What does FEMA recommend for agencies to do?

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recommends five ways agencies can mitigate losses from volcanic eruptions.

1. Define hazard zones to guide development through land-use planning. The US Geological Society has such a map for the Island of Hawaii - it needs to be updated, however.
2. Establish detection and monitoring systems to enhance forecasting of impending eruptions and provide warning.
3. Develop disaster preparedness plans with hazard-zone maps showing the relative severity, extent, and effect of specific volcanic eruptions.
4. Institute emergency communication systems to warn and inform the public of potentially hazardous events.
5. Effective and economically feasible diversion or control lava flows, pyroclastic flows and debris flows generally is NOT possible.
6. Risk assessment, especially coupled with land-use planning, provides a strategy for reducing losses from volcanic hazards.

Source: FEMA. Multi-Hazard: Identification and Risk Assessment; A Cornerstone of the National Mitigation Strategy; 1997.