written to be consistent with requirements in the Florida Administrative Code and established standards by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Florida Division of Emergency Management. These new standards, known as Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG) 101, required the entire plan to be rewritten and restructured.

The last revision was due to be submitted to FDEM shortly after the impacts of Hurricane Ian in 2022. FDEM provided a series of extensions due to the storm impacts. The state consent and recommendations were received in April.

Using input from the Hurricane Ian After-Action Report and the Resilient Lee plan, some additional modifications were made before submitting it for this final approval. This includes changes to the plan itself and supporting policies, which guide County, partner, and community actions before, during, and after a disaster.

For example, using feedback received during Hurricane Ian, the policies supporting the ordering and communicating evacuations had significant revisions. There were also significant changes to policies on community coordination following disasters, collaborating more closely with the School District of Lee County on sheltering operations, and communicating the safety of neighborhoods after an event has occurred.

Following today’s adoption, the full plan will be available at: https://www.leegov.com/publicsafety/emergencymanagement/plan/emergency-plan.