US: Colorado Springs wants input on disaster preparedness plan

Landslides, hail storms, wildfires and floods have all changed how Colorado Springs officials think of local natural disasters, and that's reflected in the city's new hazard mitigation plan, reports Colorado Springs Gazette.

While those hazards have been well-known locally for decades, the threat of disasters became something more than theoretical in the past few years, when El Paso County was hit twice by catastrophic wildfires, multiple hail storms and countless flooding events. In spring 2015, record-breaking rainfall triggered landslides on the southwest side of Colorado Springs. The city's latest hazard mitigation plan, a document it revises every five years and submits to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), reflects the change wrought on the city by recent history.