Earthquakes, droughts and snowstorms are some of the biggest natural disasters Midvale could face. And the city has a plan for that.

The Midvale City Council signed on to Salt Lake County’s Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan (MJHMP) on Sept. 16. The plan provides a “framework for reducing disaster impacts,” Brian Buckhout, Midvale’s emergency municipal planner, said at the September council meeting.

“It protects lives and property and the environment, and prepares the city’s long-term strategy for emergency preparedness and resilience,” he added.

The mitigation blueprint replaces the county’s 2019 hazard mitigation plan and has a “5-year shelf-life,” lasting until 2030, Buckhout said.

“We also took from the 2019 hazard mitigation plan, so nothing was lost,” he said, “If anything, we added additions to it.”

Some of those additions, Buckhout said, were five weather-related hazards, including heavy rain, high winds, lightning, extreme cold and heat waves.

The biggest risk Midvale faces, however, is the threat of earthquakes. The plan cites a U.S. Geological Survey estimate of a roughly 49% chance that an earthquake will occur within 31 miles of Midvale in the next 50 years.

Midvale has many homes and buildings that do not meet current seismic safety standards and are at high risk of collapse in the aftermath of a severe earthquake, according to the Midvale annex of the MJHMP.

“Key infrastructure are vulnerable if not retrofitted to modern seismic standards,” the annex states. “Damage to roads and bridges can impede travel through the city. Water and sewer lines may rupture, and utility poles or substations could be compromised.”

Alongside retrofitting critical infrastructure, the MJHMP recommends providing resources to homeowners occupying buildings not up to code. To help meet this recommendation, Midvale has agreed to present the Fix the Bricks program, an initiative that provides financial assistance to homeowners for seismic retrofits.

The multi-jurisdictional approach to hazard mitigation is meant to stir up collaboration between cities and improve efficiency in reducing risks to natural disasters, Buckhout said at a workshop meeting on Sept. 2.

“Shared risk equals shared solutions,” he said. “Hazards like earthquakes, floods and wildfires do not just stop at the jurisdictional line.”

Buckhout told the council that the main reason every city in the county is adopting the hazard mitigation plan is that it is required to maintain eligibility for funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other federal departments.

Previously, the largest grant Salt Lake County received was from FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program. Buckhout said in early September that the funding was used primarily to retrofit buildings to protect them from earthquakes. 

The Trump administration eliminated the BRIC program in April 2025, but a federal judge halted the program’s termination, leaving its future uncertain amid ongoing legal battles.

“We do expect there to be additional grant opportunities … in the near future to make up for the BRIC’s program,” Buckhout said, adding that FEMA will be restructuring to put more decision-making at the local level.

“Utah might go through some growing pains to say the least,” he said. “So there might be a flux … but I do think there will be more to come.”

Map of Salt Lake County rivers and lakes. (Courtesy of Midvale)