Creativity in County Government: Talbot County Leverages Resiliency Strategy to Address COVID-19 Pandemic

About the Program

Category: County Resiliency (Best in Category)

Year: 2022

Until recently, “resiliency” was a word relegated to spelling bees and college entrance exams. Few people thought about the actual meaning of the word. Officials in Talbot County, Maryland, are an exception. The Department of Emergency Services, with the support of County Council leadership, has long been on the forefront of resiliency planning. Leaders are committed to cultivating the grit, hardiness, and structure a community needs to recover quickly from natural disasters and other threats. Indeed, this rural county on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay created a Hazard Mitigation and Community Resiliency Plan years before the novel coronavirus swept the globe. The COVID-19 pandemic simply put this plan to the test