#91 Leadership in Emergency Management Now and in the Future – Interview with Eric McNulty
Author Eric McNulty joins us for the beginning of Season 3
This Podcast has moved to the readiness lab.
Disaster Tough kicks off Season 3 with an entertaining interview featuring author, speaker, and educator, Eric McNulty.
Eric is a Harvard professor who has been the Associate Director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative (NPLI) for more than a decade. He is also the co-author of the bestseller, “You’re It: Crisis, Change, and How to Matter When it Matters Most”.
In this episode, we tap into Eric’s experience in leadership and how it applies to the EM world, together with the importance of readiness, data, and how public and private entities can better work together.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1m 42s):
Welcome back to the show everybody, it’s your host John Scardena. I am so excited for this episode. It also kicks off season three for us, we are really excited about that big news for our Disaster Tough Podcast. But this week we have Eric McNulty on here, and you can probably tell on the screen there, that he's the author of You’re It. we're a big fan of that book. In fact, our sister show EM Speaks, the webinar, has had it on there. He was talking about You’re It and those concepts behind that book, he's also been on Todd Devo’s show, a big fan of his with EM weekly. Again, another sister show of our Readiness Lab network. Eric McNaulty comes for the national preparedness leadership initiative out of Harvard. He has tons of experience. He's definitely a thought leader. He and I caught up in New York just a few weeks ago. Eric, welcome to the show.
Guest: Eric McNulty (1m 52s):
Thank you so much for having me here. I'm really excited to be part of the conversation.
Host: John Scardena (1m 56s):
Yeah. So as I mentioned, obviously in your introduction, you are one of those people who are looking at innovating the field of emergency management by looking at the different conceptual aspects, and the functional aspects of our field. We had a fun conversation sitting there getting ready to hear Pete Gaynor and Craig Fugate to be interviewed by Todd in New York. We had this fun conversation where we were starting to name ways that we could innovate our field, especially at the FEMA level, what is FEMA doing and FEMA's role in emergency management. But before we get into that, because again I'm a fan of your book, I think it's a really good thing for industry. Can you just give us a quick little plug for those listeners who might be interested in reading it?
Guest: Eric McNulty (1m 48s):
Always happy to give a plug for the book. Thank you for doing that. What we've done in You’re It, is capture about 15 years of stories and studies of leaders in the field doing disaster preparedness to response. So what we at the NPLI do is we deploy, try and be with people during events or thereafter to see what are the tough decisions, what are they wrestling with? What are the really good calls that they make? Try to capture that and distill it and put it into not just stories, but practical tools and skill sets that people could apply in the field to get better. So we really want this to be a practical book and it's been a really great reception in the field, I think for that reason, because we're not trying to lecture down, we're trying to capture and spread out the good practice.
Host: John Scardena (2m 28s):
Yeah, that's an interesting way to say it. We're not trying to lecture down. Sometimes it's difficult as someone who appreciates data and analytics. I worked for a substantial tech firm after leaving the national team where I led business intelligence for a year and a half. I'm a huge fan of machine learning and AI and all those things. What I find in particular is that our field of emergency management doesn't attack that as much they could, like trying to figure out, I don't know where the tornado is going to land next. Our basic understanding of that is… I got to pump the brakes here for a second, where we were a hundred years ago versus now is phenomenal and definitely weather data in terms of all the aspects of emergency management is far and beyond what anybody else is using for analytics for sure and understanding the physics of what's happening. But in terms of the decision making process, what I find is too many people are still using and I'm going to follow my gut here. I'm sure this is a tiring topic for people who've listened to the show because I've talked about this so much. But as someone who's actually studied this, in terms of a leadership perspective and your studies of leadership, are they doing that? I'm going to follow my gut versus data and what are some improvements we can make between those two sides of the house in terms of the decision making process?
Guest: Eric McNulty (3m 59s):
I think their are a couple of important things there, and one is, I think we are not too many years away from data assisted decision making for leaders being the norm and you're going to have to understand it. It's going to better inform you and all your gut is, it's important to us to understand your gut to all that your gut is actually really good. If you've seen the situation many times before, it's basically accumulated a lot of data, processed it into patterns and it helps you react quickly. You know, the greatest percentage, the greatest number of neural transmitters in your brain, the second greatest number is in your gut. They're connected by the longest nerve in your body up and down your spinal column and they're constantly constant communication.
So if you're in a situation you've seen a lot before that gut killing can be a good guidance. I always say, Ben, go to the data and see what it tells you. But if you're in a novel situation, you want to depend on less than your gut, because you're probably not fully recognizing what's happening. You want to look at that data. I think the tools are coming together and another guest you should have on your show is my colleague, Brian specifically looked at this really deeply in terms of AI and machine learning and how it's going to apply to leader decisions going forward. But I think we're at the point where we have the computing power, we have the data sets. We now just have to have the open minds among the leaders to realize this is, this is a compliment to what they do in an ill health and enhance their effectiveness. It's not a threat.
Host: John Scardena (6m 43s):
Oh man, you, you highlight so many areas. First of all, what a great pitch for following your gut and applying it to data. That's a great pitch. I will say that, you know, you brought up the novel, a catastrophic disasters, especially a type one. Now not a block swamp per se, but a type one event where a lot of what we're doing is trying to go by the fly. I think you're right. You don't have enough data for your gut to be a hundred percent accurate. In fact, your gut, usually isn't a hundred percent accurate, but emergency management rarely is you have to be able to make a decision quickly. That's right, it’s been a fun thing.
In terms of the tech world of data-driven versus data informed, and I really think that's just a good way to help you understand really what it's supposed to do, but it's a branding thing, right? We really want to get to is whatever the best cases, the best case being life sustaining, life supporting missions in the fastest and most efficient way possible, and a decision-making process and having the right information with the amount of time you have. That's the other problem that we have is time. There’s a really interesting call out in a way to look at that so way to way to kick it off the right way, for sure.
Guest: Eric McNulty (8m 10s):
I give you a quick example of a good view outside emergency management, which I think is useful here is in healthcare. Some of the larger healthcare systems now have default protocols for certain common diseases like certain cancers. So rather than a doctor drawing upon his or her, you know, hundreds of cases, they are looking at tens of thousands of cases across the system and saying, this is the default that you can go, you can do something other than the default, but then you have to explain why, but it gives you really quickly having looked at tens of thousands of cases. Here's what looks to be the most efficacious treatment plan for this particular cancer and it gives you a grid. So you can draw upon that larger knowledge. It doesn't take away your freedom to make a different decision, but it makes you think about to why. Why I going against the data and it helps you. I think you really can. It really helps inform the decision rather than dictate it.
Host: John Scardena (9m 3s):
Well there’s a very popular phrase in emergency management that says every disaster is different. That's like me thinking, well, every cancer must be different or every, you know, but I can name 36 manmade, a natural disasters that are going to act the same, right. If I get in there and I see a hurricane, okay, I'm going to see a wind event, I'm going to see a flooding event, I'm going to see a surge event and I can start making predictions and, or, you know we do say every disaster is different, but we stage resources and where we state resources and we put up shelters and how that supply chain is staged. All those factors start to go into play. Same thing with wildfires. We know it's going to be proceeded by mudslides when the rainy season comes. So there is predictability in that.
Guest: Eric McNulty (9m 57s):That's right.
Again, we won't go into too far in the weeds of data, but I believe there's enough data out there for us to start saying, okay, maybe not every disaster is different. Maybe there's a lot of the same and we need to start saying that. So we understand truly routine versus crisis mode, which is a, another reference to another book that's out there and understanding when are we truly in crisis mode? IE is that true novelty? Or are we in crisis mode because we just haven't done the right prep work to make sure that we're being as efficient as possible. So there's some call-outs there for sure.
Guest: Eric McNulty (10m 39s):
In fact, I just completed a research study, went public today, actually interviewed at nine global companies around their response to COVID. One of the places they've at least a couple of them tripped up most because they thought coronavirus is novel. They sort of throw out all the existing protocols and thought we had to start from scratch and it turned out, no, it's just like, yeah. Of the 10 things you had to worry about, four of them may have been in truly new and you have to improvise there. But six of them actually were basic emergency management, best practice. Here's what we ought to be doing and so I think we got to be looking at a continuum of events here, and either or will get us to a much healthier place.
Host: John Scardena (11m 14s):
Well, you're, getting to another, and I have all these passions. One of the passions to me is that public health is great for long-term trends, not great for response. You should be looking at your emergency manager because that's the person who can do response. Public health is one of the pillars that the emergency manager should talk to. The reason being in 2014, I was working at the National Cancer Institute where we were housing, the Ebola patients, building 50. My job was to make sure that there was no patient spread in building 50. Was I a doctor? Absolutely not, but I could work with doctors, I can understand PPE, I can understand the protocols and I can make sure that it was contained. Because of that, when I went over to another federal agency, I got put on the task force to understand what we should do for a pandemic response to reduce spread and we focused a lot of messaging. We focused a lot on this stuff. When the pandemic hit, I was contacting some of my friends in DC and saying, I know we have a plan here. Where's the plan? By the middle of March, I sent him a communication out to some of those former members, “hey, we're now looking at a multi-year thing if we don't get this under control.” They all agreed.
You know, lo and behold, we're at a multi-year issue because the messaging has been really bad. I mean, that's not novel. You know, the work from home thing is a scene. It has seemingly been a novelty concept for people, but they have been doing work from home before. So the one really interesting thing about COVID is the case studies that will be able to come from it. If you said in 2014 hey, we want to put every child at home for a year to do school at home and see what the impacts of doing that would be. People would just like laugh at you out the door. So that the current of a case study, we can see the impacts of a cultural shifts, societal shifts.
Host: John Scardena (13m 22s):
That’s really interesting as well. So the fact that you're talking to healthcare and the fact that you're looking at corporations and how they're doing COVID and doing research on that, I'm sure that this will be a wealth of learning, that the learning growth should go way up from this event.
Guest: Eric McNulty (13m 41s):
Let's hope so.
Host: John Scardena (13m 42s):
Yeah.
Guest: Eric McNulty (13m 48s):
Lessons learned versus lessons applied in a whole different thing, you know?
Host: John Scardena (13m 50s):
Yeah, sometimes we like to say, you have to go for the lowest common denominator. I don't think we do that. I think we get pigeonholed and thinking, oh, my way is right and if they don't like it, they're dumb. That's a stupid way to look at it as in terms of just being totally honest. You want people on your side and creating trenches of how people feel about things is never effective. You know, a good example of that is we've had gangs, rival gang stay in the same shelter. How do people who traditionally don't get along, stay in the same shelter? Well, yeah, come up with compromises and you work with leaders and you say, hey, there's something bigger here that's happening. I didn't really see that in a pandemic. So that's a whole other thing.
But in terms of New York, getting to like kind of bulk of our conversation, we were talking about several things, changes that we would like to see in the field of emergency management. It was kind of fun because as Craig and Pete were on the stage with Todd, you were kind of looking at each other for everybody. And we're like, oh, call that, call that. So let me just ask you for the sake of our audience. If you were going to look at the field of emergency management, what changes would you like to see in our field? More importantly, how do we actually implement some of those changes? What are the solutions that you think we need?
Guest: Eric McNulty (15m 22s):
Well, I think I'm going to get a little bit wonky on you here for, just for a moment, because it's one of the findings that came out of this coronavirus study as well, is that I think we need to engage in what's known as double loop learning. So single loop learning is you try something, you get, you see what happens and you may adjust your strategy or tactics. The double loop learning is when you can go back, when you get that feedback and you actually question your underlying assumptions. I think that's where emergency management needs to go with questioning the underlying assumptions from when FEMA was founded from when, you know, as the field has grown, what's still true and what has changed. So, for example, I think one of the things we've seen in COVID is that our traditional belief in a bottom up system, which works really well for a local or regional disaster doesn't work well at all for a national or continent wide, or in this case, a global incident, because I can't tell you how many stories I've heard of people having to deal with all the different guidance from different states and localities. For organizations operating across the country, and it gets worse and you get international that doesn't, but that bottom up piece doesn't work.
So I think we have to be thinking about one thing I want to look, we want to look at is when can you actually flip a switch and say, this is coming down more top down and we're going to have to have some coordination across the country, across jurisdictions in order to be able to address it effectively. I think we ought to be looking at some of the obvious things that we're looking to do and say, how do we get top talent to really want to choose this as a field or the options you have when you were coming into school? I know there's already a high school, I believe in New York, it's teaching emergency management where you can concentrate on that, but how do we actually attract top talent? Not that we haven't got a lot of talented people in this field, but many of the most talented I've met sort of found their way accidentally.
Guest: Eric McNulty (17m 16s):
Like I never thought of emergency management, but then I had this opportunity, or I met somebody who told me, I drifted into it. Even Pete Gainer, you know, he was career in the Marine Corps and he came out and he said, what do I do? Where do my skills go? He wound up working first in Providence and Rhode Island and FEMA. So I think if it just the data conversation earlier, we think rethinking how we train people to be leaders, to really understand decision-making. It is a science behind decision making to understand how to use data. It's going to be much more complex to operating in this field. When you looked at what we're going to have in terms of impacts of climate, are we going to age the population, which brings up all kinds of new vulnerabilities.
So being able to navigate that is going to be a really tricky thing for folks in the field. I think we need to be…I would be making changes to make the education, bring them up several levels of sophistication and some of these key areas of being able to think forward, make decisions and not just do the basics of emergency management. The basics don't go away, they're still important. But I think if you're going to lead in this field, you're going to have to be up there with the top folks who are working in the corporate world or in senior roles in government. That's some of the places I'd make some changes.
Host: John Scardena (18m 35s):
Yeah. I think those are phenomenal call-outs in terms of the sophistication. That's kind of what we were talking a little bit earlier in that sophistication process of doing that, you know, processes. We have Rodney Mossik on ears, basically the godfather, and yes, truly the godfather of emergency planning, modern day emergency planning because he's retired, but he's still influencing everybody in the field and he's very active in that. He says that process is more important than outcome. As one of my mentors and, and working with him directly on the national team, my change in that is just like slightly different it's process is just as important as outcome. You still have to have the outcome, but emergency managers can understand process, and I'm not talking about paper pushers or what firefighters think emergency managers do. I'm talking about us as a field in our own culture as coordinators working in that process. One thing that's, I think is really fascinating is that Brock Long on my show, Pete gainer on my show, Craig Fugate on my show, and then up on stage Craig and Pete saying the same thing is FEMA is largely a funding organization. The problem with a largely funding organization perspective versus emergency services, and more importantly, emergency response, this small areas of FEMA that focus on, on the National IMATS or kind of the regional IMATS too, but really the national IMAT and USR is that they don't really do funding, especially USR. It's not doing funding, but their certificate comes through FEMA. If you're talking about a top-down approach and you're talking about a more focused approach, what FEMA does for the federal government in that coordination of the Stafford Act and the camera and all those things work well in a large-scale disaster. Hospital, emergency managers, organizational campus, whatever they have to figure out, like, how does this make sense for me? It's kind of a hodgepodge of ideas of like, well, I'll never have a 204, but what do I have? They have to kind of make it up as they go. I would like to see standardization in process so that it can not just apply to the federal government, but it can apply to the other side of the house and really call FEMA what it is.
Host: John Scardena (21m 4s):
It's the funding of emergency services. It's not the actual emergency managers themselves. One other question I have for you is if we recognize that, especially if heads of FEMA are recognizing that they are truly most of the organization, doesn't do the emergency management part, the emergency part of emergency management, who else should take that on? Should somebody else take that on if those basics remain, but you're saying that changes should be made. Who else should jump in the game?
Guest: Eric McNulty (21m 42s):
You know, I'm a couple of minds of that one because I, on the one hand, don't want to spread that out so much because you get a lot of divergence in terms of approach and you come up with new problems of how to collaborate and coordinate. There perhaps should be a part of FEMA or maybe FEMA is the, is a funding agency and then there was a response I would like to see them focusing on strengthening state and regional level response capabilities, because I think there'll be, there'll be faster, more nimble. They were better connected to the communities they're going to have to serve. But I also think there needs to be recognition. This is my drum I keep beating since you beat yours on data, is it, I think we are in the early stages of an age that we cannot respond to our way out of when you look at the floods, the wildfires that the recent tornadoes things are going, we simply… the challenges are too big and too complex to simply respond your way out of. So preparedness has got to get its groove back and be, and that's where I think actually FEMA could have a lot of influence in terms of what they fund, what they ensure that the flood insurance program to shape policy in ways that keep us better, you know, preventing things prepared for things. So the, the lights and sirens side of the house is still part of what you do, but you're not relying on them as much. I think we need heroes who are a little bit less than in the dramatic part of the life cycle and more in the getting us ready, because we can't respond our way out of things that are this big, this fast moving in this complex and this constant there's no season for anything anymore, they all just kind of roll into each other.
Host: John Scardena (23m 22s):
Yeah, I agree with that. Talk about the wildfires, the fire crews, the wildland firefighters, or the guys who go out there on those mountains and expect to do that for three months, essentially from late July through October, and really, maybe even August through November, that's kind of the height of traditionally of wildfire season in California. That's gone. So now you have somebody on the side of a mountain year round that exhaustion takes a toll. It takes a toll on the body. It takes a toll on the mind you have turnover, it's unsustainable. What you're saying is truly the way that we're looking at responses is sustainable.
I totally agree. That's why I'm not a fan of resiliency anymore. I think the idea of resiliency being the king of emergency management, or like that that's favorite word for everybody. I don't want to have to bounce back. If I have to keep bouncing back, I'm not going to be able to bounce back. Eventually I've been to the same cities, the same towns for multiple, multiple times of the same event. I'm like, okay, the idea of that disaster tough like mantra or name the company is that we want to make other people, other communities more tough to be able to do with their own response, because at the end of the day, that resource might not be coming. Even if it does come, it will be likely insufficient and I think that's like your call out there is a hundred percent right. My question earlier about who should lead it, have you ever worked with like state guards, like the National Guard?
Guest: Eric McNulty (25m 05s):
Yes.
Host: John Scardena (25m 06s):
Yeah, I understand how the law works, but in terms of a local response, they are essentially the US perspective of the military humanitarian arm. Like if they're doing, they can do crowd control, they help out with floods, they clear homes. They help put up flood barriers, say they do wildfire response. They do a lot of things in emergency emergency services. So if you have a funding organization who is working on a federal perspective and you want to get states and localities more prepared, I would say that they start to segregate and allow states to have people who are highly trained, who are working on this to continue to work on that aspect, answering to the governor. Again, this would not mess with your title 10 or title 32 and whatever that the right number is there. But it would provide a perspective where funding versus response and response is much smaller than the funding. They can separate a little bit because trying to do this isn't really working that great. I don't know my 2 cents.
Guest: Eric McNulty (26m 15s):
Well I think if you want to understand the laws, the governance, the national guard, and then you're one of like six people in the country who do. I've looked into it and it's really complex actually what happens there? Yeah.
Host: John Scardena (26m 25s):
Ah, Virginia. Oh my gosh. Yeah.
Guest: Eric McNulty (26m 29s):
Yeah. But I think that that's one of the challenges, the Guards, they're very good. But they're very much a short-term response for us because they're part-time. So they can get deployed for a couple of weeks, but then all of a sudden, the economic impact of having them, not on their jobs, you can't deploy them for a couple of months. I've seen that in states where they, I know they deployed, it was great short term, but then people got to go home and it's, and you can't have them out there. So I think we've gotta be really looking at what are the risks look like going forward and data that can inform a lot of this. What our likelihood to need, who do we need for short-term medium-term long-term response as we bleed into, as we move into recovery. And yes, I think we should be open to all the different sources of resources and assets. We can deploy against that and figure, how do we best to rate them against the most probable situations we're going to face?
Host: John Scardena (27m 21s):
I think that's a good mic drop moment of the show. Eric, god, talk about knocking it out of the park. So I think you're right. I think we need to be open. I think things are changing. I think the data's going to be showing that it's already been showing that it's changing the frequency of catastrophic hurricanes alone should tell us something that frequency of wildfires alone should be telling us something, the frequency of active shooters. Maybe we should actually look into the real data of why that's happening instead of like the fluff pieces you hear on media and really dive in deep of why that's happening. Thursday paper and somebody's master's program about cross narcissism and the rise of active shooters, but whatever, you know, there's a lot of this stuff that's happening.
Host: John Scardena (28m 9s):
So great all-out don't want to be doomsday preppy, but you're right, we need to be nimble, we need to focus on what's best for the future. We're getting into new phases. You're calling that out as a thought leader. Again, You’re It. This is where my wrap up here is for the show, if you like, what Eric just said, which you should have, that mic drop moment that he just had, and you want to learn more about Eric's perspective on leadership and learn how to be a better leader yourself read You’re It. I'm sure Eric, you and I should continue this conversation. I had to stop yet you're blowing me up too much. So this is good stuff.
Guest: Eric McNulty (28m 49s):
We can always get tenured, always happy to talk with you, John.
Host: John Scardena (28m 51s):
Yeah, absolutely. So again, if you liked this episode which you should have. Here's that shameless plug, you give us a five-star rating and subscribe. If you do that, you'll hear more great content. Maybe Eric will come back on the show. Hint Hint. Since we probably should have him back on the show and we'll see you next week.
#90 Disaster Tough After Action
This episode has been archived. After our own after action, we determined that the content in this episode does not promote best practice, does not represent the facts, and does not help you become disaster tough. Please check out another episode for better information.
#89 Football & Christmas! Interview with Matt Hernandez
Matt is a former player, assistant coach, and serviceman with the United States Army. He now works to help communities improve emergency and social services.
Matt is no stranger to emergency and disaster services. Throughout his career in Military Service, working in hospitals, or now with technologies that improve social services - Matt is an excellent example of a heart full of service during Christmas. He is also familiar with having family members in emergency services, after all his father is Joe Hernandez, USAR subject matter expert and practitioner. Matt talks to us from both sides of the coin, as a son and as a practitioner, providing great advice for us to help others or those that may need an extra helping hand during the holidays.
We talk a lot about football during this episode. Matt is a former player and assistant coach for the US Army football team. He shares insights and examples of how we can deal with crisis mode vs routine mode in disaster.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the disaster tough podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
Radio comms just got a major breakthrough with the L3 Harris XL extreme 400P. It is the newest and toughest radio out there built by their space and tactical teams. The XL extreme series can take a beating, 1700 degree blast of heat, repeated three meter drops, rain, salt water, you name it. The XL extreme series by L3 Harris can take it. Visit L3harris.com to schedule your demo today.
The battle to monitor and contain COVID-19 just got exponentially better for us. We are officially introducing an electronic reusable yes, reusable COVID-19 test through our sponsors. It's called the COVID plus test created by tiger tech distributed by FS global. This is the first FDA authorized rapid non-invasive pre screener. It's extremely easy to use. Forget those one-time use swabs. This is a disaster tough technology for more information on the COVID plus test check out our show notes.
Host: John Scardena (1 min 41s):
Welcome back to the show, everybody. It's your host, John Scardena. I am very excited for this episode. As you know, Joe Hernandez has been on the show a few times, I think maybe three or four times at this point, he's one of our great friends of our show. I get to go to his USR training that he does with disaster medical solutions. It's phenomenal, I've talked about it on the show, I've had other people on the show, I've had his friends on the show. Now I have a huge honor to have his son on our show, Matt Hernandez, because just like Joe, he's following in his father's footsteps by doing amazing things. I'm really excited to talk to him, Matt, welcome to the show.
Guest: Matt Hernandez (2m 16s):
Hey John, thanks for having me on really excited to be here with you and your audience.
Host: John Scardena (1 min 41s):
Yeah, thanks. I want to talk about Unite Us here in a little bit. This project you're working on or this commitment you're doing with social services, it's really cool. But because it's the Christmas episode, because we're talking about this stuff and our focus is really to help other people, I really want us to focus on that aspect, making sure that all of our listeners, whether they're military first responders, emergency managers or humanitarians, that they know some people out there get it. But before even that, so now we got a third piece. I'm looking at this picture behind you and so for those who are listening to the episode, this is from, I believe what Matt told me is the 2010 Army vs. Navy game. Matt has a kind of a cool experience working on that side because you actually worked as an assistant coach for the Army. Is that right?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (3m 18s):
Yeah, I was a 2008 West Point grad. I played football there four years when I was at West Point. Then, after I graduated, they have this program where they keep some folks back like athletic intern or grad assistants. So I got to coach an additional year after I was there. So it was a pretty neat experience to see things from the other side of the table, put together game plans and mentor some of the guys I used to play with. Really neat experience.
Host: John Scardena (3m 45s):
Okay. So first of all, I didn't know you played too. What position did you play?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (3m 50s):
I used to play defensive end.
Host: John Scardena (3m 52s):
That's awesome.
Guest: Matt Hernandez (3m 54s):
About forty five pounds ago.
Host: John Scardena (3m 56s):
I was going to say you look like you’ve thinned down a bit. You know, last week we had Dan Scott on here with EM student and he talked about emergency management as being the coach of a disaster. He went into kind of his ideas about that. I explained what I thought of emergency management to be as the analyst up there watching the game from below and trying to figure out how to get the ball down the field. As a guy with an actual coaching experience, with actual logistical experience of helping literally the ball moved down the field, whether it's getting the team there or whatever, can you provide at least some of your experiences as a way for our listeners to start spinning the wheels of how emergency services, how they can apply the game of football to possibly emergency services or even social work, that kind of kind of idea?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (4m 54s):
Sure. I mean, I think a lot of it boils down to preparation, right? So I mean, people see the product on a Saturday or Sunday, if someone's playing a football game, obviously if an emergency is taking place and you’re physically trying to help and assist, you're seeing the product as it is, but the preparation that takes and the repetition and the understanding of you have to be an expert in your craft in order to be an expert in those dire situations, right? When your blood pressure's up, when people are relying on you to do your job, if you don't take the proper steps to prepare and to walk through the motions and understand what your role is and what your team's role is, you're not going to be successful. So I think people see you know, that game time scenario and I'd apply the same thing to the military. If you're not training the way you're going to fight or practicing the way you're gonna play or preparing the way you're gonna end up saving, then you're going to be missing. You're not going to be performing the way that you should be when the time is right.
Host: John Scardena (5m 51s):
Yeah. I think this applies also like I said, training, because I've been a part of so many exercises as part of getting ready for a big disaster. Whether it's a hurricane, wildfire, or literally preparing for a nuke where every single exercise from that same training group always was a lightning bolt exercise. Which basically means there was no preparation whatsoever. Like all of a sudden we're in a category five hurricane, like nobody saw this coming for the last five days? Right. And what I've been finding is that going to you know your dad's USR training, their model is phenomenal. I played sports as well, you know, you're not always in the game, right? Like there's skills that could get taught in a slower environment. Then once you're able to apply the skill, then you get put in the scenario, right? In terms of game time versus preparation time, what do you think the ratio of that is?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (6m 55s):
I think it's… I work with a lady and her dad's actually a coach in the NFL and she says, you know, you practice for six days and you play the game on, you know, on a Sunday, right? With the NFL in mind, you're practicing six times more than you're playing. I think that's at a minimum, it's an iterative process. Like you said, like you got to build up on the little things, you got to do little things, right, in order to put everything together. Everything's about preparation. I think it's also just having a plan too, right. So having, having a strategy about how you want to act in a certain scenario. Or how you want things to unfold, there's always variables you can't control. But if you plan for certain scenarios, then you're going to set yourself up for success. One of the things that we did in the military and actually applied this for some emergency management prep when I used to work in the hospital environment was you prepare for the worst thing that can happen and you prepare for the most likely thing to happen.
If you can figure out those two scenarios, you can pretty much figure out anything in between. I liked that. So we use that, we use that application. We used to prepare for emergencies when I worked down in Miami and in the hospital environment. That's what we would do. If we just took that concept, what's the worst thing that happens to make sure we have a plan for that. Then what's most common and we'll be good and figure everything out on the fly. If, as long as we prepare and have the right plan,
Host: John Scardena (8m 8s):
There's a book. I forget the name of the book, but this actually might be the name of the book Crisis Mode Versus Routine Mode. The last chapter in that book talks about those who basically, the way that we'd always looked on the national team was everything. Any situation we went into was crisis mode because the people that were there, the resources were overwhelmed, the game plan wasn't working. So we were specifically called in to fix. We had to take crisis mode to routine mode. The problem with that though, is like, sometimes people get the adrenaline rush in the crisis mode so they think they should stay in crisis mode.
My big pitch is that again, with a lot more training, you should be able to get to routine mode as fast as possible. The flip side is, if this is okay, this is not the year for football for either of us because I'm an Ohio state fan. Yeah. That was painful. Well, you know what? I have a theory on that. It's a conspiracy theory, but I have a theory. Anyways, the problem is when people are in routine mode, but they actually should be in crisis mode. If you're preparing for the worst case scenario and also the most likely scenario, then again, you're going to be able to tell the difference between routine and crisis. So great thoughts there. So what was the final score? I don't want to bring this up, Navy versus Army this year? You got, it was a tough year, right?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (9m 48s):
I try to forget that. Right. I think it was 17-14. So we it's funny, we were underdogs against Air Force. We'd be there for us. Then we were favored to play when we played Navy and we lost the Navy. I mean, those games are just always so competitive. Right? You have a long-standing rivalry, which you understand now. I mean, Ohio State owned Michigan for a long time. And now, you know, Michigan had the last laugh. So.
Host: John Scardena (10m 10s):
Well, just say last laugh, don't say laugh. Okay. First of all…Here's the conspiracy theory, Jim Harbaugh, the guy's a moron. The guys like Tara, look at his record at Michigan. He's done so bad against Ohio State, obviously and against everybody else. But the problem is if they fire Jim Harbaugh, Jimmy, whatever his name is, and they replace him with me, with somebody actually better then it would be harder for us. So I think Ohio State was looking at the cards and saying, okay, are we going to win the championship this year? Probably not. So if we lose to Jimmy and they extend his contract, which Michigan basically just did. Right. We're going to beat them for the next five years and everybody wins. So they got one of six with Jimmy.
We beat them 17 to three.17 years we’ve' beaten them. So I don't know, don't say last lap yet. Fair enough. That is the most that's that's talking about. So when I said routine mode versus crisis mode, I was watching that game. I don't know if this is like the football episode, but I was watching that game and I was like, why aren't they changing the game plan? They were acting as if they were going to win. I see this sometimes with teams and also in emergency services and emergency management. I don't know if you've seen this in the military side where they maybe with the politicians, but they act as if they know they're going to win and they won't update their strategy. Is there advice you can give to people in the field where you're like, okay, how do you know when you're in routine versus crisis and how do you create backup plans?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (11m 48s):
Well, I think it almost tells line of cockiness, overconfidence. Like if you're overly cocky, like that’s where people get hurt, right, or mistakes are made. So, in a football game, you may lose a game or you may make a mistake. If you're talking about emergency management board, military, and you make mistakes, like people can die, right. Or people can get significantly hurt. So I think there's a fine line between being confident and understanding, like we put the preparation in, we've done the right things, we know our job, or we're in the right mindset. Versus like, hey, this is easy, we got this. Like, we've done it a hundred times, that we don't need to focus on what we're doing. Then you lose that attention to detail or that focus that's when you can make mistakes and people can get hurt. So I think you need that constant reminder. I mean, we could go back to the football thing, like Bill Belichick's, right. He always expects you to do your very best. The second that you make any kind of small error, they're gonna critique that and they're gonna find a way to make it better because they don't want people to lose that edge. Right. So you can lose that edge, you're not prepared, that's when mistakes can happen. So I think having leadership understand that, and know that, and instilling that every single time that they need to is important.
Host: John Scardena (12m 48s):
So I find that different people have different personality traits, right? If you're talking about critiquing people, how would you go about critiquing somebody in emergency management? Dude, I can't even get, you're a football player. There's a lot of cocky football players out there. How do you critique somebody who has a lot of experience who thinks they know what they're doing, who is kind of bullheaded at the same time… You know? Because your goal obviously is to help them and help the mission, right. How do you find those lines for yourself?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (13m 25s):
I think like you said personalities are different and so you have to know the folks that are on your team. You know, when I was a second Lieutenant, I get thrown into a platoon, I had a 36 year old platoon Sergeant who had been, he'd been a Marine recon before. So he's been special ops in the Marine side. He had multiple deployments with the army before this guy was way more seasoned. I was book-smart, but I had no field experience and so, you know, I think walking in with some humility and understanding that you know what you know, you also know what you don't know and validating their experience and their understanding is important to level set that mutual respect. But also that you can do a couple of ways. One is, if you just, if there's a standard and you need to follow a standard, then you can talk about what that is. I think another way you can apply it too, is you can always ask them, put the onus on them. Like, what would you have done differently in this scenario? Did it go the way that we thought it was going to go? And if we did not, what would you have done differently? You know, with the experience that you have and sometimes asking them what their opinion is not to say, you'll always do what they recommended moving forward, but validating who they are and understand their experience and giving them a chance to speak about what they could do differently or what we could've done differently sometimes gives them skin in the game and it gives them a reason to want to help the team better. Right? Or just a different approach. Sometimes you can take with those more seasoned folks that have, you know, lots more experience.
Host: John Scardena (14m 40s):
Yeah. That's a mic drop moment. I mean, that's exactly what I would think is the right call. Man, I have so many thoughts on this and I keep wanting to go back to football and we are shaking and go back to football because this is actually pretty fun. What I find is that like, even with myself, I've had to catch myself doing this and you get to people with no experience who are just super passionate, really excited, just want to jump in. They're like, you know, bushy tailed, right? Like this Christmas morning, ah, there you go. Then we have a Christmas proper, it's like Christmas morning, right? You're like, oh, this is what I've been wanting to do. Then they get in there and they get a little bit of experience. The cockiness just shoots way up. What I find with true subject matter experts is that they have all that confidence that they just gained and they have all that experience and they have all that excitement, but they're able to turn it on. I really hate to give this reference. I apologize in advance for all the people who hate this guy. But Tom Brady, I can’t even believe I'm saying this, Tom Brady is a true subject matter expert in his craft. I would say maybe 10 years ago, I was like, I hated the guy. Like he just seemed cocky or whatever, but he's so far into it now that it's like, he lets the game speak for itself. He has all that passion still and he has all that drive. That's a good football pun, you know that's the example of getting to, in terms of how you should act once you're actually there. The problem is there's a huge gulf actually between, I got a little bit experienced and a true subject matter expert. I think it's trying to learn how to manage people in that space. Right? Yeah.
Guest: Matt Hernandez (16m 31s):
It's a good point. Yeah. I'm going to be seeing this new series man in the arena, but it's really awesome. It's about like the journey right from when he was the sixth round draft pick out of Michigan and then all the preparation he put in until he got his moment. I also agree with you. I wasn't a fan of his, I'm a south Florida guy, so I'm a Dolphin fan. Wasn't a fan of the Patriots, but I admire excellence and he's a person that has, he's the best that there is because there's preparation and his attention to detail. Like you said, he's an SME.
Host: John Scardena (16m 58s):
Yeah. I liked that. You got a Meyer excellence. There's a lot of people like that. Your dad's like that for me in the USR perspective for sure. We're going to do one more football analogy cause I really liked this. I gave a presentation to NATO. I was there on their keynote back in September for urban warfare planning. Really fun experience talking to military leaders without emergency services experience and or understanding of how emergency management crisis management in Europe, what it can do for them. It was a fun conversation. The way I broke it out was describing a disaster like chess pieces. I would say, this is my side, this is the other side of the disaster. It kind of walks through that as a guy who played football, do you ever go through? And you're like, okay, that position, that would be this and this position would be that. Do you ever do that?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (17m 55s):
I wouldn't say I use that exact reference. I actually did a training one time when I was a captain in the army and we had to do professional development. What I used was attention to detail. The scenario I did was I broke down a couple of different plays that looked the same, same formation, similar down in distance. A couple of them were run plays, a couple of more play action. It was off the same movement. What I was showing was like, hey, there's a difference in where these guys align both in the backfield and on the line of scrimmage and the initial action, like in the first like two seconds of the play what's happening like one second and two seconds in. So you can see what's happening. It just showed the attention to detail, like understanding what your opponent is going to do in this case. We're talking like the enemy, like your opponent's going to do reading your keys, understanding what you should be doing. And attention to detail matters in combat, it matters in sports and it matters in emergency management too. Understanding getting down to that kind of level, like the expert level, that PhD level of understanding exactly what's happening and breaking them down and then having a plan and then practicing. Right? So I'm seeing it happen in front of me on a screen and now I'm going to go out and emulate what I'm seeing on the field. So I know if this guy was aligned differently, now I'm looking like hey, something is keying me to think that they may be doing what I think they're doing based on what I saw. So I see it, then I practice it and then I execute it. There's a sequence where it's iterative. So I wouldn't say the exactly of like moving pieces in this player was this player. But I have used analogies for football all the time in my work.
Host: John Scardena (19m 27s):
Do you know any pilots? Any chance?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (19m 31s):
Yeah.
Anytime I talked to a pilot, every analogy is about flying every single one. That's how I feel about football players too. At any time I talked to a football player, it's like, oh yeah, it's kind of cool though, that you look at operations as plays and, you know, instead of focusing so much on the players themselves or the positions as the plays of like, what is the objective you're trying to do in that specific play, try to get wins. I actually liked that a lot, in theory.
Guest: Matt Hernandez (19m 60s):
The other thing I say too, just like team sport wise, like, you know, there's other sports out there that people and not to speak. Like I played a lot of sports growing up football, I think is the one sport where you have to rely on every single other person on your team, more than anyone else. Right? Like you have a great basketball player, he could take over the game. Great pitcher, he, or she could take over the game. But in football, yeah. You can have an athlete, but like the lines not blocking or they miss an assignment on the back end. You have to do your job. So it applies in emergency management, or it applies in the military. If you don't have somebody doing their role, then you have a potential catastrophe that can happen. It's really important to be accountable to your peers on doing your role and then also making sure that they're doing their role.
Host: John Scardena (20m 39s):
Unless you're Ezekiel Elliot in the Michigan game in 2018, when you basically put the game on. No, that's a good point. So let's switch gears here for a little bit. I brought up Unite Us earlier, it's a company you work for. Just to for everybody's sake, they didn't pay us for this, but you work there and I was looking it up and I think it's pretty cool, especially because it's like hitting the innovative side of emergency management and especially humanitarian aid. Can you walk through just very briefly about the mission of Unite Us and maybe your own personal story of why you're focusing on emergency management and or helping people?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (21m 28s):
Sure. Our mission is pretty simple as to connect health and social care. We understand that everyone understands clinical care is really important, right? So it's elevating social services and the basic needs, the basic social determinants of health are important in people's lives and how that impacts their overall health. When I got out of the service, I wanted to kind of find something that had mission focus. So when I got out of the army in 2013, I started working in healthcare. It, so I got involved in a hospital system, worked in a couple of hospitals and, you know, like doing, like helping clinicians, take care of patients. I spent another couple of years working on the provider side doing the same thing right now. I'm directly helping clinicians, not for a hospital company, but for a provider focused company.
But I always felt like something was missing. They do great work, but I always thought we could be more proactive about helping people. This is all about driving health into the communities and really bringing health to the people in. Getting people connected to social services like housing and food and transportation, that basic things that keep people healthy, all of that impacts health. The research says 80% of your health happens outside of the clinical setting. So that's what that company's really after. When I realized what the mission they were doing, that I could be more proactive about helping folks that I live next to and, in folks I grew up with, it kind of spoke to my heart and just wanted to jump on and, and be a part of that innovative concept because it's a newer concept part. It's not mainstream yet and so it's been fun.
Host: John Scardena (22m 54s):
Yeah. The fact that you're tracking that progress or all those different activities is huge because like so many people have these touch points with individuals that come in who need services. But to be able to actually track that and track the history of that, especially when they don't have a lot to go on, like there's not a lot to go on for data, especially when you meet them, they don't have that history readily available anyways. The idea that's at least to an organization like Unit Us and the fact that you're going out there and trying to help, that progress. I mean, because that's really what we're talking about is progression for the most vulnerable. That's a mission that I can get behind. That's a mission I think is pretty cool. But let's back up for a second. Obviously, your dad's a pretty famous guy in the USR world with all of his experiences, with urban search and rescue and 9/11 and everything else he's done. Haiti, Oklahoma city bombing, all of that side. Is that why you got in what experiences impacted you and essentially, why are you carrying the banner, carrying the torch there if you will?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (24m 8s):
Yeah. I mean, I think I was blessed to have, you know, a hero dad, right? I mean, you said it, he's done a lot of amazing things in his life and you know, I always saw him helping other people, right. So it's hard for first responders, families like Christmas. He's like sometimes he missed Christmases and birthdays and things like that, but he was helping other people. So as a kid, it's hard to understand that. But as a grownup now, as a father myself, like I understand the sacrifices that some of those guys make, you know, to help other people. There's a story like my daughter, for some reason, loves always hearing stories more so than books where I remember being on a vacation, coming home from vacation with my dad driving. We were coming back, I think from Disney or Bush gardens and there was a bad accident on the highway and so a van in front of us flips multiple times, goes off the highway, skids off into the grass, ends up upside down and it's in like, I wanna say swamp. Right? So it's, it's, it ends up sinking quite a bit into the ground. So my dad, the guy that he is right, goes into crisis mode for a minute and then relies on his training. But he was like, I think I was about 13 at the time he slammed on the brakes, pulls the car over and says, Matt let's go. I'm in the car with my mom, my brother and my sister, but on the, you know, the biggest one of the group. I remember like we had just spent time buying new clothes for school.
I had new shoes on and, you know, silly young immature of me was like, what? My shoes are gonna get ruined. He's like, I'll buy you new ones. So we've run off into the end of the couple hundred yards into the embankment and there's cars. This van is upside down and there's two older, an older couple hanging from their seatbelts. So he walks me through and we get them down safely and then rescue comes and, thank God those people were fine. They had cuts and bruises and we're crying and we're afraid. But when I saw him go into mode like that, and, you know, I spent a couple of times riding with him and his crew as a young man. I was in high school when 9/11 happened. I was in 10th grade and I just, you know, he always said like, just look at the people that are going to help. That’s always resonated with me. So I took a different route by going, you know, in the military, but service was always something I saw growing up, something I respected and wanted to be a part of. I mean, I think he absolutely is an inspiration for what I decided to do.
Host: John Scardena (26m 31s):
Yeah, that's a pretty incredible for both him and you and I hope he did replace your shoes.
Guest: Matt Hernandez (26m 37s):
Yeah, I think he did, but, you know, and I tell my daughter that story all the time, she's like, tell me the story about Papa and you helping people because I think she's got that bug too, which I hope she does. That'd be cool if she does, she's four and a half, but I always saw him helping and, and it resonated with me. It's, you know, it's always stuck with me.
Host: John Scardena (26m 55s):
It's pretty incredible for you specifically too. You called it out right with family members who are in emergency services and for those of us who have good deployed to disasters, right. Then like, you're just gone. There were several years in my marriage that I'd get a phone call and two hours later I'd be gone. I wouldn't know I was coming home and I wouldn't come home for months. So like he, there's a taxation that puts on your family because of that. So the fact that you specifically were able to say, okay, there's greater good out here is a big deal, especially because he had to have been gone all the time between local and national stuff. Your military service, 9/11 obviously was an indicator for military service, right?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (27m 47s):
Yeah, absolutely.
Host: John Scardena (27m 48s):
Yeah. It was a major drive for me as well because of some health stuff I can't serve in the military. So I was like, okay, like what can I, what can I do? I kind of found humanitarian aid slash emergency management and talk about impacting an entire generation of a leader essentially through something that was so horrible and horrible at the moment and still horrible now. It's driven people like yourself to do good in the world and now you're working on helping the most vulnerable populations. I think that's kind of a Christmas message in itself, there's hard days and there's hard moments, but good can come and Goodwill come. Right. I think that's kind of the message I subscribed for, I choose to believe in. Do you have a similar mantra for yourself or how do you look at it?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (28m 47s):
Yeah, I've always said they can always get worse. I mean, I don't know if that's the most positive thing in the world. I think there's a silver lining.
Host: John Scardena (28m 55s):
You should be the emergency manager just for that one phrase.
Guest: Matt Hernandez (28m 58s):
Everyone goes through hard times. I don't think anyone, regardless of where you were born or what's in your bank account or what you do, everyone is going to experience hard times. But I think there, there are silver linings in, in situations. I think finding your tribe, I think social isolation kills people, right? So social isolation is a really bad thing. Finding your tribe that can help you process things is important. Right? I think there's a good camaraderie around the first responders, cause they're always together, right? They work together sometimes, you know, if you're on a fire or EMS side, you're together for a long time. Sometimes it's also getting those families to interact with each other so they can understand what that shared burden looks like.
Because you know, if you're not married to a first responder or you're not the child, the first one, or you don't really know what that feels like, why is my dad not there? Why's my mom not there? Why is my spouse not there? I think giving people a chance to fellowship with each other and have that shared, you know, struggle is important because then they can relate to what you're going through. I think he said there's still a silver lining and you can find one in every situation if you look in the right place. I think there's something to be said about gratitude and understanding. Like, I'm glad my dad is one of those people that wanted to go help people and be out there when other people didn't. I think having a tribe around you is important to, you know, help you get through those times when you do have the downs and there's the ups and the downs that comes with it. But you know, I think having folks around you is important.
Host: John Scardena (30m 29s):
Yeah and you bring up a social isolation, how like dangerous that is. One problem when people are in either a personal crisis or a catastrophic disaster is it's hard for them to see beyond the fence. I've shared a story about a hurricane before. So I won't share that one because I've been called out for sharing the same stories. I'm a dad, so that's the problem. But you know, what was it a year ago? We had a major wind event when I lived in California and it took out the power out of our neighborhood for five days, except for 10% of the neighborhood. As a guy who likes to do analytics and GIS. We live in that 10% of the neighborhood that was fine. But we'd go visit some friends and you would think that they were in a war zone. I say that respectively of the guy, who's actually probably been to a war zone, but they think it's so hard. They could walk three blocks over and just come into our house and be fine. I think that the message with social isolation distance is real. If you go far enough, you will get out of the storm. That might take professional help if you're in a personal thing that might take finding a group, that might take checking out a vacation spot, that might take moving, literally moving, but you can get out of a storm. It is possible. Right. I think that's the message that we're both sharing today. What would be your final thoughts to either a family member or a responder who is kind of feeling like they're in that isolation mode themselves or that, that crisis mode themselves?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (32m 18s):
I think I used to tell folks, I still say this to this day, because I still have, I still communicate a lot with the guys I served with. I feel like people that are those helpers, which we're talking about, they have a sense of purpose with what they're doing on their day job. When they're not actively doing that sometimes and if you are alone, those two things when you're not feeling that purpose and you're kind of on your own is when you can get in trouble. Right? I think there's a couple of ways that you can help bridge that gap. You can volunteer, go to church, you can help in a toy drive, help out a food bank. There's a lot of opportunities to get out and give back. You could do something nice for your neighbor. Like something that you can do to spark that feeling of gratification and purpose I think it helped get you out of that dark spot. Being alone in your home by yourself as is, is not a safe place to be if you're in that scenario. Then I think too, it's like if you know folks that are alone or that may be alone, this holiday season, reach out and offer them to come over for lunch or for dinner or, you know, to partake in whatever your family is doing. Extend that hand out there. Don't take no for an answer. If you think there's an opportunity there to help somebody because holidays are tough, right. I mean, COVID might be back again, right? Everyone's got this hysteria going on and it's been a rough couple of two years. I think just, you know, extending that reach to help other people is important. Also trying to find that purpose of helping others, I think also allows you to feel important and I get that satisfying gratification by helping other people.
Host: John Scardena (33m 55s):
I think that's a message that I think we can all get behind on one last Christmas reference for ya, you know, Christmas cookies and Santa being a football guy. Do you know how to make Michigan cookies by any chance?
Guest: Matt Hernandez (34m 12s):
I don't even know what those are.
Host: John Scardena (34m 13s):
Oh yeah. Well the outcome is they're pretty gross, but you just put them in a bowl and beat them for three hours, which I'm very excited about. But yeah. Thank you. Also, if a Michigan fan knocks on your door or you should pay him for the pizza and see him on his way. I got lots of this. Seriously though, now obviously I do with motion really well, great message. Great call-out it is the, the Christmas message or the holiday message to, if you're doing fine to help out somebody else. If you're not doing fine, go find that help. There is help out there, it's real. Hopefully people got a little bit of an uplifting message they should have from this episode alone. Matt, thanks so much for coming on and talking to me today and talking about football. That's awesome.
Guest: Matt Hernandez (35m 5s):
Yeah No problem. Pleasure to be on.
Host: John Scardena (35m 6s):
Everybody if you liked this episode, which you should have, here's the shameless plug that we do every time you have to give us a five-star rating and subscribe. If you are trying to find ways to either give back, we have relationships with lots of different companies and organizations, nonprofits like the salvation army, Patrick Muggins, but on that, but on our show a few times we can help you out, point you in directions. If you have questions, if you are feeling alone, please reach out, tell us on social media. We can try to point you to a group, or if you don't want to tell us on social media, you can send us an email at info@dobermanemg.com and we will connect you with somebody. We don't want anybody to feel alone right now, especially during the time of giving and giving back as Matt has been calling out. So make sure you do that with us and we'll see you next week.
#88 Interview with Dan Scott, Host of the EM Student Podcast
Dan Scott is the host of EM Student - Relaunch happening January 2022!
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab
The EM Student podcast brings interviews of academic and industry leaders to students who are new to the emergency management field, as well as emergency managers with an always-learning mentality by discussing the multifaceted nature of emergency management, including how other fields interact with EM and what skills are helpful to cultivate while navigating a career in the EM field.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
Radio comms just got a major breakthrough with the L3 Harris XL extreme 400P. It’s the newest and toughest radio out there built by their space and tactical teams. The XL extreme series can take a beating, 1700 degree blast of heat, repeated three meter drops, rain, salt water, you name it, the XL extreme series by L3 Harris can take it. Visit L3harris.com to schedule your demo today.
The battle to monitor and contain COVID-19 just got exponentially better for us. We are officially introducing an electronic reusable yes, reusable COVID-19 test through our sponsors. It's called the COVID plus test created by Tiger Tech, distributed by FS global. This is the first FDA authorized rapid non-invasive pre screener. It's extremely easy to use. Forget those one-time use swabs. This is a disaster tough technology, for more information on the COVID plus test check out our show notes.
Host: John Scardena (1m 40s):
Welcome back to the show everybody! Its your host John Scardena, I'm so excited for this episode. As you've heard several times before, we've talked about EM weekly. We're big fan of theirs, obviously, cause they're one of our sister shows on the Readiness Lab and one of the co-hosts of EM weekly is also the host of EM students. His name is Dan Scott, he's a great friend of mine. He's definitely leading the way in emergency management, trying to get people to think conceptually about some of these topics in our field to try to push that needle so it's really fun to have him on the show. Dan, welcome.
Guest: Dan Scott (2m 12s):
Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Host: John Scardena (2m 15s):
Good. We obviously interact quite a bit between everything that we do and I see on LinkedIn, you're a big fan of trying to inspire other people. You put up these quotes, you put up these comments out there to try to get other people. What motivates you or what's what's driving that for you on your side of the house of why you think you should be doing this?
Guest: Dan Scott (2m 41s):
Oh, well there's a couple things that drive me to do it. One is that ultimately, I need to see this stuff too. I need to be practicing what I'm trying to preach. But ultimately we see in our field of emergency management and this is opinionated in my area having done this for so long, because we don't see enough leadership and we don't see enough people taking action. There's a lot of theory out there. There's a lot of emergency management, which they feel that ultimately they need to be reserved there. A lot of reserved emergency managers out there. I'm trying to bring a little bit different approach to how we do emergency management a lot more forward, not just forward thinking, but a forward acting, being more out front, more vocal in what we do and how we do it.
My goal behind the inspirational quotes is to push people a little bit further, but also to engage them with questions and how do we get better and not just as emergency managers, but as people. Ultimately how we increase what we do and how we are, who we are, and how we approach things will definitely increase in and improve the way we do our jobs and whether it's emergency management or something else. I mean, my goal isn't to necessarily only, only approach emergency managers. That's what I am passionate about myself. That's what I love doing. It's what I do. But it's ultimately just in general, what we do and what we go about doing every day that we do it with passion and we do it because we want to be doing it not because we have to do it. If we do have to do it make the best of them.
Host: John Scardena (4m 21s):
Yeah that’s really good call out. You used these words like leadership, passion, and inspiration and people trying to get people to take the lead. Sometimes when people are passionate, it's hard for them to articulate that passion into leadership skills because they get really excited about it. If they're so excited about there, they almost don't want to step in the realm of leadership because they just want to focus on their little pocket of what they think is really important. But the problem with emergency management and emergency management field is that this our field in itself does touch everybody else. I think the pandemic has really highlighted that. I think it's exhausting for people. Great call-outs there. So in terms of your approach of how you want to do things differently and why you think it should be done, what are some examples that you could provide the field that say, Hey, like maybe you should try doing X, Y, Z, and this will be make you a more effective leader.
Guest: Dan Scott (5m 34s):
Ultimately the level of engagement that we see and not during disaster, there’s the emergency manager that we see during a disaster or during some sort of response. Then there is the emergency manager we see, and one of the ways I equate to, we hear this a lot, the blue sky versus the gray sky, right? Well, there is so much we could be doing in the blue sky that would make the gray sky so much easier. In emergency medicine, we hear this a lot. You should never be introducing yourself on the scene of emergency or in EOC. Well we say that a lot, but we don't necessarily practice it when we shouldn't be out engaging more. I've heard this and it ticks me off to no end. It's one of those things I have a chip on my shoulder about it is that emergency manager is usually in her office type could have a plan doing is working in our office. Emergency management in general is not an office driven job. Although a lot of what we do is in the office. It doesn't mean that we have to be in the office everyday, all day. We should be out engaging our community, engaging in our organization. Just recently, we had a conversation with someone on the podcast and it was about engaging the community. Well, you don't necessarily, necessarily need to look outside of your own organization for engagement. You can be engaging those that are within your own organizations to gain partnership, to gain goals that would be to aid you in what you do to aid them and what they do.
You build partnerships in the organization that you don't necessarily know were there, but we ultimately need to be engaging. That's what my goal is, to drive and inspire the emergency manager, emergency manager professional, however, you classify yourself because it's an arising thing. How do we classify ourselves? However, you classify yourself as the engagement that we see in blue skies and in gray sky. When I walk into a room and you got a gray sky environment, everybody should know who I am, what I'm bringing to the table, how I'm going to help them and that I'm there to help. I'm not there to take over. I'm not there to tell you what to do. I'm there to help you. There's no struggle for power. There's no struggle for who's doing what you walk in, you know, your capabilities, you know, each other, you know you're there to help there's trust in the room in gray sky. You build that in blue sky and blue sky is where we need to be spending more of our time.
Guest: Dan Scott (7m 49s):
There's a lot more of it, but we see the gray sky so often because that's what's sexy, right? That's where all the lights and sirens are. That's where we, when we just had the tornadoes. Right? Then I was just big response. What about all the stuff that led up to that, that we could have been doing to aid ourselves and repair ourselves and mitigate against these types of incidents? I guarantee you that wasn't done in previous and now we're this huge response. But as soon as this response over, what are they going to do going forward until the next huge response. I want more blue sky engagement and that's why I'm doing what I do.
Host: John Scardena (8m 23s):
Yeah. I think that's a big pitch of what we work on as well. From what we do when we get in there, one of our first questions are who's your stakeholders? Do you know who they are? Are you willing to hear that you might not know who all your stakeholders are. Reviewing them and sitting down with our side, the emergency manager that has hired us and the stakeholder and say, what is your capabilities? What's your competency? What are you good at? What do you want to bring to the table? Then when you start putting all these pieces together, it's much easier to see the puzzle. Also, it's a lot easier to make decisions because you can say, well, I don't need to do this myself. Somebody else can do this and somebody else can do that. You're able to refine that decision-making process to being most efficient. I think that's a great approach and I think it's the right approach. I think it's the approach of the future, which is a fun, little segue into you trying to attack the future by a podcast on EM student and helping those who are the future to think about these things. Can you just kind of give us a plug? Or what are your ideas for EM weekly and to help our audience, tune in essentially?
Guest: Dan Scott (9m 48s):
Sure. So with EM student, my goal ultimately was to drive not only just the student, but also the current practitioner to learn more, to be a continual learner, always looking to make themselves better when it comes to what we do, how will we do it, and the avenues in which we can do it, and what tools are available to us who don’t need it. As a student myself, I'm a lifelong learner. I'm going to be a continual learner for as long as I can learn, as long as my mind will allow me to. But ultimately what we see is that emergency management touches, as you said, so many different avenues, you touch everything, right? As a student myself, I wanted to reach out to those that are teaching emergency management and the levels that we don't think about using IT right? Information technology in an emergency management future and how we can use that and apply it to emergency management theory into practice. What we don't see a lot of is that we don't see a lot of theory into actually taking action to make it happen. Right? We see a lot of, well, this is the back history and this is how it could get by, let's apply it. So my goal for emergency the emergency management student or EM student is that we're going to have professors and people who've written books, and basically the specialist in the field to come on and teach what it is that they teach in the classroom in a very short amount of time. Or give you information on where they can go find more learning or specific topics, whether that be a core capabilities, whether that be technology, whether it be communications, was that a very under underutilized skills and leadership.
Leadership is one of the most underutilized skills out there, and it is don't get me wrong, no mistake. Leadership is a skill, not everybody is. If you're not a born leader, you learn to be a leader and then you apply leadership and you learn and you correct, and you learn and you correct and you apply. These are the things that I want to bring to the EM student podcast, not only as a student myself, but also as someone that teaches this stuff. I teach this stuff, I teach emergency management. I want to know that the stuff I'm teaching is going to be applied and can be applied. There's a lot of stuff out there that they teach that cannot ever be applied and what it is that we do every day. One of the ways I equate it is we have, you know, you have EMS and you have fire and PD, right. They go to the school and they already get certified to do what they do. As soon as they get into the field for filtering and what do they tell, forget everything you've learned in the classroom, I'm going to show you how to stand on the street. Well, that's the way emergency management is too. You learn all this stuff when in real life, it's applied differently. I want to bring those two together. How do you learn it and then apply it in real life situations? so that it aids communities or the organization of which you represent.
Host: John Scardena (12m 35s):
Yeah, great call-outs because I think of my own education and getting to my first EM job, you know, how many years ago that was 10, 15 years ago. It's like, okay, can you write a hazard vulnerability assessment? And I said, what? Then like three months later, I said hey, we need to write emergency operations plan and an occupant emergency plan and I said, what are those? You know, but hey, you asked me about the Stafford Act. I'm all in, you know oh good Samaritan law. I knew about that kind of stuff, but putting like theory into practice and how to do the actual application. So I think it's kind of a fun idea to talk with people who are doing the theory and say, hey, that's really great and this is how you apply it in as an emergency manager. It really is as you called out, whether you're a college student or you've been practicing for a while and you just want to get to that next spring, be willing to be teachable. EM student is for those who are teachable, those who want to hear different perspectives and learning models and apply that learning model. I think that's ultimately the goal. You know, we did a plug for EM students, I think that the plug for the Readiness Lab is that we want to innovate the field of emergency management. I think a great way to innovate the field is to help two different sides of the house that usually don't talk together and bring them a lot closer. I think your podcast doing that is a great idea, just because we were changing this model for ourselves. Speaking of models, you know, we're thinking about innovation and we're thinking about these changes. One way you're attacking it is through bringing theory to practice and how they can collaborate rather than fight against each other. If you were going to talk to our audience, we have what, 20, 25,000 emergency managers listening to this episode. You're going to tell them, say, hey, I want you to change one thing. There's this one thing about emergency management that I want us to get better as a field, as what would you say? What would be your call-out?
Guest: Dan Scott (14m 47s):
My call-out would be, how we classify ourselves. This is a new project that I, just within the last two days, I've been thinking about. We have so many names for what we do so many names for what we are. We don't classify ourselves in a way that is universal. You know, when you think of a fire, you say you know what that is, right? When you think of law enforcement, you know what that is. You think of EMS or, or hospitals, you know what that is. When you look at emergency management or you say I'm an emergency manager, people don't know what that is. Sometimes you don't even know how to explain what you do.
Host: John Scardena (15m 26s):
I have a dissertation every time I want to explain that to someone.
Guest: Dan Scott (15m 27s):
We need to get better at that as practitioners, and as those that think about it and teach it, we need to know how to define emergency management and what it is that we do. We need to get on the same page and what we call ourselves, how we describe ourselves and what it is that we actually do when we apply. When we show up on scene, if we show up on scene and to get away from the fact that emergency management is not a first response profession, it is a secondary tertiary response. We are not first responders going licensed sirens to the scene, and we need to get away from that in the visual aspect.
Host: John Scardena (16m 2s):
I think the hardest part of trying to get on the same page is that if I ask a hundred, I mean, I say this all the time on a podcast, I know I never call out my guests because I never want to make my guests like one way or the other. But if I ask people, what is the definition of emergency management? Now I've called it out on my show. I believe my definition is simple and kind of straight forward, you know, emergency management is protection of life, property, and continuity of operations. But if I ask somebody else, they'll say, well, it's about community lifelines and another person will say, well, it's about the whole community approach and resiliency and the whole community approach. I don't even know what that means, you know? So we can't even standardize what we're talking about because the reality is our field, as much as we want to claim this or that, had a major shift after 9/11, especially after DHS 2004. When that came out like that was a restart button in my mind of what emergency management is. Therefore as a general field, firefighters have been around for hundreds of years, they've had that time to refine what their job is, and the skill sets. We are essentially, if you want to be really nice, maybe 120 years, if you think of the hurricane, Galveston, and Red Cross response.
Host: John Scardena (17m 33s):
But if you really want to look at it, we were talking under 20 years, new programs left and right, there's no standardization, there's no any of this stuff. I think that's again, a great call-out, that hey, let's figure this out. It's time for us to figure this out and not have to be confused when we try to explain to somebody what we do. If you're confused, you don't know very well.
Guest: Dan Scott (18m 2s):
A lot of it too, is how it's applied, where it's applied, where it was formed. If it was formed, is it a primary duty, a secondary, or tertiary duty, other duties as assigned is very common. Or, if it's just someone who says, yeah, that's what I do because it's a mandated compliance issue. But they never really touch it ultimately, but they're the person that's in the position. That's supposed to be directed with that responsibility. There's too much of that going on right now and we ultimately can correct it. It's going to take time. It's not going to happen tomorrow. You know, it's going to take time, but we all have to be on the same page before that change is going to come. A lot of that comes too with no… you know ultimately there's so many different names for what disaster management, crisis management, emergency management, emergency manager, specialist, merchandise coordinator, disaster specialist. I mean, it's all over the place. Then their level of responsibility goes anywhere from safety compliance, OSHA, NFPA all the way, you know, to emergency managers responsibility, to prepare and response. These are full-time positions that are all being crammed into one job, that nobody can do fully. That's where we keep getting caught up and that's where we're caught up. Especially when you have someone who's other duties as assigned, because there's no way that they can do it. You have those, you think, it's only preparation. So I run the CERT team and that's emergency manager. No, it's not. So there's so many ways in which we look at it. We have to narrow that down to where we are focused on what it is we do. Even though we touch all these different things, there is still a singular focus on what it is we do.
There's many ways you could describe it for emergency management. One of the ways I describe it, emergency management is the road and then you have all of these lanes on the road, on the highway. We are trying to keep everybody going in the right direction, the same direction at various speeds and keeping them for going out of their lane. There are merging, there's going off. We keep everybody on the right place, moving forward, we're support and coordination. We keep people driving forward, right? There are two ways to a highway, but we keep them going, the ways they need to go in the lanes that they needed to be, and we help drive that forward. That's how I describe it the most. But they think, well, you know, you're the quarterback in the game. No, I'm the coach on the sideline. You know, all the directions of people to do. If you want to go that way and have a sports analogy, we're not the quarterback, we're the coach on the sideline. We know all the positions, we know what they're supposed to do. We help them do that. We'd call it, we call it on the sideline. But then some think you're the IC. We're not the IC. We play that role occasionally, but we are not incident commander.
We're the guy on the road driving for that coordination. That's one of the areas in which we just need to get on the same page, bring our focus down, but we're so all over the place, and it's not anybody’s fault necessarily just because of the way they're applied and where they're applied. Again, we just need to keep moving the ball forward. We're going to get there. It's not going to happen as soon as we would like it. Definitely not as soon as I'd like it to be there. You know, I'm very passionate about emergency management. One of the things that I tell people is that emergency management, generally, if you're not passionate about emergency management, then you're not doing it right. I love what I do. I love being an emergency manager. I don't necessarily like where I'm doing it, but I love emergency management and if you love emergency management, you should do the job correctly where no matter where you're at.
Host: John Scardena (21m 28s):
Yeah. You're talking about a response and you're talking about quarterback versus coach, and you're talking about these different concepts. That is definitely a very popular thing. I have guests come on the show and some guests are very passionate about, they only do response, and some are very passionate that they don't do response, and who's right. From this guy who gets to interview a bunch of really great minds. My thought is you're all wrong and you're all right, because maybe I should say the other way around to make people feel better. But the reality is it's emergency management. I don't want to be the guy known as the guy, as you called out, sitting in a desk, writing a plan that no one ever reads, but that's not the goal. That goal is supporting life, saving life, sustaining operations. 99% of what you should do is in blue sky so that you don't have a gray sky. So when gray sky happens, it's it's as short as humanly possible. The reality is not only are we the coach, but we're writing up the playbook. We're the analyst upstairs watching the game, we're the coach, we're the sub in the game, you know, we're kind of all parts. But the reality is, our real job is whoever has the football, we are the group moving all the debris out of their way to be able to get that football down the field. It's an ironic term because we say football for a nuke, so we're not trying to move nukes, but we're trying to understand. I love the idea of a coach knowing all the different players. Yes, an emergency manager must know all the different players, but one big gripe I have with the five areas of preparedness is you don't prepare to respond. You actually respond. You don't prepare to recover, you actually recover. So we have to get this mindset, as you're saying, most of the time we need to focus on the blue sky stuff so we don't have the gray. Just reiterating. But I think they are great call-outs and I think these high level discussions have to happen. Again, I'm going to do a nice big plug for your show is your show. You’re show will talk about people who are arguing on those different perspectives, and you'll say, hey, well, this is what we actually do in practice. How do you make that fit? And I'm excited for the 2022 season. I'm going to call it, you're getting a football analogy for EM student and for you to run with it even harder and to do great things there. I want to thank you again, Dan, for coming on my show, kind of a fun conversation to talk about your road analogy, how we can make the rubber hit the road. Too many puns, but.
Guest: Dan Scott (24m 35s):
Really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me and bringing me on, and hopefully we can do it again soon..
Host: John Scardena (24m 39s):
Absolutely. So again, if you like this show, we always shameless plug, give us a five star rating and subscribe. If you have a question for Dan Scott, the easiest thing to do is actually start following EM student because they'll probably answer it on one of the shows. But you can also reach out and ask a question on one of the social media channels for the Disaster Tough podcast. We're trying to build disaster tough communities. We want people to be better and the way to be better as blue sky as Dan's calling out some great thoughts there again, and we'll see you next week.
#87 NATO VS US: An International Perspective on Emergency Management with Kyle King
Kyle King is an expert practitioner in crisis management. He specializes in working with NATO for the establishment of emergency management in conflict zones, unstable political arenas, and nation building localities. Kyle is the CEO of Capitol Building International.
Kyle King is an expert at, “building more resilient communities and human capital at the intersection of crisis, conflict, and emergency management.” He has decades of experience with military and political organizations including those associated with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Kyle and our host, John Scardena discuss the differences between the US and Europe perspective of emergency management and share ideas how each can benefit from identified best practice.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the disaster tough podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
Radio comms just got a major breakthrough with the L3 Harris XL extreme 400P. It’s the newest and toughest radio out there built by their space and tactical teams. The XL extreme series can take a beating, 1700 degree blast of heat, repeated three meter drops, rain, salt water, you name it. The XL extreme series by L3 Harris can take it. Visit L3harris.com to schedule your demo today.
The battle to monitor and contain COVID-19 just got exponentially better for us. We are officially introducing an electronic reusable yes, reusable COVID-19 test through our sponsors. It's called the COVID plus test created by Tiger Tech, distributed by FS global. This is the first FDA authorized rapid non-invasive pre screener. It's extremely easy to use. Forget those one-time use swabs. This is a disaster tough technology, for more information on the COVID plus test check out our show notes.
Host: John Scardena (1m 40s):
Welcome back to the show everybody! It's your host, John Scardena. I am so excited for this episode. I've been on this huge NATO kick for the last several months, as you know, gave that presentation back in September. Then just a couple of weeks ago, we had John Spencer from West Point talking about the Mumbai attacks that he gave at that NATO conference. Now we're, we're pushing this conversation even further because we have Kyle King on here. He's actually in Ukraine right now. We're going to be talking a little bit about his perspective and how he's worked with NATO and what he's doing. So it's really exciting, Kyle, welcome to the show.
Guest: Kyle King (2m 15s):
Hey, thanks a lot. I'm so happy to be here and I'm really interested to talk about this.
Host: John Scardena (2m 21s):
Yeah. So the US to Ukraine, I understand it's nighttime there right now. So thank you so much for joining on. We had a conversation just a couple of weeks ago, actually. This is why this conversation is going to be spurred on here about the differences between the US perspective and the international perspective of what emergency disaster services is. But before we get into that, can you kind of share for us some of your background and what you're doing? Why are you in the Ukraine right now, for example, and the background behind your company and your goals?
Guest: Kyle King (2m 57s):
Sure, absolutely. So, my name's Kyle King, I'm the managing director at Capacity Building International. I like to say we work at the intersection of crisis conflict and emergency management. From my view, I think emergency management is really a great tool to increase stability, especially in post-conflict and what we might call operational environments, you know, in different countries. I actually started my career out in the US Marine Corps, and I spent a few years in the Marines and I actually went into the US Department of Defense fire emergency services. I spent 17 years in the emergency services left there as a, the assistant chief of operations and training, and then actually started working with NATO in the civil artsy planning field. When I did that, I spent about eight years with Aidan. That was within the context of using similar to planning or what we might call emergency management, within what we call a security sector reform environment. So supporting NATO as a civilian in what they called an operational environment, as they train the security forces, train the military. The question was really about how do you integrate the military and the security forces in domestic emergency response and national response planning. From there after I left NATO, I founded Capacity Building National. We still continue to work in international and support US government efforts in terms of building partner capacities, especially in a disaster management and so much the planning field. Currently, yes, that's correct, I am in Ukraine. I am subcontracted to the organization for security cooperation in Europe, and I'm currently in Ukraine with these special monitoring mission as well. So it's sort of a second hat that I'm wearing at the moment.
Host: John Scardena (4m 32s):
That's pretty awesome. It's interesting because we have had military and first responder and all these other counterparts on here, and especially talking about the Mumbai attack and terrorism. But getting more into that conflict zone and or recovery mission, our side of the house, when we think of recovery from a conflict zone, we're thinking more of that humanitarian aid that gets out there. I love the idea that military personnel are looking at the tactics of emergency management, what emergency management can do to reduce impacts of disaster, whether that disaster is a manmade incident or a war, literally war.
Especially with your being kind of the highlight for the last several years with a huge migrations into Europe, and what does that look like in the conflict of other locations now spilling over into other nation states and having to worry about that. Of course, Russia and China making moves and I can ask all kinds of questions about that, especially with, what was that report that came out just a few years ago, about we have six years until China tries to take Taiwan and they're trying to follow that same blueprint of what Russia did with Crimea. There's a lot of questions that about the pool back, just focus on like basic terminology here for a second. We have been focusing on this podcast a lot about the meaning of words. One of the things have been calling out is the misnomer of emergency management. You know, are we more managers or coordinators? What are we, and the other, the other side of that is emergency. We think of first responders when we think of emergency, but it's, it's usually much bigger than that. As you noted to me a couple of weeks ago, Europe calls that crisis management, right? You don't necessarily call it emergency management where there you call it crisis management. Is there differences based off of your experiences between the US and the international community of what they think emergency management or crisis management is?
Guest: Kyle King (6m 51s):
You know, that's a really great question. I think that terminology is incredibly important. So once you leave the borders of the United States, the terminology changes, so outside the borders of the US there's a lot of talk about disaster risk reduction. Sendai framework and the UN and everything else that goes along with that. There's a global sort of perspective on disaster risk reduction and what that means. Then you start encountering terms in that response sort of phase, you encounter terms such as civil protection, emergency planning, crisis management, and other aspects that emergency management is still there, but it's not within the context that we know of as in the United States.
What was really challenging for me when I first started working nationally, is coming to an understanding of what that means in terms of what we are indoctrinated with in the United States, in terms of understanding FEMA, understanding the national response plan and frameworks and everything else that goes along with that. But then you encounter different societies where there's no reference point for that. Especially when working internationally in terms of, in post conflict and operational environments where everybody's focused and spending millions of dollars in terms of building police forces, rebuilding rule of law court systems, building the military and security infrastructure, but nobody builds fire brigades or fire departments, for example.
Host: John Scardena (8m 18s):
Care needs of critical infrastructure need to be protected. Yeah.
Guest: Kyle King (8m 22s):
Exactly, so it was really difficult to try and understand like what programs were actually functional and operating in terms of building out these capacities and you'll find them, there's really not any that are doing that. It just really became an issue of trying to understand all the terminology that's surrounding all these different things. What I had sort of discovered and found is that we all sort of have this same intent and what we're trying to do, which is build more resilient societies, if we want to call it that, or building more safe communities. But at the same time, we're using different terminology to phrase that and it goes through everything it's pervasive throughout the entire society. So it's issues with legislation, terminology, and legislation. The entire authorities and frameworks, and who's responsible for what, and it's really sort of a challenge. But it's interesting because it makes you absolutely question what you've been taught, right. Is your frame of reference actually the right one? Sometimes there is no frame of reference. There is no right answer and it's absolutely fascinating to me.
Host: John Scardena (9m 24s):
Yeah. That that's a big call out, actually, because whether I was at the Endem conference, a week ago or whatever it was. Whether I'm talking to experts on this podcast, there's a recurring theme that's happening. Something that we're challenging ourselves in our company is that there's no standardization. If I go to the UK, if I was spending time in the UK, we have gold, silver, bronze. If I'm here in the US we call those typed incidents, but even in the US, I can ask an emergency manager, what's a type one incident. They can give me a hundred different answers. A prime example is asking is 9/11. What happened to the twin towers? Was that a type one incident? Well, of course, because of complexity and new and game-changer whatever. Well geographically, and it was a recovery mission. In terms of like a response, it actually wasn't that difficult of a response. Even that, 9/11, the thing that changed the entire world, let's try to figure out what these types mean and you're right, that lack of standardization. When you get in there, especially dealing with conflict, and there is no framework, there's no baseline. What do you start focusing on? What is your personal baseline of what you build off of?
Guest: Kyle King (10m 51s):
That's another really good question. Really, every situation is very unique and mostly what we start with is at an inter-agency level. There's a large assumption of okay, you've got something, is it functioning? Then we want to start looking, and it's a basic question, right. But it's kind of what we got to know. So we go in and we start assessing, okay, do you have a capability to respond? It doesn't matter what it looks like. It doesn't matter if they're wearing the same uniform or not, or if it's mostly a military role, that's the first response. But we want to look at it first, are you capable of responding? Are you capable of addressing those needs? You know, you want to, in terms of more of a military context, which you've heard probably before, which is, can you shoot, move, and operate?
Can you do these things? Can you be able to provide communications and support to society inside that in your country? So we really started at an like an inter-agency level, and it's a bit more of a top down approach. Then we start looking at sort of the risk map or mapping and the hazards and everything else that go along that inside that country. Then we look at sort of a capabilities assessment, okay, if this is where we are, this is our baseline. Can you at least cooperate, can you function and work together? Even though that might be in a limited capacity. Then when we, of course look at all the risks and hazards, and then when we see the response mechanisms and what they are responding to on a daily basis. Then when we look at a capabilities assessment and say, okay, where can we go from here? Now we can build those capabilities to increase the readiness and the response for the national agencies and things like that. We have to really start with where they are, and this has become a real issue in terms of providing, say, partner assistance from the US to other countries. Which is, we sort of walk in with this assumption that we have the answers that we know what we're talking about that, well, we have FEMA and we have everything else. You know you just need to do this, or it's the application of technology that will fix all your problems. More often than not, what I have found is that technology is often not the answer because it's the decision makers that are often sort of hindering the development in these areas. This is where it takes a moment to step back and trying to assess and identify where the perspective that you're coming from. Then how has that applied across a nation and the people that you're talking to, it's a lot of, sort of what we call cultural intelligence and making sure that you've got the right frame of mind when you're talking to people.
Host: John Scardena (13m 18s):
I like to have that process. That's kind of the process that I go through as well. So I immediately address competencies, capabilities, the ability to deliver, and then providing a hazard vulnerability assessment, looking at all, man-made a natural threats. Then if it's an organizational base, you could even do this with society at large, but just a general impact, a business impact analysis of if this gets hit by something, is it strong enough to basically not have an issue? If it's going to have an issue, how quick can you bounce back? Now, you were talking about this concept of like resiliency and maybe a difference in resiliency of how good people are. That's like kind of the reasoning behind Disaster Tough, is we want disaster tough communities. Like as you know many years has it been where the keyword has always been, we want resilient communities. You want to bounce back. I don't want to have to bounce back. Right. I think what you're saying is the same thing, we're kind of saying is we need to create systems in place, disaster, risk reduction, understand what resources we have available so we can start preventing things from escalating. If you can't escalate, of course, resiliency has its part, but it shouldn't be the goal, right. The goal should be stopping. If you don't, if we don't know what the resources are, or we're starting to talk to some of those partners, so stakeholders and they are over promising, but we know they're going to under-deliver then there's, there's another issue there.
So competency capacity has a vulnerability assessments, I think that's a phenomenal place to start. So if you've done that in some of these other different areas that you're looking at, and there's nearly no standardization, and you're trying to create systems in place to protect infrastructure and people, how does that come into play now in the Ukraine? Because it still seems that there is a ton of tension between Ukraine, the US, and, you know, Putin you know Russia. And so what is your general role there and what are you essentially, what are you in charge of doing? Are you in charge of building up those fire departments? Are you in charge of creating systems or are you trying to figure out how to mitigate those in case something happens, mitigate issues?
Guest: Kyle King (15m 47s):
Yeah, I think before sort of getting to that Ukraine issue, I think we understand that there's many layers to resilience, right. I think I heard one of your previous podcasts that sort of discussion around resilience is often very confusing because there's, nobody really can agree on a definition. We have to have an understanding that in terms of like with NATO, right. At least in my opinion, anyway. So in terms of with NATO, the issue of resilience still, already coming up because of the events, like in 2014, with Ukraine, with hybrid warfare, undermining society and general governance capabilities. It became an issue with NATO in terms of how do we build more resilient societies now that has evolved over the years. Now we're starting to see a bit of a convergence between the emergency management community and also this resilience to discussion that's happening. In recent summits from NATO, they've issued out these resilience baselines, which in our previous discussion is very similar to the community lifelines from FEMA, right? So then we start really looking at the issues of, okay, let's look at communications and infrastructure and all these sort of pillars of society that we need to effectively govern. This is where NATO sort of has moved into this resilience space and in terms of societal resilience, which is again, very hard to define right. When we're talking about.
Host: John Scardena (17m 7s):
What does that even mean? Right. Yeah.
Guest: Kyle King (17m 9s):
Yea and it's extremely difficult, you know, if you and I can't really define it where we just have a discussion about what it actually means. Imagine having 30 nations sit around and try and define what it means, and it just becomes utterly complex. The challenge is, again, in terms of with NATO as well, it's not only just having this abstract sort of societal resilience thing, but it's also what can actually, what can NATO actually contribute to that discussion? Then that is where it starts to get into that similar to planning field within NATO and sort of that your Atlantic disaster response coordination center, where they can offer disaster relief from other nations and things like that. But then it gets into an issue of where you get to these, say more discussions at a diplomatic level about what it means and the good things that we should be doing and we're striving for.
But ultimately at the end of the day, everything is a national responsibility and the United States must implement these things. These other countries must implement these things and agree to these guidelines in order for it to be, and try and be more resilient in the eyes of NATO. It's a challenge because we get this sort of top-down focus, which is very vague and sort of diplomatic. Then we'd get that community piece that you were talking about. How can we have a more resilient community in a disaster for tough community? How can we put those two things? They're not too far apart actually. But the difference is the fact that we've got to pull these two different strands together. That's why I'm happy to be here today because we're actually working on two opposite ends of that spectrum and kind to try to connect these two dots.
Host: John Scardena (18m 42s):
Yeah, it's interesting thinking of. I like how you said they're not too far off. I think the considerations are different. What's my immediate consideration. One's probably much more political, you know, strategic planning and other ones like immediate life saving, life sustaining missions. So how can these mesh, I find for myself that if they don't mesh though, you have a huge problem. Whether it's a lack of resources or people don't get it, and so they're extending the response. There's this huge play here. I think the pandemic has really highlighted that if this is misaligned, then you're going to have a bunch of other issues. I think that's what an emergency manager can really do is just pull them a little bit closer together and, and see what's happening there. I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier. Actually, I have two things you've mentioned, one about a military and then two about technologies. You're mentioning technologies versus leadership. You said it wasn't so much about technology, as is about leadership. I've been finding on my end, that leadership has historically an issue with embracing technologies to support the decision making process. IE I'm just going to follow my gut here when there's a whole team of GIS people down the hall that can tell you actually where the floods are going to go and how to get that competency at level up. Can you just clarify maybe what you meant and what leaders, especially if leaders are listening to the show, what they can do to not fall short essentially?
Guest: Kyle King (20m 24s):
Well, it's been my experience that when we go to different countries, when we start having discussions it’s at an inter-agency level. When we started talking about cooperation, we talked about roles and responsibilities, and maybe the legislation is defined. Maybe it's not really defined as well as it should be. So we end up into a discussion of where we, let me step back a moment. Most of these environments, there's multiple actors, right? There's generally multiple parties that are trying to help many different nations. Maybe it's USA, maybe it's other programs are out there, but anyway, you'll get into a space of where there's often a solution and the easy fix, right? So if we just buy this GIS system and then set them up for a year, they're going to be all good to go. They can implement it, we'll train a couple of people and it's going to be great, and they're going to use it. Then the world would be perfect. Right? The unfortunate reality is if people sort of stick around long enough, is that the people you train change jobs, they don't have a budget to continue the license for the commercial software. Then all of a sudden it sort of just sitting on their shelf somewhere, no longer in use, then they revert back to where they were, which was simply they talk to each other. So the application of technology is always a nice idea, but you have to have that fundamental human component behind it. So then it's like, okay, are you financially sustainable? Is this a sustainable decision that you're going to implement?
You'll find it's very, I mean, the extreme sort of version of that conversation is they want helicopters to help with wild land support. You're like, okay, well, that's gonna eat up like 40% of your budget. You know, that's not really a sustainable decision, but it looks great, right? So you get into these sorts of conversations and at that inter agency level, especially when there's conflict among the institutions, it's the technology isn't helping his people. Having to sit there and to work these things out is sometimes not a quick solution. It's not an easy solution. You can't simply buy something off the shelf and, and enable a capability, but it requires people working together because that affects everything sort of top down. So the leadership hits the budget. It's the people, it's the resources, human resources, and resource allocation that goes along with that, and especially even with legislation.
Host: John Scardena (22m 38s):
Yeah. I love that answer. My one funny story about GIS is we were on a coordination call for a mass flooding event in 2017 for Midwest floods, like Missouri. FEMA counterpart got on there. She goes, okay, so I'm, I'm usually the SIT situational unit lead, SITUL. They gave me a GIS computer and I'm going to be doing GIS for that disaster. I was like, hey, that just means it has more Ram. Like, you can't do GIS from like, what is this device? She had no idea. So I'm like, hey let me help you out with a couple of different resources, assets, people who can do this stuff. That's what I mean by technology is a great assistant, a great resource to be able to apply, but I love what you said. It ultimately, it does come down to people and their competencies to be able to make the decision-making or go through the decision-making process. I was at USR training last week, another example where we were talking about technologies and basically we were telling the participants, it's really hard to break an axe. The power goes out, your axe still works and you can still get through this rebel pile. I think just understanding what the different tools can do for you, but not to rely on them only is absolutely critical.
So let me switch gears here for a second, because you're the NATO guy. You're my NATO guy right now. That's why I'm going to call ya. So I have been focusing on, especially with my experience with NATO and talking to them about the systems in the US and what it can do for their individual nation states. Again, not look at NATO as an organization, but the individual countries, a lot of them just run out of the military. It's a military run organization, military setup. We have systems like that in place, but because of our laws we're not going to have the army takeover emergency response in the country, right. Title 10 forces or whatever. So could you just name for our participants, what lessons you've learned in the international community that could help the US and then maybe what the US can provide the international community? Some different things that we can all gain from each other.
Guest: Kyle King (25m 6s):
That's a really interesting question. No, I think one of the most shocking things that I've seen and maybe shocking is not the right word, but when I've been in some pretty terrible countries, and what you find is that even with limited power, limited water, people are extremely resilient. What I have found paradoxically right, is going into some of these countries where it's just a system systematically, poor, you know, and just lacking infrastructure and things like that. The people are just dramatically more resilient than what you would find in downtown New York city. Right. So when power goes out and is off, that's like another Tuesday, but you do that in the middle of New York and it's riots in the street. Right. I think to a certain extent, we have become more fragile because I see that people are incredibly resilient and some of these nations, because what they've gone through for sometimes prolonged periods of conflict. What that has also done was, and just in sort of my view, in my personal opinion, it has forced a sort of locus of control and focus on the family unit. Right? So what you've seen is families and neighborhoods are actually drawn together to be able to support each other.
So when power goes out, when floods happen, you know, all these things, people are coming together and you see that organically within these communities because they've lived through this tremendous experience. I don't know that that would happen in major urban cities in the United States, as much as I've seen it in other areas. Right. That's generally a by-product of having a very sort of harsh conditions and harsh environment for a long time, which fortunately we haven't had in the United States. But that's just sort of, to re-emphasize your point about communities and strengthening communities? Because it has been very evident to me, the fact that these communities, when the power goes out and we think, oh my God, power's out for an hour, and then people lose their mind and really people go about their business and some of these other societies, and it's actually incredible. It's just another thing, they go to lunch or something like then that's it. That's something that I observed sort of these differences between societies has, and we could possibly learn a lot from that. We need to sort of reemphasize communities and community resilience, because that's the foundation of everything
Host: John Scardena (27m 41s):
There's man, I could talk about this forever because you're hitting on this core concept that people don't want to talk about, but it really does come down to families. There was an SDI assessment at 17 years, the 17 year period after Columbine. I'm sure someone's going to correct me because I'm going to be wrong here. But I believe it was 17 years. There was only one active shooter that didn't have a father in the home. That's not a call on mothers. Obviously mothers are like the bedrock of society. Right. But it just shows that like a family unit, a well functioning family unit does a lot for people. There's like all this data of clinicals, there's a journal of clinical psychology that talks about the role of families and the first eight years of your life. If you can be taught to make good decisions, then it will propel you throughout the rest of your life, it will determine the rest of your life. There's a lot of stuff. But I, as an emergency manager go to my city council and I say, hey, we need to focus more on families. Or how about we build another school? Or how about we make another program? You know? There's a lot to be said of, what is the actual data telling us to do versus, what's kind of easier because it's kind of a hard topic to address. Or, it's an uncomfortable topic for people talking about nuclear families or whatever.
That's really interesting from a data perspective, the other to call out you were talking about, again, going back to this core and creating great communities just for the listeners sake, a great case study would be a Tsunami in America. No, not American Samoa just to Samoa and because of the cultural affiliation with families, all the fisheries, as soon as they went out, those families moved up into the mountain, started working with the farming communities. When the waters receded, they went down, they used that same sheet metal, the same material that had been blasted by the tsunami, definitely would not happen in the US, they rebuilt their fisheries. In three months, the economy went back to leveling out to where it previously was, now was the economy like Manhattan. Absolutely not, but it shows that there's something about a family culture and communities and studies like that. I actually agree with you that in some ways we were much more vulnerable because of the power goes out for three days, people freak out, because they're not used to it. How do you build in to that, I wouldn't say hardening of systems with, as in human systems of how do you get people to be more resilient without actually having them to have to deal with years of conflict? Is there a way to level the field? That'd be my question to you.
Guest: Kyle King (30m 43s):
Yeah. So before I can answer that or at least get my opinion on it, let's talk about sort of that transitional period for the military through conflict and into what crisis management to what I believe emergency management has a role. When we initially start with a conflict or there's a conflict occurring and the US goes into a country of something like that, there's a tipping point that's genuinely there that we switched from fighting off the bad guys to having partner forces, right. There's a lot of sort of money and time and effort spent to be able to get to that tipping point. Then we have these partner forces. At that point in time, when we realized that we have a host nation, that's a partner, then we have ideally create a more stable and secure environment. That's where in my belief anyway, and where I've had my experience is that when that's where an emergency management sort of ideas and concepts that come into it, because then we need to sort of freeze what we've learned at that community level. Right. Okay. You've been through hardship and we need to remember that as we build the rest of the systems around you to support the fact that you have critical infrastructure, that your phone systems are working, that you have running power and water, let's still remain resilient. Don't forget what you've been through. Don't forget your family is important, that your neighborhood and your community is important, but we need to capture that. Then to be able to build a systems around it, to where people are able to function and freely move within their community and still retain that.
But there's all the supporting systems around them have been, as you say hardened, so that they can start to live a more consistent life in terms of security in that community. We get to that piece, and then there's a sort of a maturity that comes along through that process, to where the institutions are more developed. The police is going through its reform, you're building out the court system, you'd be building out the fire brigade. We started looking at pre-hospital care systems, levels of trauma centers and everything else that goes along with that. But that's usually terms of years you've talking, you know, five to maybe you've been a decade away in terms of development. So really to your point about how do we capture that? This is where I, coming to your point about when you go talk to somebody on the city council, what sort of struck me about that was if we say we're just getting to build another school, isn't that just another version of applying technology, right? Isn't that just another version of what can I just pay to fix that problem? I think the human factor is discounted there. I think we have to get to a point where we dress the human factor and have these discussions, because when you work in post-conflict or operational environments, it's all about that relationship with people on the ground. It's that human terrain factor that we have to manage in order for us to create effects. Now reverse that, and then look at that the United States, well, how are we creating effects in the community? So it's going to generally be through people because you can throw resources, but with the school is only as good as the teachers and the people, right. If nobody shows up, there's no university, right? This is sort of where we can build a building all day, but nobody wants to go, nobody's going to go.
I continued to sort of center around that idea of the fact that we have to start with the human element and have those hard discussions like you're talking about. When we have to sit through it, I think as leaders, as you mentioned, we have to be comfortable with those discussions. We have to be okay with being uncomfortable and saying, we don't have the answers. I can't answer a question when somebody is complaining to the fact that they have had a court case for 10 years and it's past the statute of limitations because the court systems corrupt. Or for example, when I'm going on a bit of a rant here, but for example, in some countries, the fire brigade is the most corrupt institution in the nation. So you can imagine if for us, from the US you're saying the fire department is the most corrupt institution is a little bit unusual, right. But in other countries, it's absolutely the most corrupt organization because they have all the permits they allow you to build or not build, or whatever the case. It's hard to have these answers, but you have to sit in that sort of uncomfortableness and be able to have that discussion.
Host: John Scardena (34m 38s):
Yeah, no one's ever going to write a song, FC fireman in the US that's for sure. Traveling outside the US and working with the police side, that's how I felt. I felt like some of these police agencies that I interacted with were the most corrupt. I didn't like the Grinch analogy, or I didn't want to talk to one of the nine and a half foot pole or whatever, but those people moving to the US, I understood much better of their hesitancy and why they push back against dealing with police, because bringing, the US has a hodgepodge of culture and it should be, it's what's great about the American experiment. But the idea that, if systems are corrupt in one area, that means there's going to be a lack of trust in others.
Host: John Scardena (35m 32s):
That goes back to kind of what this general discussion is about that human element for my master's thesis, talking about anthropology and disasters, one of the worst mistakes and emergency manager can make is going and bringing your culture and your culture of response to another country. There's plenty of case studies out there to show, oh, the UN just got eight aid workers killed because they were putting people in black body bags, which is in some cultures considered a curse body black bag. There was an uprising, and just a lack of understanding of where you're going to. I think that's a really good thing that emergency managers can do.
Host: John Scardena (36m 13s):
Maybe they can't change the fact that we should all focus on families more, but what you can do is say, hey, if I'm hired to work in either a different county, different country, whatever, then I need to learn the local culture and customs, and to be okay with that, some things in culture are wrong, but most things are just different and understanding what is the acceptable level of success for them? Start building that process off of that. That would be my 2 cents. If you're going to give advice for emergency managers about what they can do now, to think about the human element, especially from this international perspective, what would you say?
Guest: Kyle King (36m 54s):
I would say question your assumptions. So when you are talking to somebody, we're constantly thinking in our mind that we know, and somebody who can say, we know where they're going, we were sort of predicting the answers before they happen, then sort of the conversation as well.
Host: John Scardena (37m 11s):
That’s what a podcaster does.
Guest: Kyle King (37m 14s):
So if we take emergency managers outside the United States, and there's sort of assumptions about how society works and what if you land into a country where there's no insurance. Right. So what role does insurance play in the United States in terms of emergency management and disaster relief and recovery and all that? Yeah. What if there's no insurance people don't trust the insurance mechanisms. There is no property and insurance. It doesn't exist. Nobody likes it. It's not a thing it's for corruption and that's it. Then what do you do if insurance doesn't exist? We have to question our assumptions about how we think things are. So if you were going to a new community and you were going to go into a new environment, and you're the outsider at that point, from what I do internationally, from my perspective, my opinion, I would spend time with people talking to them, listening and trying to understand. Don't assume you have answers and be like, oh, this is just like that, right. That I had this experience before, because we just did one, two, and three, and the problem was solved. It's not always the case. You have to keep your experiences in mind, but disregarding any assumptions that you're making about the communities that you're working in and talk to people and spend the time understanding what's happening first, before you make any decisions. Especially if you're going in at a higher level, because if you're going in at a higher level, you obviously feel like you're under pressure and you want to show some progress very quickly and how you're changing the world or whatever the case is. You're on a timeframe you're on probation, whatever the case is, you want to get things done, but you might be pushing in the wrong direction.
One of the best things to do is just get into the community, talk to people, figure out what's going on, ask the really simple questions of, if you were going to change something, what would you change? What would you make? What would make you feel better? What would make the community safer and find out the real answers and find the underlying causes and then try and work through it. I think this is because there's been a lot of discussion around, what is emergency management. It was sort of writ large over the last year or so, especially since the pandemic. I tend to venture now into the society of where I think emergency management starts to get more into about how do we effectively govern in our communities, right? So it's the delivery of services. The way that I look at that internationally is if you have a fragile state already, and you fail in the delivery of basic public services in many countries, it causes the collapse of a government. Especially in terms of smaller governments, right? So you might have a nation of just a few million people, which could be an average size city in the United States, but that will force them into elections. Then, a prolonged period of two to three years of political instability, just because they can't effectively respond to a wildfire, or the pandemic or anything else. So it creates political instability and the entire system collapses. That's what we generally have at riskier. If they can't effectively deliver service, that they can't affectively govern and take care of the public and public safety. Those are kind of where my head goes when we talk about those things.
Host: John Scardena (40m 15s):
I think that's a great launching point for people to think about. If you're going to ask my opinion about changing anything in this conversation, I want it because it was a great conversation. Kyle, thank you so much for coming back on or for coming on the show. You've actually been on another podcast of ours, EM weekly with Todd Devo. So if you really like this conversation, if you're one of the people listening to the show, make sure you check out Todd Devo on EM weekly and try to find Kyle King's episode there, because this is really big stuff and this is like game changer. The way you think the way you process is huge. Kyle, I'm so grateful that you came on the show, for sure. With that, we're going to switch gears here a little bit. Kyle King is with Capacity Building International he's with the NATO.
We've had this really great conversation. If you got something out of it, here's the shameless plug. Please give us a five-star rating and subscribe, send us a comment. You can do it on one of our videos. You can send everyone likes, send us emails. Emails are great, but try putting it out on social media. We make that plug every time for the Disaster Tough podcasts and so that Kyle can respond directly so that we can help you out. As we create a community as what Kyle was just talking about today, and we'll see you next week,
#86 USAR Recap: Chief Walt Lewis of Orlando Fire
This week we are airing a previous episode from one of our good friends and instructors with USAR: Chief Walt Lewis.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Previous episode with great content! Chief Walt Lewis serves on the Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Florida Task Force 4 team and operates as a District Chief for Orlando Fire. Chief Lewis has been able to successfully combine forces with his emergency management counter-parts, looking at the fire perspective and coordinating other stakeholders of the disaster lifecycle.
In this episode we talk about leadership, firefighting and the culture of fire rescue, training, and incident command. As noted in the show, all groups that play a role within the disaster lifecycle should apply these principles of success, which highlights the need for cross-sector training and collaboration.
We want to provide a big thanks to Disaster Medical Solutions for inviting Doberman Emergency Management the the State Urban Search and Rescue skill based training conference. Joe Hernandez, C.E.O, is a great friend of the show and led a flawless conference. It is at this SUSAR conference that we met other powerhouse first responders and instructors , like Chief Lewis. Thanks again for the invite Joe!
Host: John Scardena (1s):
Everybody we're at USR our training, that's a urban search and rescue training, with Walton Jones and the other guys that we work with. We've had several episodes with them. We want to replay Walt's episode because he's one of the instructors here and we have really great information. That's what we're playing this week. We'll see you next time.
You've just entered the Disaster Tough podcast. The place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1m 57s):
Welcome back to the show everybody, it's your host, John Scardena. I am so excited for this week. Two weeks ago, I was at a state urban search and rescue conference basically north of Orlando, Florida. I met just amazing men and women who are true heroes, and have a ton of courage and they were at the out there doing medical training for search and rescue, and they were in pancake buildings the entire time. They were working on really intense situations. I got to be there to observe and to do after actions and to see how that coordinates with the bigger picture with a strategic planning. While I was out there, I met Walt Lewis, who is a District Chief in Orlando for fire. We had these amazing conversations talking about the role of firefighters and the future of firefighting and what's going on, and what's some of his career experiences. I was like, man, we have to have this guy on the show. He's actually with the Florida task force four, which is out central Florida. So he can talk about USAR too, well, welcome to the show.
Guest: Walt Lewis (3m 4s):
Hey John, thank you very much for having me.
Host: John Scardena (3m 6s):
I was just talking about how I should call you Chief Lewis on the show and I introduced you as Walt. So thanks for the informality.
Guest: Walt Lewis (3m 14s):
That’s what my parents named, me so that’s where I started out as, I am very fine with that.
Host: John Scardena (3m 16s):
That's awesome. You're obviously a really cool guy because when we were talking out there and I was seeing how these different parts of emergency services coordinate and work together and this very hyper specific field of medical USAR and how to move into that from the firefighting side, it was just really incredible to think about. Just looking at the use cases there, let's talk about going back from your experiences, how did you get into firefighting, and then what drove you towards USR perspective?
Guest: Walt Lewis (3m 58s):
Okay, well, I'll try to keep it short. So anybody that knows me, my wife always jokes that I'm like 44,000 minimum word per day. I'll try to keep it in under an hour.
Host: John Scardena (4m 10s):
That's good for podcasting, by the way.
Guest: Walt Lewis (4m 16s):
So I was fortunate to be exposed to it early on in life. Both my older brothers, my father worked for volunteers in a small town in New Jersey, and each of them were very active in the volunteer firehouse. Being nine years behind my older brother, as a youngster was seeing the firetrucks and the enthusiasm. As time grew on, my father retired, moved to Florida, and I got to be an Explorer in my hometown of Palm bay. With that the exposures were there and early on with Palm Bfire department when I got on there, we responded down to assist and what we thought we were assisting with hurricane Andrew. That was my first exposure to use, or here's this major natural disaster. I was dating a girl down in Miami at the time so I knew a little bit of the area. To go down, there our people that coordinated, it didn't want it. They took it for what it should be as far as the disaster. They brought their own camper food supplies, and they laid the groundwork for our group to be able to operate because so many people flooded Florida. Hey, we're here to help. Where do we stay? Where do we eat? We had certainly realized what that impact is. So fortunately our agency did the right thing. Jim stables, the Fire Chief, now in Boynton beach, back down to Florida, he helped coordinate a good part of that effort and showed us how we could do this in a good way. So in small teams, we went down to operate out of firehouse 29 and Sweetwater, and provided some aid to Miami-Dade fire rescue. I thought it was kinda neat. The USAR system was coming online. FEMA was coming about from CD, civil defense, and my brothers were involved in civil defense. That's what funded the fire department part of it in Maywood. So in retrospect, it's kind of neat how it connected and then fast forward, and getting on with Orlando fire department. After a couple of years with Palm Bay, the 9/11 disaster, the 9/11 tragedy highlighted the need for regional and local teams to be able to be self-supportive at least for the outside of the emergency, unknown if it would be just an isolated event prior to then it was really thought of disaster as being pretty much localized or stole in their aspect. But 9/11 really pointed out that you would have major disasters in so many locations. Outside of the hurricane or the earthquakes in California, where you had large areas, heavily devastated, here you've got the Pentagon impacted, the trade centers impacted, and had the flight 93 made its impact where its destination was another site, perhaps. So that highlighted our system and we were fortunate with Orlando, Orange county, government, Seminole county government aligned to create under the umbrella of the state of Florida is created one of the regional task forces. With that Florida four was born. Originally, 12 teams were supposed to be created. There weren't enough areas to support it. Florida's one and two, which are already in the system, its FEMA teams were also pulled on the umbrellas of Florida asset. So they're a dual role team and they're great set of assets.
It's great having older teams with more experience and seasoned veterans there to kind of give us some guidance on things. They've been some great heroes in my career to help me with get answers. I'm very fortunate to have one of them that's retired from Miami Dade, Dave Downey, living in the Orlando area. So I get to talk to him every once in a while and get some really good insight on stuff. I have a great pleasure working with him because years ago he was a guy, and I still do, look up to and want to follow as far as leadership and great decision making. So I try to follow what he's laid before, because he's done a great job, and I want to continue that tradition. So that puts me in a position of a joining Florida four in 2003, the team stepped onboard in 200 hurricane Charlie hit the map across Florida, and then three other, two other storms followed St. Francis and Jean, each of those cross the Orlando area. Once we were able to step up our team and get out the door, we started to become active light rescue. A lot of searching and verifying was done and being able to support the community in humanitarian needs was started. So our team got a couple of deployments out to Wilma, Katrina, Ivan. With all those deployments, we got quite a bit of seasoning. Then we had a drought which was kind of good for the nation, kind of good for a lot of areas that we didn't go out the door for another 12 years. So it was a challenge staying on the team, staying motivated. I saw people do a whole decades of service on the team and never deployed.
So that part's a challenge and keeping people motivated now, as I've advanced and had the pleasure I have the honor of now serving as one of the task force leaders, I get to be that cheerleader still and keep people engaged in the team. It is easier when you dress up for the rehearsals a lot, and then there's a performance. So if you're a bridesmaid, a bunch of times, and you don't get married, it gets a little disappointing for us. We're fortunate that we get that opportunity, but we never like to see the tragedy. We just always are happy to be able to assess like any team out there.
Host: John Scardena (9m 11s):
Okay. So you hit on12 different topics that I want to talk about. So that's awesome. I'm glad that you're the 44,000 a minimum because I'm the same way. So let's go down this list a little bit because I was literally writing this down as you were talking. You mentioned Andrew, which is a game changer, you mentioned 9/11, you mentioned Katrina, you mentioned all these different events that have really changed both the USAR perspective and the emergency management perspective. If you really think about it, for our listeners, I keep saying that everything before 9/11, whatever emergency management was then is not what it is now and it should not be, after this pandemic. I hope more people wake up to what it can do in terms of coordination. We hit that next phase and we can talk about that later, but you're talking about some major events that are happening and you're involved in those in one way or the other. So that's awesome, just to have that perspective on the show, and then you kind of switched over and you're talking about leadership, which is a very big thing that we talk about here. I thought it was interesting how you're talking about keeping people motivated.
We're kind of in a weird field because we never want disasters to impact people, but we're in the field for a reason. We want to work. We want to get out there. We want to be able to prove our skills and whether you're an emergency planner, you're a firefighter, you're a humanitarian aid doing a nonprofit. You want to be able to do your job and to help people essentially when you don't… oh, actually I'm going to back up for a second. A week or two ago, we had Joe Delmoro on here from a FEMA and he talked about, how you have to go to your town and say, hey, I need money to stop bombs from happening. You hope that a bomb will never go off in your city, but how do you get funding to make sure that bombs never go off in your city? So you're always fighting the money man there. On the same side, you talked about keeping people motivated, not deploying for 12 years is a pretty tough run. I'm not gonna lie. I would sit in house at FEMA sometimes for like eight months. I'd be like, I started like to twitch, I'm like get me out the door. There's things happening. I want to be there. So how do you do that? How do you keep people motivated? What tasks do you focus on? How do you, how do you keep that level of energy up? So if you do deploy you're prime and ready to go.
Guest: Walt Lewis (12m 1s):
Well, it's not easy that's for sure. You're going to have members that are only there for the t-shirt. You're going to have members that are the adrenaline junkies and to touch on that point there, it was a bad thing many, many years ago and I put some thought to it as far as why, you know, touching on your point. It's not that we're adrenaline junkies, where we want to see devastation. We have prepared for a major event and we enjoy the mental and physical challenge to be able to encounter that and do it with success so that we can succeed for the people we have signed up to serve. I think that's a better answer live in saying that, yeah, we just hope nothing ever bad happens, but the fight the dollar certain circumstance.
That's a challenge and try and keep people motivated. Big thing is training. There's always the events there's we don't know what mother nature is going to throw at us next year, but there's always a manmade problem that can come about. There's been enough tragedies here as of late that identify that we need to be on our guard. As a USAR team, we need to be prepared for whatever is under our umbrella and incapable, but ultimately it could be anything. It could be wide area search. So we started developing our team for that one, several children, a couple of high profile cases. The area went missing and we could have been tested as a utilized resource. We have the rank structure. We have the radios, we have the personnel, the equipment, people, the vehicles, the GPS units. It was just a matter of being another extension. And sometimes we just weren't thought of, or we weren't in plate or what's going to cover the insurance. So it wasn't planning on the front side to enable that so we could work on that. But before they asked us to go, let's make sure we can answer that call. So we did training in that arena and got a lot of people. We had some experts in the field that were less involve members, but when they're engaged and tasked with a project, they become more engaged and more available, interested in being involved.
The biggest thing, if anything, it's consistency. If you don't have consistent training every month, every three months, people start to forget about it. Then they dissociate and they do it. They put their time to something else and it's always going to be cyclical. People have kids, they get older, they retire again, people that want the t-shirts, they don't have the enthusiasm to begin. So you have to keep, at least the majority engaged. You're not going to get everybody but understand your audience and what is their motivation? I mean, that's a leadership principle and it's plaguing every service. But you've got your veterans, you've got your boomers, you've got your gen X-ers, millennials, everybody in between. What drives them? What's their motivation? What do they want to achieve? And how do you make your drill? Can you make your training, your team fulfill what they want and just use them? What Forbes lists or why do people leave jobs? It's not money as the top answer it's fulfillment, right? So if we can fulfill some of our members, even if it's a short amount of an hour training, two hours, hey, coming out of the firehouse from nine to 11, we're gonna be doing some training, come by the warehouse. If nothing else stay engaged, see the people again so that you learn a couple new members. You remember the old members, people see your face so that when the deployment happens, the people and we're able to move quicker because especially in our agency, we have three main agencies. So I named Orlando, Orange county fire rescue, and Seminole county fire rescue, were supported by other agencies and region five to 70 fire department, Winter park fire department, Osceola county fire rescue, Martin county, we've got Claremont fire rescue. We've got numerous agencies in our region that also provides the personnel and a big one Lake County fire rescue. Their fire chief is a former Seminole county fire chief or a chief officer. We got a lot of people that are going to integrate just like in a FEMA building. They're going to be coming from different places when you have that association to those people it's going to work smoothly.
Host: John Scardena (15m 50s):
Okay. Again, you mentioned about 12 different things I want to talk about. I love it, dude. I love it. You're already giving us a lot of clips we can use. First of all, the t-shirt one I find is hilarious because the national strike team is there only for response. If there's not a response, we're really not doing our job. We work on policy. We worked on training. We did a ton training. We'll talk about that in a second. But when I would get it to deployed to the hurricane Harvey, the hurricane Matthew, the wildfires, the tornadoes, whatever disaster where you got to deploy to, 90% of it was natural. One of my metrics for demobilization was when staff that we'd bring in, because we'd have 200 staff and we had what 25,000 people deployed when my staff started asking me about t-shirts. I knew that it was time to go home or not be in a response anymore. Right? Like you're doing 18 hour days. You're trying to coordinate all these resources. I specifically was trying to figure out where the USAR teams should go. I was working directly with the emergency services branch director and we were doing all these different things. So they use our teams, would go out and we were tracking all this stuff and trying to help out.
Then one day people started asking for t-shirts and you're like, okay, that's not that anymore. So that's really funny. I will say on the other side of the coin, if you do want an awesome t-shirt, you have to get the Disaster Tough T-shirt from a website. Okay. That's really dumb. There you go. Good man. The other thing that you're talking about is the mental challenge. I really like phrasing it like that. That's a good idea that the conference that we were at talk about a great mental challenge. I like to call a strategic level emergency management, to be fair. When I was talking to most of the firefighters out, there are people trying to go in the USAR Teams. They had no idea what emergency management was. We'll talk about that in a second, but I love the idea of a chess match. I like to say, okay, there's a category five hurricane coming in. How am I going to reduce the level of impact, to the max and what do I need to do to do that? That mental challenge of figuring out who, what, when, where, how bad, and reduce that impact is a great mental challenge. So I like that a lot. Then what you're talking about this last point, and we're going to talk about this one quite a bit, where you can fill us in here is consistency. I was very lucky to work on under somebody similar to you, Rodney, Melsick, who, when we didn't get deployed, man, we kept that culture up of deployments. We did trainings all the time. We did what we call lightning bolt exercises, which is basically, you're in go mode. You get the call and you're going through all the motions. We did a lot of training and we just refined and refined and refined and so when we went out there wasn't any rust, right? And luckily I was on a team that we didn't have a lot of t-shirt people. They brought in the best people, but consistency is really key. How do you integrate the consistency of training? I'm going to go back to this money thing again, because it was a lot of times for us, it does come back to money. How do you give people the training that they need if they're not getting deployed? Those dollars could be not there. What type of exercises would you suggest?
Guest: Walt Lewis (19m 28s):
Well, there's a ton of stuff. It's just got to put the time to thinking about it and you don't try and do it alone. Talk to some other task forces, TRTs, and other people that are in your field and see what they've done for success, or at least brainstorm for the lack of the old term, but get everybody together. What worked out well for us during most of that 12 years, I grew up on a team as a text rich specialist. Then to me, that's one of the most important roles in the sense of you can't find victims, there's nothing to do. So with text search, we needed to stay good with our skills with our GPS use. Well, everybody's going to look to us to make sure we know where we're going and how it's gonna work. So let's stay focused on what our demands are and to work with a small group, I approached our team management and said, hey, doing the road training's great, doing the confined space training, great, all is good but we're not staying highly proficient on our skills. What's important is frequency, recency, and accuracy equals proficiency, right? So by having those three things, if we're not frequently training on it or doing it accurately or not doing it recently, we're not going to be good at it. So as the team management, would you mind if we broke away and did our own group training for canine search specialists and techs are specialist. It's open and available to anybody else that wishes to attend and we'll need those extra help. So we started working with our canines and I got to see firsthand some of our dog operators and they are fantastic. Love those as resources. I had true faith in our canines when they would go out and search, if Marcia's dog hit, I knew there was a victim there, it wasn't. I needed another dog to come check because in seeing their dog operate all the time, I had confidence. Same thing with Susan Wesley's and Jen Browns, I knew that the dogs were doing their job and I could have confidence that we could start doing the rescue work rather than delaying it any longer. The problem was in the pile that dog barked at me, I would really like to just start coming to help me wait for rather than wait for another dog to come bark at me. But I understand the reasoning so I can appreciate that too.
But the fulfillment part of it, doing those training skills, look at where you may be deficient. What do you truly need to focus on? But also, what can you do at the cheek? There were other agencies that need to do training as well and have a small training budget, but can't fulfill what they want for their training, because they don't have enough people or resources. Fish and wildlife commission, the official wildlife commission. What do you guys got going on? The next year, well, we got a couple of flight trainings we got to do, and we've got some ground search. You mind if we integrate? That would be great. So with them, we got to do airframe training, find out what equipment we can carry, how far we can go, how long the air ship can go, how to do loading procedures. They teach us, we teach them everything on the front side so when we go out and we have to meet, we already know these people and we know what exactly we're going to do. It was their training budget we used. We just applied to people to drive down to Lakeland airport. Well, we're going to Lakeland airport to do the training. Lakeland fire hosts, the technical rescue team. So I call Matt brown. Hey, Matt brown. We're going to be in your backyard. Would you like to get some training, free training for him? It happens to be in his backyard. So three different layers of training involved, all on the cheap search and rescue training. You can do search and wide area search training. It's not much to take out maps, but you can do search training in your own backyard. That's easy. Everybody knows the major geographical regions, but pull out a map of the Apalachicola national forest and then give it to our search managers and now they got to try and work on an exercise we're deployed to here, lay out where you're going to do and where your boundaries and what you expect, your genuine travel time for your people and doing their willingness search.
How do you set up your drills? What are your support mechanism and have them truly walk through everything and have it come out with and then have the experts stay silent. Then at the end, let them follow back in with, and think about these other couple of things rather than inject every little thing. So this way they learn not necessarily the hard way, but they truly get all their thought out of their head and then get the introduction or the extra points. And it's as much as you want to try and do really, what's going to be your primary or prior priority responses and work your way down there because it's possible. It doesn't mean it's probable, but go with the probable and handle the possible as well. The disaster medicine for a while, we had some pretty motivated medical specs. We would get mad cadre back again. We would integrate them with a couple exercises and not only did we find the victim with the dog, searched them with a camera, hurt them with a Dell star, but then we had a med spec come out. We would remove the victim to some degree and then the med spec had to medically manage the patient in the pilot future training. We hope to set up and hopefully with the development of our future training center, we can create that training environment that will integrate every aspect of our USAR components. That's something that I see. Here's another, another segue for you is some of our training facilities, they do really good for a couple of points of use are, but not all of them. It might be good for structural collapse or for shoring or search, but not really good for the medically needed management patient. Like the M sock training that you went to. Joan does a fantastic job with a group for disaster medical solutions of setting things up to make it as realistic as possible. That should be the run or the sprint level and sometimes we do have to do that crawl level with our personnel so that we can get to there, but there's always some crawl stuff we can do. We can only do GPS training. That's great. We can do math training, that's free. We can do winch and off-road vehicle operations. That might be a constant curve because you might break something, but there's a lot of little things that you can do. Again, it looks look at your priorities.
Host: John Scardena (25m 12s):
Okay. Wow. Again. So this is really interesting. You talk like a firefighter, but you are using emergency management principles and pretty much everything you're doing so far, you have talked about three of maybe 10 things that we hit on. You talked about the issues of planning, specifically planning before a deployment. That can create a hiccup. That's a big time of emergency management thing of like coordination and planning. I already used the word coordination, coordinating between different teams is what emergency management really does. I run a company called Doberman Emergency Management, and yet I think emergency management is a misnomer. That's kind of my problem, but emergency coordination is really what we're supposed to be doing. Great emergency managers, great first responders coordinate with all the different groups in the house. Quite frankly, when you're out there doing your job, you shouldn't be coordinating at that point. There should be somebody behind the scenes assisting you, helping you coordinate those resources. The last thing you talked about was training, Joe Hernandez and the disaster medical solutions. I do not do endorsements on the show very much, but I will say this I 100% endorsed Joe Hernandez and the disaster medical solutions.
That was probably the best training skills-based training I've ever seen. I have been to a million trainings. In fact, I've put on a lot of different trainings and hopefully those went pretty smooth as well. However, this was top tier for sure, full integration, by the way, he kept on saying crawl. That's kind of a huge pun for USAR. I don't know if you caught that, but I've never been in a pancake building so much in my life than last week. As an emergency manager, I kept on every day, I would take these notes and I'm like, man, there needs to be so much more coordination between our side of the house and the USAR side of the house.
But in terms of that training piece, like everyday was flawless, right? Yeah. You had the skill-based training in the morning or the discussions in the morning and then the afternoon and evening, they would actually go out there and do it. When I say do it for those listeners, they had a cadaver and they were actually performing amputations and tracheotomies. I learned about ketamine out, like everything in the pancake buildings, it was about 300 ML of ketamine and then another 200. I was like, okay, I basically can do USAR now. But yeah, let's talk about that. You start trading specifically, because you're out there as an instructor yourself, there was a lot of instructors. It was almost one for one. Well, it was like 2020 instructors that I counted with 36 students, a lot of different skills going on. What do you think sets apart that training and in your perspective, am I missing something? Is that just kind of the standard or does that training really stand out for you as well?
Guest: Walt Lewis (28m 23s):
No, I didn't. I'm not going to do mass, any other training agency or groups that are out there, and there's a lot of great ones, but Joe has dedicated from the early days. And this originated underneath John Holder center rescue training associates many years ago where we provide the disaster medical specialist class. Eventually when that company folded, Joe kept this going and created disaster medical solutions and he has the eye too, super nice guy. I know salt of the earth superhuman, great humility, but he has the ability to just create great connections and friendships with people. There's so many high level people. I really don't even count myself as an instructor in the group because there's so many smart people in the group that I have the pleasure of going, just to be able to hang out with them and have fun with them. I bring a very small piece of the pie and they have done pretty much the whole.
Host: John Scardena (29m 18s):
You're full of it, by the way because you literally, the last 20, 30 minutes just proved why you are one of those smart guys. So that's BS anyways.
Guest: Walt Lewis (29m 30s):
So I took notes from that conference, but their focused goal, the thing they're focused goal, you know, Vinnie Johnson, Wanda Rica, the guys that are helping run the thing, is to make it as realistic as possible so that when you are forced with that event, the decisions you're going to make, how are you going to respond? What needs to be done? There's no question because most of the time, those medical specialists, they may be completely on their own without the yet conference on a doctor nearby because you're in the disaster environment. You may be in Haiti where the doctor is one and there's four med specs and each of those with patients, and you've got to make the decision, what is being done for this patient right now, IB therapy by carve onboard and EKG tracing. If I've got the machine available, if not, then I've got to make my other decisions based on symptomology. Having that depth of knowledge is way beyond we're just paramedics, you know, continue to learn from, and also want to break the mold of standard, not against ALS or any other teaching platform, but when the situations are presented, do you have pretty much a basic mannequin? You might have a sim man, which is very interactive, but to go the further level of the mannequins over there and trauma effects. Forgive me for not having an accurate name of the company, but trauma effects has moved on to another company name and to have the realism that's there with that high level, multiple patients scenario that is true to life it immerses you in the true scenario. So when the students would come in, we had to break the mold. In a day one we gave a little forgiveness too, we started hitting them day three, I have plenty of dumb looks and I would give him a lots of dumb looks when they would ask me a question about a patient that they should be able to find out themselves, but they wouldn't get it because they didn't take their gloves off. The work loves to expose their patient care gloves, to touch the patient. I'm not going to tell you anything. This is not a mega code. This is a real life scenario. Do everything that you can, and the patient will talk back to you. The noises, the smells, the sounds everything's coming about to make it as realistic as possible. So it has all information-based decision-making not just me telling you something, you just, all your sensory input. So it's sensory input, decision-making rather than information and for those scenarios, the last day, the goal is to have live interaction. The location couldn't be much better. It's Florida state fire college. It's got a great pile, but also it's when fire standard students are there and lots of them are energetic and interested in participating and learning. So they're right there and they make great role models or a model actors. So they get move lodged up and supported features. You'd mentioned about the student does structure, a student to instructor ratio. If we engage in a football game, we'd probably give them a run for their money. Absolutely instructors, because it was the thing. One to three, as far as in orange shirts, but it was very close to being one-to-one or one to two and a lot of scenarios and we want that. We want that immediate, full attention as much to the students as possible so that they have full confidence when they go back to their local jurisdiction and they can be the authority so that their fire chief, their emergency manager, their EMS director had full confidence that these are highly trained well pointed individuals that are fully capable of providing whatever scares needed, when that disaster happens. The downside is going to be sustainment of that training. So we invite those students to come back and when we have other exercises in those regions, we try to reach out and stay in visible. So certainly go to their websites and know when those events are coming so you can come back up and revisit just so that's availability is there and that's something that we don't do a very good job of it.
We typically take a class, but we don't do a lot for sustainment later on. We expect our agency to follow through it. So we allow that to happen too ahat's a great vision of Joe and it's the personnel that work there. I love being around them. I mean, we tried each other, we have a great time, but I know that at any moment, if I needed help, I could call any of those 20 people and they'd probably be at my house tomorrow, if not tonight, whatever I needed. So they're a fantastic group of people, very intelligent, very humid, humble, and just experts in their field. And I'm privileged to be around.
Host: John Scardena (33m 47s):
Yeah. In fact, I was privileged. I felt the same way. I felt like it was an awesome learning experience. I like what you said earlier, when you said you don't want to knock any other group and to that credit, I'm kind of one of those people who says something like, I'm the best other people are the best too, but I don't want anybody to be any better. Like that's how hard I want to push. I hope everybody gets to that level. I think of things like tears in terms of training, that USAR training is top tier in terms of, it was as close to flawless as I've seen it in terms of the purpose, the mission and the outcome.
When I was w observing the students, again, I'm not a medical guy, but I have had some training working with people and understanding communication and understanding emergency services and understanding that tempo and understanding these different things that have to happen. That coordination piece, even just tracking what you're doing, like from a triage perspective, I understand triage because we deal with triage a lot in large-scale disasters, right? And so I was watching them and like day one, man, I was like, oh, this is bad. They were making so many mistakes and day two, even day three, there was one moment where I was really impressed with the two instructors, basically by their lack of attention in this one area, the person that she should have been treating died, or they would have died because they didn't treat it fast enough. They weren't really well coordinated. You could tell the instructors were really frustrated by that because, you want them to do lifesaving work, but when they came back together and they did their hotwash at the end, it was no emotion. It was pure teaching moment and still building up their confidence. Let's focus on what you did, right. Here's a couple of things that you need to tweak, but you really know you're the professional. You already came here. You're already paramedic, you know what to do. So make sure you're doing those things and allowing that, I think what happens a lot of times with the instructors is, if people aren't doing it right, there's a real world try to stop everything. Well you didn't need to be fix this, or they'll give a little hints.
There wasn't really a lot of that. There was, we're gonna teach you the skill. You go do it. Then we'll do a hot wash by the last day, which was my favorite probably exercise I've ever been a part of, because we don't really do with night a lot. We had another guy on here Dr. Steven Johnson, who is a biochem counter-terrorism expert for UK. He goes, we don't really do a lot of night exercises because there's just so much more work. I was really happy to see the night exercise and then watching the students, we actually had her name was Tammy. I was outside the whole, in fact, I was inside the hole a little bit but I was mostly outside of the hole, but we could hear inside. The level of progression that happened from day one, I'm not talking about her specifically, I'm just talking about students in general till the last day was just incredible to watch. That's my favorite thing as an instructor really is bright eyed and bushy tailed morons, usually what happens in the beginning. But if people take it seriously and that's kind of on our side to help them take it seriously. But if people take it seriously by the end, where are they at? And I was very, very impressed where they were at. That's why I was just kind of blown away by what the purpose and mission and the outcomes were of that training exercise. So hats off to all the instructors, yourself included and Joe for coordinating that piece.
Guest: Walt Lewis (37m 36s):
The other group to touch on is also the students. We get a lot of high-level performers and Tammy, the one you mentioned, she was one too. So coming into the program, there are the people that really take it serious, really do the extra study. They're the good paramedics, you know, in the organization and then they become even better or more better exposed.
Host: John Scardena (37m 55s):
Yeah. It's interesting to watch. I'm not a huge Kobe Bryant fan in terms of basketball or whatever, but I did like what he was talking about high school students and they will go and work out and do basketball skills and training an hour and a half, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or they'll do an hour every day. Then he was like, okay, compare that to a kid who does three hours every day. What happens after the year? And he goes, it's simple math. Somebody takes it seriously versus somebody doesn't take it seriously and does like a hundred percent their effort, whatever their level of effort is, sorry, whatever their capability is in the beginning, it doesn't really matter. If you're listening to this podcast and you're like, okay, I'm like really bad at X, Y, and Z, and somebody else naturally just amazing. It doesn't matter if your level of effort is always to the max and theirs is not, you will eventually be better. You definitely saw that with a lot of the students and other students that really impressed me actually, from a coordination and communication standpoint, was a student named Cody. There was one exercise where I'm in the actual hole, they're not relaying information very well. There's five different parties talking on the outside of what they should be doing on the inside, trying to relay information.
So neither parties communicating and Cody tells everybody shut up. I use like the incident commander or whatever. He's like, everybody just got really quiet. He goes, what do we need? And he says that into the hole, they relay it back. He says, okay, let's get them X, Y, and Z right now. I was like, that's the word? A little bit later, he was like, is there, this is a really funny moment for me actually, he was like is there a code word for trying to get everybody quiet? I was like, you just used it. He said what. I'm like, shut up is the code word like that is the way to get everybody to be quiet. Sometimes it has to happen. Now the problem with that is once we told them that, or once I relayed that information, the whole group kind of got excited with using shut up. It’s a little bit, maybe too much, but it shows that like, communication is a big piece. I thought that was another great thing about this challenge, because you're treating them as if they should be able to do it and you expect them to do it. I think that's part of the reason why they were trying very hard. It's like they wanted to live up to that expectation. Right.
Guest: Walt Lewis (40m 27s):
Going into those drills, typically, he's not going to be the whole leader, the whole search manager, the whole, what we're trying to get out of that without telling them is that we're trying to develop you to be the authoritarian in your respective role so that you making that decision. You'll have that confidence that this is what we need to do, this is how we need to approach it. You need to listen to me rather than being the diminutive. I'll do whatever you tell me, but I really think we should do this. We want them to engage their capabilities so that they feel confident and can make those decisions and get that message across, maybe not by telling their team manager to shut up, but kind of more appropriate management in their peer level.
Host: John Scardena (41m 10s):
Oh yeah. You don't tell your boss to shut up. That's a big no-no, but there's a time and place and he used it appropriately, I thought.
Guest: Walt Lewis (41m 23s):
The got control of the problem and got it on track and that's one of the other skills that we're teaching without teaching.
Host: John Scardena (41m 28s):
Yeah. I will say the later in the week, when we had some explosions go off before that he was talking about, we have explosions and a little more real and then the first bullet explosion went off and I caught them on camera. I got to Cody, he flinched. I was like, ah, I knew it. So it was kind of funny that they catch him on that. I think we just highlighted some really good points about training in general. I do that all the time in emergency management. I train people on active shooter because I did more of the operation stuff in DC. So we talked about active shooter and we do skill-based training with that.
I've tried to get people away. It's like a much more complex than run, hide, fight. We try to make the scenarios real as possible. One benefit that I have that I don't think is utilized enough is this geospatial background that I have, map making and visualizations. I think one of the reasons why the USAR training is so effective because you guys were out there actually in the pile. Tabletops exercises can be great and they should be utilized, you know, pretty frequently. But when you're able to pull in maps and injects and people are able to do visualizations and start to make it as real as possible, then you start getting away from having to tell people don't fight the exercise when people are fighting the exercise. It means to be honest, it means the exercise wasn't developed very well in my perspective. It's a call to emergency managers, trainers, instructors, whatever to say, this is exactly what we're trying to do. We're trying to make it as real as possible, as we can and go forth and succeed. Right. And so, again, just hitting on all pistons, I'm giving a lot of praise because I was obviously really impressed. However, I will say, and maybe you can shed some light into this.
I felt like pretty much everybody I talked to out there, had no idea what emergency managers do. Like most of the time I got was like, oh, you deliver the water right now. That's a logging, right? Oh, you can get us food, right? No, that's someone in a VOAD, like, I don't do that at all. So I think there's this disconnect, we're all in. I've been trying to find a word for it. Lately, emergency management and emergency services should be hand in hand. I really feel like that way. It's not as part of the reason why there's so many disconnects in communication, that was a big thing in 9/11 that you brought up, you brought up 9/11 police and fire. Not literally, don't even have the capability to talk to each other. Well, there's an after action. The police helicopter watched the second plane hit. He had no capability. He didn't even consider communicating to the firefighters in the other building. hey, get out now there's a second plane that just hit. That's still a problem in New York city. There's this whole culture thing, BS. I don't care about people's culture. You're going to care a lot because you're a firefighter, but I don't care. Right. In a large-scale disaster it's about lifesaving. But that being said, why do you think or let's actually, let's just be super honest. What do you think that the opinion of emergency management is from a standard firefighter perspective? What do you think that they think an emergency manager is and are, do you think that they are effective? Do you think the firefighters believe that they're even needed?
Guest: Walt Lewis (45m 9s):
I'm going to hate to put words in anybody's mouth. So I'll speak from our perspective. So fair enough. As far as most of it's just education, it's an understanding piece. We're very blessed. We've got a very good emergency management organization. We've got Manny Soto and April Taylor, and they do a fantastic job through this last year. We had full exposure as to what their involvement is by daily situation reports being published by them. In the planning section, chief, I tutored from April quite a few times, ran into her for some guidance on things. Quite a few times always had the answer by high-level performers like that. And you get spoiled. You don't necessarily have to know what they do. They just work magic for what, what does an emergency manager do? If the person at the end of the nozzle or on the fire truck doesn't understand what they do. That can be okay. They have to have faith that there are people above them that understand what the emergency manager to do. It has to be an integrated process. I like that. I think that's where maybe the best disconnect occurs in many agencies. We just started again because of training challenges and time on the calendar and the availability with COVID access and so forth. We're getting our officers to go back to the emergency operation center, to spend some time with our communications personnel, to see what challenges they run into.
Through that exposure that's attached to and under the same roof over EOC, we do quite a bit of training at our EOC. We have nothing else. We close the class there. So our people get to sit in their environment, see the desks, how it's laid out. There's Manny, I can ask him some questions and then a good number of our people, probably a dozen or better are involved in some sort of project that integrates with them. So that helps. So the association, they're not just not a mysterious person behind the door that only shows up when a hurricane shows up and then we have to ask them questions. They can't answer us any way because I don't understand what we do and what do you need me to do? We try to reduce that. So again, on the front side, exposures integration, how can we make it happen? When the pulse occurred, we stepped up our EOC, to some level you probably don't need public works. We probably don't need, we probably know a couple of ESF’s when he says, sit down and think about it. You do. When you square out a mile square of downtown Orlando, you're going to have an influence of how the trash is going to get picked up, how people are going to get access. So the police having a say in it. So all the ESF’s, there's quite a few ESF scenarios that are going to be effective. And like you said, maybe not emergency management, emergency coordination of having the decision-makers in the room that can all integrate and coordinate how it's all going to play out how this is going to impact the community for today, and sustainability. We want to be able to answer these questions because the decision I come up with, it's going to work out great for me today, but it's going to mess you up for the next month.
So having those answers and people in place, and I think we need to give it more value. So where the big challenge I see is an emergency managers of being able to advocate to their community leaders of how valuable that role is. Sometimes they don't even know themselves. Maybe they haven't been in that position. One of the great performances I saw in stepping up, and there's thousands of out there, I'm sure lady named Adrian. She became the emergency manager for Holmes county from a rapid needs assessment team for hurricane Michael or visiting the different OCS. Earlier in the year, she had been in a different role. She took on the role of emergency manager because that person had left. She was still working to go to the classes and then hurricane Michael hit and she was sparse on resources. She's not Orange county, Orlando, the Holmes county. So she's really in trying to get answers. She did a great job with what she had and people she had. She had the match lined up. She had all the streets were open, how things are going when she's coordinated and public works. She had a family at home she's tending to some other family members needing help. She, I don't know how she gets. She did a fantastic job and she earned the title of a accomplished emergency manager by doing it at her level, the best way possible and sometimes that's what emergency managers have to do. But from that, I hope other emergency managers can see where the value is needed for better preparation.
Guest: Walt Lewis (49m 31s):
Then I hate to say respect for the position, but without, for lack of a better way of the position needs to be better understood by everybody that would have to rely on it because once the disaster hits and you're coming to this person going, why can't we? And why didn't we, that's not the time for anybody to say, well, we should have on the front side, that's when you got to pick up the pieces. In the after action report, you know, we could have been better prepared. Had we done this and this and this. So hopefully any previous after action reports pointed out were failures have occurred from be utilized to help drive better change now for better prepare preparation for later on. If nothing else, this whole last year of COVID, our EOC has been activated. The stadium has been activated. So that's been a great primer for what we need to be doing. And why that's set that set up is so valuable for COVID. We didn't need public works every day, but not every emergency is going to require. Every ESF function will be relative to the disaster. You have an active shooter, public works may not be so involved. You have a hurricane, police is going to be involved, but public works is going to be the big drive after your rescue. So it's going to be relative to the emergency, but they all have to coordinate through one hub and that hub is emergency managers.
Host: John Scardena (50m 44s):
Perfect. I love the idea of the hub. Yeah. We pull in all the stakeholders, a great emergency manager understands the authorities that they have to understand that the authorities that they don't have and the perception of the authorities that people think they have, which is a big part of the job. Because if people don't think you're relevant, they're not going to use you. If I'm going a million miles an hour and I have to say, what do you do for me? That's already too late. Right? And I think an emergency manager is forced to do that because they're like, what can you do for me? And how can you make my life better? But a great emergency managers start to understand all the stakeholders, all the ESF’s, all the different community lifelines that get involved and say, okay, this is what's needed. This is what's needed and then there's an expectation that each of those people or those groups do their job efficiently. Right? And so I was telling him just to use our, a students. I said, you know, in so many disasters that I've deployed to, I have directly said, you need to go to neighborhood A, you don't need to go neighborhood B. Right. We have limited resources. We're trying to coordinate teams coming in. I don't do USAR, I do a little bit of USAR now because of that conference.
So thanks Joe. But, and thanks team. But the idea was that I knew I could send some people out into a region and they could do their job. Honestly, that confidence went way up after the training that we just did because it was like, oh, that's why they're so good. But in any case, like, that's the idea, right? If you have the Red Cross come in and do sheltering, I'm not going to go there and check on how's your sheltering going? Every day I wanted the numbers back. I want to know how many survivors we're going to try to get survivors out the whole deal. But when Salvation Army comes in and they do a feeding mission or a religious group, Southern Baptist church, the church, Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, whoever brings in food, I'm going to expect that food to be safe, healthy, and whatever. Whatever the group is, public works, I expect everybody to do their job. However, the biggest problem I've seen is when groups get left out, because nobody even knows about them and so there needs to be better communication. Well, before disaster, you never hand out your business card in disaster, right? That's the idea. To the USR perspective, man, I was kind of frustrated my first day there because I was talking to a lot of the teams, the state teams. One guy, said I've been on a team for 16 years and they've never deployed us. I talked to somebody else and like, I've been on this team for eight years and they never deployed us. You said 12. Right? And I will tell you during hurricane Harvey, because hurricane Harvey, Maria, and Irene were happening at the same time. It was my understanding that every state and federal asset for USR was being utilized and what I was hearing from these different groups was we've never been deployed. And there's a lot of politics at the local level that was preventing that. Oh, we're not NIMS qualified. Do you think I care if somebody's NIMS qualified, if you know, we're doing life saving. No. You know, and so, we need to do better on the emergency management side to understand the resources, but this is kind of a call-out to all those local people who are anybody who's listening right now, if you don't feel like you're part of the process, get part of the, become part of the process, tell people what you can do now. So when there is an issue, you know, you're already in that discussion. So there there's a lot of points to that as well. For sure.
Guest: Walt Lewis (54m 40s):
For sure. You hit on a couple of things if you don't mind me touching on. So prior to Katrina, it seems that the federal response to major emergency use was several teams and that's about it and it wasn't fully activated. Hurricane, Haitian earthquake, was I think the first time every FEMA team, all 28 were scheduled to go there to respond. I may be off on the figures, but I believe that was the precipice offense to activate every single asset available for humanitarian needs and rescue. Since then, we've done more to put resources in play. Hurricane Dorian was probably the biggest Wah wah moment if you want to call it that. But I think it was a fantastic
Host: John Scardena (55m 23s):
That’s the quote of the show.
Guest: Walt Lewis (55m 26s):
Category, five storm that's devastating Bahamas, and it's going to level Florida and I lived there. So I'd really take interest in wanting to keep it up and running. But here millions of dollars of assets, multiple teams coming to the state of Florida that weren't needed. I counted as a win because it was a fantastic disaster response exercise to see what else is all needed without the cost of recovery needs. You're not getting the money back for maybe some of the things, but you definitely got a lot of good answers so that we're fully ready for the next one. I think it was a fantastic preparation if nothing else. So I applaud our response efforts in getting staged resources ahead of time.
One of the other points you made was that the emergency manager shouldn't have to hand out business cards during a disaster, for sure. So if you're in that element where you're not being sought after, by your community leaders go make the approach and then where I've seen a couple of circumstances, it's maybe that top level manager really isn't interested in meeting with you, find out the person in that office that is, talk to them and say, hey, just so you're aware in case we ever have to operate together. Here's my card. These are a couple of things I can do, I'd like to chat with here and meet me for lunch or someday. And then talk to that person that's used at that level. You can determine where you're going to have to serve that group plan for it so that when the disaster happens, you're ready with the answers because when that high level official or that top person who really wasn't interested in you comes in and suddenly need you. And you're ready. Here you go. This is what I forecasted. This may be a problem for you. Here you go. Boom, there's your door just wide open. So that should solve a lot of your issues, but it takes work and it takes a lot of planning and you don't have to be every single plan, but some of the plans go with the probable and that's planning on the front side. That's a lot of what emergency management is, is being ready for the disasters in which your most likely circumstance.
Host: John Scardena (57m 24s):
Yeah, the worst thing an emergency manager can do is to go to approach a high level person, political appointee, especially, and come off as the doomsday prepper. If you walk into a room of somebody who doesn't want to deal with you because they have budget constraints and they're trying to do this, and they're worried about their career and blah, blah, blah. And they don't really see it as an issue. You walk in and say, okay, we want to prepare for the nuke. That's not going to be very effective, but if you go in there and say, hey, we have, every year we have floods and it makes you look bad. Like the make you look bad. Argument is probably the most effective argument I've actually had when dealing with high level people, because they are career focused. I mean, we are in careers, so it's okay to be career focused to a degree, but it's like, hey, you want to stay in office. You want to not have a, a crap storm hit ya. Then, you know, spend one 10th of what you would normally have to spend and let's mitigate this flood by, you know, let's deal with the levy system that's been outdated for 20 years. That's been on the news a couple of times about being outdated. You don't want that to become an issue that happened in Michigan 2019 or 2022 dams gave and big deal impacted 10,000 people. Oh, surprise into that. Or 1999, the Army Corps of engineers said, these dams are vulnerable. You have to fix them. Now it will cost about $10 million to fix the private company chose not to fix the dam. And it became a hundred million dollar problem to fix plus all the lawsuits. So, you know, that happened with Texas power grid, right? Hey, your power, your, hey, you don't have, you don't really store any of your fuel. Maybe you want to start sort of storing some of your fuel, you know? Oh, just kidding. When we had a cold happen cold, right. Everyone starts using their, gas and the power goes out for several days and you know, everybody's out of their job. Everybody about one resigned from that job. That's the kind of things that can happen. I don't know, but there's other motivators too. I like how you said, like most reasonable go for the most reasonable, get their trust to show that you can do your job competently. And sometimes it's not about the job. Sometimes it's just approaching people like humans, Hey, you have kids. I have kids. Right. And I think there's lots of different ways to garner relationships, a great emergency manager, anybody who's who's in the field of communications should be a great communicator anyways. Right. And so if you're not very good at that skill, that's a skill to definitely work on.
Guest: Walt Lewis (1h 0m 5s):
Absolutely. If you're not going to communicate your message, somebody else will, and it won't be the one you want.
Host: John Scardena (1h 0m 11s):
I love that, man. You have all these quotes. So we try to do quotes from the show. Ashley's going to have to put that together for us for social media, but okay. Let's, we're getting to about an hour here. That's where we'd like to keep it. Let me ask you a couple of questions. I actually asked you this question before, and I really liked your answer. It was pretty, pretty simple answer, but it's a good answer. There's a lot of media right now. In fact, let me back up. When FEMA became on, came under department of Homeland security, we added a fifth element to, prepared, preparing mitigation response recovery where the four, and now we add protection. So a lot of emergency managers. In fact, I know some cities that have started giving a weapon to their emergency manager. And so from your side of the house, there's been a lot of media that says, hey, should firefighters armed themselves? Yes or no. And so I asked you that question before, I want to ask you that question on here. What are your thoughts about firefighters carrying a weapon?
Guest: Walt Lewis (1h 1m 20s):
As far as day to day? I don't know if that's necessarily the best option and it's relative to your region. We typically stand by and re and stage when there's a hospital event down the street. Now as an entry team going in as a rescue task force, my personal opinion. If I'm an, I'm a gun guy, so I'm comfortable with guns. My father was a police officer. So if I'm qualified on the weapon, I train with the weapon. Often I'm going to be proficient. Number three, you should see accuracy proficiency. So with that, if I am comfortable, the weapon, then I should be able to, I would want to protect myself. In theory, I would have four officers around me providing that protection. The threat has been reduced or minimized because they're secured, sequestered, killed, captured by that. But I believe if I were on the rescue task force. Now, if I were comfortable to have a weapon, my agency would allow I would to carry a weapons while I would have the option to protect myself as well. So that if one of my other protectors was injured or incapacitated, I can still provide that layer that I need to continue for protecting everybody else at my level on my team. If I'm not a gun capable person, then I wouldn't force that issue. You don't want to give somebody a weapon. That's going to be a more danger for themselves and others and create the problem. So it's a little bit more of elaborate and answered than the other day.
Host: John Scardena (1h 2m 46s):
No, I liked it though. I mean, that's kind of what it broke down to before too, right? Is if you have the training and expertise and you're you feel comfortable with it, then there's a possibility for a door opening. But if you're not like that, that was the same argument with teachers carrying a weapon. People were like, oh my gosh, you know, I think the state of Georgia, everybody, all teachers should carry a weapon. Well, I don't think everybody should carry a weapon. I don't think if you're comfortable with it. You're not there to everyday protect against the active shooter, you're there to teach. And that that's the cliche, like your weapon is you know, the pencil, right?
But there was a story a week ago in Logan, Utah, a man, a 41 year old man was trying to break through the window to grab kids inside. And as he was breaking through the window, a teacher, showed their weapon and held them there at gunpoint. And the officers came and arrested the individual pretty scary situation for the kids. But a teacher was able to control the situation. Nobody died, nobody got hurt and they controlled the situation. And the police officers praise the teacher for doing that because in their state, they're allowed to do that. They're a lot to care if they want to. And that was to me, a perfect example of training and expertise, not escalating the situation, but I go back and forth on it. Quite frankly, like I am as an emergency manager. I'm not law enforcement. I'm always behind the scenes, but I recognize that if I was wearing my FEMA shirt or if I was wearing my county's emergency manager shirt, then you know, some idiot might want to put a target on my back, you know, and to be aware of that as well. And so like, it's a complex issue. It's, it's always going to be gray for a lot of reasons, but I like what you're saying. I like, at least the door could be open to the conversation if the training and capabilities there. Okay. So that being said, that was kind of, that was the biggest tangent of the show.
Host: John Scardena (1h 5m 0s):
Let's talk about the, the final point here. The question I like to ask everybody now that we've talked about the emergency services side and the emergency management side, which again, should be a much closer relationship. In fact, Orlando sounds like they're doing a great job out of April. I don't know who you are, but great. Thanks for making us look good. Yeah. The other, sorry, what was the other name? Manny and April check check. Good job. Make things, make us look good. So the last question I'd like to ask now that you've been integrated with them very well. The next phase of emergency management, what do you think? One thing that we should change to get to that next level of emergency management?
Guest: Walt Lewis (1h 5m 44s):
Well, unfortunately money is always the big drive on everything. It's always a big challenge and we asked, and it's not about money. It's about budgeting, which is about priorities, which is about what we need to address first. And that wasn't always the big challenge if we could make things happen. And I think this requires integration where a lot of cooperation, airports, hospitals, large businesses, cities all typically require events and training drills, collaborating those efforts to integrate those operations so that you truly get a large operation, I think would give the biggest effect. You would have to develop that. So that have to be training modules up until you built it. That would require a work and forecasting and people staying consistent with the operation. Those are other challenges to face, but some of the best exercises I've been in and in the medical component, the M shock conference you went to a couple of weeks ago was a component of, that was part of it was a syndrome, a community involved disaster response exercise and did a couple of those. There was one in Connecticut that I missed out on. I've got to be a part of one in Wichita many years ago, phenomenal, phenomenal multi-day exercise, multi-agency multi involvement.
It was a impromptu terrorist scenario where the truck detonated before its target then created the fire and collapsed aspects, but also a SWAT element. And so police investigation, and then inter integrating with JTTF and FBI and bringing those elements who also need to do exercise, coordinating that whole element. They were given a piece, then the fire service, they had to do their piece water, supply water loss because of the explosion devastated the water management area. So they had to do that piece, which damaged several buildings in the hearing reminiscent of the Oklahoma city bombing. Then you had multiple buildings to be searched and structurally supported and prepared. So then you have your vendor application of cranes coming in and heavy equipment, patient management, hospitals, transport infrastructure, sustainment, large, large exercise, a lot of pieces, but it's like eating an elephant one bite at a time. It can be done. It just has to be supported and having enough, right. People I think in certain regions would be able to make that happen and just take a collective of time, have a work group, don't call it a committee. It doesn't get done, go to work groups or the work gets done. And see if you can put something that together. And that's something that could be done every three to five years on a large scale, it takes a long time of planning. But I think that truly tests an agency or region on their true capabilities and gives honest answers.
Guest: Walt Lewis (1h 8m 37s):
And unfortunately, some people don't want honest answers and it's typically an inhibitor, but if we're truly serving our community and whatever aspect and role that you serve, you should want to be able to be willing to take in those answers so that you can perform better because all our purpose, my purpose is a firefighter as a district chief, as a task force leader is to serve my community. And part of my community is my family. I purposely live in the city of Orlando. So I serve my family and I want my firefighters and everybody I work with to do their best because they're serving my family when I can. That's awesome. So if we took that approach, I think we would probably put a little bit more exercise, a little more energy into some of those things that we do. And hopefully that's maybe a little motivation for somebody that's listening to your podcast to go forth and do even better because I love what you're doing. Disaster tough. I mean, I'm a big fan at this point when, once we met, I started listening and I love the messages and I'm humbling,
Host: John Scardena (1h 9m 36s):
You know, no humble needed. You're, you're talking about all these, ah, I'm not smart enough to be an instructor, BS, you know, you don't, there's no, you know, there's cumulatively needed there. You're obviously cutting the top, top tier. Right? So I came home and I told my staff at Doberman, I said, guess wha we're going to start doing? We're going to start doing full-scale exercises that do cross training. I learned a lot. I I've been around the block and you know, I'm kind of an arrogant guy, but I've been to 30 states. I've been to, you know, disasters of every kind every size. And I have two degrees in the topic and I get to interview experts like yourself every week. And I learned a lot being out there that applies to what I do. And I was like, man, they really need to understand what we do so that the whole idea of communication and incident command and learning that authoritative piece and the different things that applies to, to, to even the tactical level. And so we need to develop skill based training and exercises that allow observation and a little bit of training in cross sector, cross sector training. And by so doing it, you're creating more, well-rounded more capable people by gaining the skills that apply to them and their specific sphere of influence.
You're just expanding that understanding. And so when you get out to a large-scale disaster, we didn't even talk about pulse nightclub. So there's definitely gonna be a poll part two. In fact, we're having Brian Davis come on here, Chief Davis, thanks to Chief Lewis is going to be talking to us about some of the incident command perspective from that. But like just understanding when you get into a large-scale disaster, because 90% of what fire police does, doesn't require a large-scale disaster. However, like if you go to a car accident, especially if there's a fatal car accident or there's a taste, there's going to be fires, there's going to be police. There's going to be the tow. There's going to be, you know, whoever DOD is going to be possibly involved with rerouting people. There are a lot of elements in emergency management and emergency coordination that have to go, they go into play and just understanding how they work. Oh, hey, I'm, I'm 45 feet away from the police officer. I literally cannot talk to him. Maybe we, maybe an emergency manager can address that issue, stuff like that. So great call out about a full-scale exercises, a lot more training, a lot more cross training and full-scale exercises. I love all those points. I just want to thank you again so much Chief Lewis for coming on the show, you obviously know your stuff. There's going to be a part two. If you allow us, there's got to be a part three and five for obviously, because you know, it's been really fun to talk to talk to you and I'm sure our listeners are going to have the same sauce. So thanks again for coming on the show.
Guest: Walt Lewis (1h 12m 36s):
Absolutely. And I'm right around 40,000 words. So I still got a few left.
Host: John Scardena (1h 12m 40s):
That's fantastic. That's awesome. I appreciate the opportunity. Absolutely. Okay. So everyone, this is what happens every week. We love it and we hated it at the same time. We love it. When you send us an email and let us know what your thoughts are, but we would really like it. If you put it on our social media to Disaster Tough podcast on Instagram government, emergency management on LinkedIn, either, or for Facebook, that kind of stuff. We love the reaching out. So we appreciate for all those who do it, don't be afraid to ask her a question publicly. A lot of other people have similar questions and that's probably the fastest way that Chief Lewis will be able to see those questions. If you send it to us publicly, a lot of other people to answer as well.
However, if you do want to work with Doberman Emergency Management, if you want to do full-scale exercises, you you've been thinking about how this place you want to become a better emergency manager or whatever. Send us an email at infoatdobermanemg.com. We'll work that there, if you liked this episode, which you should have, because it was packed, was quotes, packed with great information from Chief Lewis. If you liked that, you have to give us again, we always ask five star rating and subscribe. Let us know that she liked it, and we'll see you back next week. Thanks.
#85 Mumbai Terrorist Attacks - Interview with the West Point Chair of Urban Warfare Studies, John Spencer
On November 26th, 2008 ten terrorists infiltrated Mumbai. The response lasted more than 60 hours. Subject Matter Expert, John Spencer, explains what happened and how we should prepare for the future.
John Spencer is the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies for the Modern War Institute at West Point. John is a researcher and subject matter expert for the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks. He is also the host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast.
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Host: John Scardena (0s):
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Host: John Scardena (1m 41s):
Welcome back to the show, everybody at your host, John Scardena. I am so excited for this episode. I have a really special guest, I'm really honored to have him on here, it is John Spencer. He is the Chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. He's also a subject matter expert on the Mumbai attacks that happened in 2008. In fact, November 26th, 2008. So it's a 13 year anniversary. John Spencer also is the Urban Warfare Project Podcast host so make sure you check out his podcast. It's really great content. But if you can back up with me for about a month and a half, you remember that I went out to NATO to speak at the urban environment summit there about a month and a half ago. We talked about that on the show. I heard several presentations, one of which was a standout by far, and it was this presentation about what happened during the Mumbai terrorist attacks. John went through all these really good details outlining what happened, what the responders are doing, what emergency managers should be doing. He had several key components. They're really great for our audience. Today is the 13 year anniversary. John, welcome to the show.
Guest: John Spencer (2m 54s):
Hey John. Hey, honored to be here. Appreciate it.
Host: John Scardena (2m 57s):
Yeah, absolutely. Let's just dive into it because when you gave your presentation, we're going to try to take a, what was it, an hour presentation into 30 to 40 minutes with injects and some questions? So it's going to be a little different than normal, but can you give a general perspective to this audience of emergency managers, first responders of what happened from A to Z and kind of a strategic level?
Guest: John Spencer (3m 23s):
I can sure, try John. So you know, that I was there in 2018, which was 10 years after the attacks. This attack happened on November 26th, 2008. The people call it twenty six, eleven, almost like our 9/11. So commonly referred to as the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks or 26, 11 for short. On November 26th, 2008, basically 10 operatives of a Pakistani terrorist group that had been trained and almost conducted like a Navy seal type of infiltration, a seaborne infiltration. They came in, they actually launched from Pakistan, traveled by boat. They had a massive deception plan to get into India. And Mumbai is, is a mega city. So it's a city of about 17 million at the time that sits on the coast of India. But they launched from Pakistan, made it a night C insertion, which was incredibly impressive into two different loading or landing sites. So there's 10 terrorists, they split up into two boats. They actually camouflage even the boats look like fishing boats and they came in on our fishing slums. So as an urban warfare scholar, just the amount of planning that had to take to get these guys into position in using basically the city, the systems of the city and took advantage of basically open gaps in security.
So you had these giant fishing slums in India, there's giant slammed all over in Mumbai, but we're able to insert and not really cause any attention inserted into areas that wouldn't call police basically if they saw them. So they took advantage of all that were camouflage, look like a tourist. So they're dressed like an American in clothes with the classic European backpacks. They even hadn't had the religious braces, which is just mind blowing. We noted that they basically scouted all this plan and this recon years in advance. They even used an American Pakistani named David Hedley who went to all the sites for, for a long time, took photos, do GPS targeting. I mean, this was such a coordinated plan, which we know is coordinated by Pakistani intelligence services and the Pakistan military train some of these terrorists. I think you heard me say as a kind of a military scholar, what I found up-front and foremost incredible was that the actual 10 terrorists weren't like Delta operators or Navy seals, they were actually like privates to my mind, but they each had a satellite phone in their ear, which was connected back in Pakistan through secure telecommunications. They were basically being remotely controlled. So remotely controlled humans to be able to pull this off because they had less than a year of training and they, but still, that was incredible.
Host: John Scardena (6m 23s):
It's also incredible to think about the amount of intelligence that just an earpiece can provide, because when I'm envisioning this and I don't know, this is like how legit, this was, either had open source or they had maybe a satellite imagery or they had, you know, even the news once, once it broke out, but to be able to give direction, blindly, to people with minimal training and that precise is truly scary to think about. You know, and just the amount. So when I think of like the staging of 9/11 and the 9/11 commission, when that was processed, all the terrorists were here, legitimately quote, unquote, legitimately, they use systems to infiltrate the planes to be able to get on.
They didn't come by sea in the middle of the night and that's really interesting that like the tempo of what Pakistani, you know, these 10 individuals had to do in that short amount of time, it was go kill it and die. Right. I mean, that was essentially the mission.
Guest: John Spencer (7m 35s):
Yeah, absolutely. They were all supposed to be suicide bomber, basically suicide terrorist. And that was part of the, basically proxy warfare, right? We call it proxy warfare where one nation is attacking another, but doesn't want to be known that he's doing it. So the plan for these 10 terrorists where they all would die and basically they all did that, but one who made a big mistake. That's really the only reason we know so much about what we know. Yeah. They did intercept some of the communication that was happening from Pakistan to the terrorist. But the fact that this one guy didn't die is where most of the information we know about why, how it was conducted and everything.
Host: John Scardena (8m 11s):
Yeah. Well, he messed up, but good for us. Good for the good guys.
Guest: John Spencer (8m 17s):
Yeah and it was a first responder basically who literally grabbed his weapon and took around to the chest that allowed another fresher, another policemen to tackle him.
Host: John Scardena (8m 27s):
Yeah. A hero.
Guest: John Spencer (8m 29s):
Exactly.
Host: John Scardena (8m 30s):
So they’re now on the shore there. So you're talking about giving this reference of slum dog millionaire and the makeup of the city. Can you talk about using the systems of the city to get into the city?
Guest: John Spencer (8m 46s):
Yeah. So Mumbai is the fourth most populous city in the world. It is extremely dense and we often say that in urban warfare scholars about density per square mile and in some parts of Mumbai, it's up to 86,000 people per square mile. That's because if you've ever read, there's a book called Planet Islams, which is really talking about India, there's over 43% of the Mumbai city population lives in a slum and that's 9 million people. Some of those slums are a million people. So, Slumdog millionaire, the famous movie is about a slum in Mumbai called Novari.
That has over a million people and all along the coast, if you actually see pictures of Mumbai, you see the entire coast is built. It has slums, fishing, slums and actually most people don't understand, even some of the sounds. Like the bar are built on top of basically the trash heaps that were created by the city. So they'd go out and dump the trash and they built homes on top of the trash eats
Host: John Scardena (9m 48s):
Like that's nuts.
Guest: John Spencer (9m 48s):
Yeah it is nuts. So that's like 9 million people who are outside of your city governance system. Right. So that's how you can use places like that, that aren't secure, right? So it's not the, the favelas of Rio that are very dangerous. We went on a tour of the Dabar supposedly to help people see that Dabar is a good place and they have economy. It didn't give me that feeling, but they basically don't have services extended to them. There's some, but there's no pool. There are police kind of in there, but you could see how it would be easy to move through them and there'd be a lot less. Although this plan had multiple basically fail-safes right. So they split up into teams as soon as they hit the ground. So that way, if one team was discovered and stop, the entire operation was still happening. They also use, not only did it use the flows of the city, right? So these open gaps in security that they can insert, they even knew the timing of the city. So at this time on November 26th, 2008, at this time of night, there was a major cricket game between India and England, which was huge to them. So almost like the entire 17 million person city is glued to a TV watching this game. Somehow the terrorist knew that in time, their night see insertion to that net, it's crazy.
Host: John Scardena (11m 19s):
Wild. Yeah. The amount of detail that went into the planning of this, it sounds from like a preventative side. I know we talk about, there's eight steps to terrorism, usually in the US. But like from a preventative side, it sounds almost impossible with a lack of security forces in a 9 million person population slums to, you know, the camouflage essentially. What I found fascinating, was they didn't want to integrate with the people there. They wanted to look like tourists and I wonder why that is, is it because like, I don't want to deal with the tourists. I'm just going to let them go wherever they want to go, or?
Guest: John Spencer (12m 5s):
Yeah. You want to become the clutter, right? You want to become the noise. Clearly. They're not going to look like they had shortcut haircuts, but they're Pakistani, and they're not gonna look like Indians. You know, a group of male, military age males that don't look like you would be abnormal, but they wanted it to like the clutter of the tourism. And we've all seen backpackers and you know, whether you've been to Europe or whatever. So they've had these giant backpacks, which were normal to civilians, but you couldn't insert with that size of a backpack unless you disguised yourself like the clutter. These were basically backpacks from hell, right, John. So they had AK 47’s, pistols, handmade bombs, a little bit of food to survive, supposedly drugs to the hype them up near. They were literally backpacks from hell that they each had on their backs.
Each person was its own basically killing machine. When they basically executed the planet inserted from a preparedness aspect, I think it is important. So the Indian state did do basically like the 9/11 report and it did only, it came out after I visited, which was interesting. You know, I visited in 2018 and walk the ground of every site, but I didn't have this report. So I got to read this report afterwards and of course the intelligence that was coming from across international organizations, you know, all the spooky organizations was that this attack was getting ready to happen. That and the Mumbai police even visited every one of the sites that was attacked and said, hey, you need to do more into preparation for what we believe is this attack. So they really get you to some of the, I think for me, some of the private and public relationships, right? So, there are five sites attacked, two hotels, a private cafe, a Jewish community center, and a public rail station. Four of those are publicly owned, so you can't make them do anything, but so they visited each site, the police didn't say you need to do more to protect yourself. That's a really tough conversation to have with a public organization who has its own security, but it's a, it's complex in a city like this, especially.
Host: John Scardena (14m 21s):
Did, just for my reference, because I knew that they have a history of, I think suicide bombers, they weren't expecting an insurgency, a takeover essentially, or stopping in the city. Do you know the preparation of each of the sites? Did they actually, I don't think the hotel is basically what I hear from the hotel is that they probably didn't do anything, but did any of their sites take that initiative to say, okay, we're going to put up measures here to try to prevent?
Guest: John Spencer (14m 48s):
That was really frustrating and what we tried to get, so it was tough. We went to each site like the two hotels there money-making organizations. They didn't want to talk about 26, 11. Matter of fact, we were quietly rushed to a different private room and they erased all record of it. One of the cafes, which was the first one hit the Leopold cafe it’s not like that. Right? So they still have bullet holes in the walls, holes in the floor. The two owners are very open about it, they talked about being visited. But like you said, so Mumbai had a history of terrorist attacks and bombings, and it has a major one, like in 2003. And they had one in Bangladesh in India recently. So they were on high alert for bombings. So they had actually changed like at that cafe, the protocol, and were searching every backpack coming through, which is really eerie feeling. You're talking to the owner who, his brother, was at the front when the two terrorists, if we walk through each attack, the two terrorists approach, the cafe, they stopped, they look like tourists with backpacks and they would have been searched entering. They stopped, he saw them on the phones and all of a sudden they pull AK 47’s and enter shooting and then you don't have anything against that. Yeah.
Host: John Scardena (16m 3s):
It's nuts. So, okay. So that was, that was the first event, right? Yeah.
Guest: John Spencer (16m 9s):
So let me walk you through the attacks, right? So they land in two different sides of this. If you think of the city is like an island, kind of like Manhattan on two sides, which is incredible, at night, using GPS. Get the ground, they're supposed to sink their boats and there, these are private. So one of them didn't. So we actually have one of the boats, pictures of the boat, and they break up into four different groups, a group of four and three groups of two, and make their ways to the different attack sites. Most of them get in taxis and they leave bombs in the taxis, homemade bombs that are meant to explode when they get out. They take taxis, just hail taxis to different sites.
There are five sites. There was a cafe, the Leopold cafe, there was two hotels, the Taj Mahal hotel which was just the most famous hotel, basically in India, it's iconic, the Oberoi hotel, there was a Jewish settlement house and there was a train station, which is crazy. I think you remember him talking about this, John is, I didn't understand, you know, there's like 7 million people commute into Mumbai a day. There's only three north and south. So most people live outside of the city of Mumbai, just like most major cities. Right and they travel every morning. If you've ever seen a picture of trains in India, you've probably seen a train of Mumbai, which is thousands of people hanging on to trains. It's insane because 7 million people commute in on three tracks. It’s nuts as you think about infrastructure and stuff like that. But there's one called the CST terminals, like the basically grand central station in Mumbai, that was the base of the fifth site. So these terrorists hit the ground break up in a two man groups, basically getting taxes, leave bombs in taxis, and then go to each one of those attack sites. Again, in the beauty of this, the coordination of this attack at about 9:30 PM on the 26th of November, 2008, they all attack. So what we say is basically this mega city, they attack that once with two main groups. But it literally, if you think about EMS, it felt like the entire city was under attack. That was the chaos that they wanted. So not only the five attacks almost happened simultaneously, but five bombs exploded in other locations in these taxis that are just driving around at the same time.
Host: John Scardena (18m 40s):
Yeah. It's amazing to think of putting on that hat of like social engineering. It doesn't, I mean, this highlights so much. 17 million people, right, live in the city and have 10 people, five different sites. Now all of a sudden between media, between rumor, and between sounds and everything else now a hundred percent of your area feels infiltrated. Now you feel like you're being attacked by an army. I mean, that's really what happened with seven seven attacks. It's what happened with Paris, which is also, I think happened in November. So like there's several events that show that, like, it doesn't really take much to, to shut down major cities, by the way we've built those systems.
I did this in my undergrad, are natural disasters actually happening more often, or is this like the communication technology changed and we're looking at data and that it's just like, yeah, if there's a hurricane in the US but in Japan, they didn’t hear about it then, you know, blue skies. Right. But now because of social media, especially now because of social media, let alone 2008 and because of media, 24 hour news cycle, you're going to shut down major things without a lot of effort, which is kind of scary to think about an implication we have to consider to get on top of very quickly. I mean, how do you decipher between, we should tell everybody and maybe let's figure out how to close this up very quietly so that we don't shut down all of our critical infrastructure. Yeah.
Guest: John Spencer (20m 25s):
It is not easy. You know, even when we're in Los Angeles, we asked, so the Mumbai attacks became almost an ominous around the globe kind of like 9/11 did, is could you prevent it? And even in the US in Congress, there were briefings on, could we prevent a Mumbai style attack in our major cities? That's a tough question. I think we could, and some differences in services from Mumbai, I discovered some of those, and I'm not an expert in Mumbai, but I definitely saw, they have like a colonial British system on purpose. So their natural policemen doesn't have a gun. They're in this attack, there are heroes throwing rocks at terrorists with AK 47’s because they don't have a weapon, but they're the first responder on the ground. So we were talking about preparedness, but then you actually have response and, and how you respond, right. How do you respond in chaos like this? You exercise it, right. So, you know, better than. I do these major exercises so you can exercise your command and control systems and exercise your response systems. I think that's what Mumbai highlighted to this city was, you know, basically the lack of investments in security infrastructure, the lack of they had SLPs for responding to major attacks, but they weren't implemented like they had. Then there was a major gap on basically the echelon of requesting support, but we've seen a tax like this in the past where it was, it's the heroes, that first responders that you want, somebody there immediately with the right equipment to respond.
So here you have, terrorists with AK 47’s and lots of grenades. You have a single man responding with either no weapon, or he has it. He has a handgun and a flak vest that's meant to stop shrapnel and not a bullet and a plastic helmet. All those lessons were learned here and I think from a disaster response, even the EMS control center, there were, they said almost 1,400 phone calls to 911, basically between 9:00 PM and 2:00 AM during this attack. That's basically a call every four minutes, the chaos that they wanted to instill, they beautifully executed.
Host: John Scardena (22m 45s):
Yeah. Unfortunately they took terrorism to it's to its true definition, right? Yeah. When you're talking about that style of tack having here, I think the huge differences, one, I think our intelligence acts, which is really great, but I think Boston bombing. The amount of resources that responded to that, you know, they knew who they were very quickly and they were going door to door. I mean, there was such a huge force to try to eliminate the threat there, but I think it could do this in a second. It took forever to get just resources in play. Who's doing it and what resources do you use? And you know, who’s in control of that here? We had everything from, you know, this house will happen with the Navy yard shooting. I talk about that cause I was, let's just say intimately involved in that response and recovery to after action as well. Our biggest problem is that because it was in the national capital region, you had everyone responding, you had local state, federal, you had private, you had people who had the badge on, had the gear on and you had off duty. I mean, literally everyone was there and they were all armed to the teeth. Unfortunately with Navy yard, the big lesson learned is, I don't know if you've studied that, that the security officer re-holstered his weapon as the most. So just for the audience sake. So there was a security guard with a weapon. He hears what he thinks might be shooting. You can see him on the camera, takes his gun out. He hears the sound stopped because in a building, it sounds very different than outside. So he doesn't know if it's shooting or not clearly. He re holsters his weapon, and that's right. When the active shooter came around and killed him, which is a big training opportunity, unfortunately. But going back to Mumbai, can you give us now the, so we know that the locations, we know that they were getting intelligence through earpieces. We know that they weren't very well-trained, but there was like a seal style training, but it did take forever to, to get things in place. So can you talk about that timeline there for a second? How many hours was it before? Can we actually start backwards from star deficient finish? How many hours was it? And then in the middle of that, what was the chaos that they were doing?
Guest: John Spencer (25m 15s):
Yeah, so, you know, the five sites, Leopold cafe was a site of a cafe. They basically just shot it up, killed 10 people on the spot and then continued moving to our main target, which was a Taj Mahal. You had the train station, the main, basically Grand Central Station in Mumbai, the Taj Mahal hotel, which is the iconic hotel of India basically. You had this Oberoi hotel and then you have the Jewish center. You didn't have this clarity yet at the time, right? So you just think is a massive attack. So there is a response to all these sites. There are heroes responding to all of them. There is actually a railway police at the railway, throwing chairs at the terrorist just trying to survive. 58 people were killed in basically the 90 minutes they attack. But the plan of the terrorist was basically the besieged, these sites. They wanted like terrorism, they want an international recognition of the attack. Unfortunately they got that. As you talked about within hours within three hours, there's not a security perimeter around these sites, but there is a media perimeter because everybody knows where the attacks are happening now. Especially in the hotels so the two hotels to Taj and the Oberoi, they entered, they shot the place up. Now they're basically holding ground, which was not unusual for any terrorist attack at the time, rather than just attacking them, run their holding ground.
Basically, especially in the hotels, going door to door, which is a kind of a terrorism lesson learned, they're just knocking on doors and hoping that the guests opened and then they, many of them did and they're just killing them as they opened the doors. It's nuts, but so their response is right? So three hours, you basically, you just starting to have the sites identified in the explosions that have happened. You've narrowed down the sites and you have, the commander is actually out in the field and you got a lot of criticism for that. The overall commander is trying to, which I think we were talking about in Los Angeles was, you're trying to kind of understand in disaster response about a common communication system, but maintaining a common operating picture. You'll basically, we say in the military is everybody understands the ground was, was not done in Mumbai because there was so much confusion even to the locations. But some of these locations, like the Taj Mahal, about getting the floor plans and all that caused a lot of first responders to die because it was so complex inside the hotel. We stayed there, it is a labyrinth of old and new structures and hidden everything. So we talked about, so basically the India, once they recognize where the sites are and recognize this is a major terrorist attack there, the command on the ground tells everybody who's in the perimeters to hold what they have basically set up a perimeter around them.
Guest: John Spencer (28m 16s):
And now you have a siege and they are waiting for a national level, forced to respond. It's called the national security group or the, basically the black hats basically think of a Delta force to respond to this terrorist attack. Unfortunately, that that group was in new Delhi on a three hour flight away. Plus we talk about authorizations for a national response like this. They couldn't get everybody thought they were waiting for these forces to come. And there's also, there's a Marine. What they called the Marcos, basically the Navy seals, the Indian Marines, a couple blocks away. They could have jogged to these sites that also needed permission from the federal government to respond to the terrorist attacks.
You had Indian army, Navy, I mean, it was crazy. So three hours after the initial attack, these terrorists are going inside and just killing, people are dying. You have, unfortunately the security force on the outside waiting for a national response. So the black hats and the NSG are trying to make their way to Mumbai. They don't get there until zero eight the next morning. That's nice. Yeah. They only got there by literally taking a civilian aircraft, getting there, and then they couldn't get from the air field to these sites. Then once they, once actually get there, it takes a while to plan their attack. Especially at the Jewish settlement, they try to take a helicopter into the top. They get lit up. I mean, these are, I talk about this, how to eliminate a terrorist that's embedded in some dense, urban train, like this concrete, there are a lot of, and some heroes who almost disobeyed orders and still tried to enter in the terrorist in the basically their 9/11 commission report talk about how the terrorists were prepared for that. As soon as they entered they moved to high ground and the hotels did that for them, they moved to high ground so that anybody who entered through any interest that they knew about would just get a rain about AK 47 and grenades on them. So the tactics they use were crazy. The one that we didn't talk about, which I think is important about, especially for disaster preparedness, so that the two guys who attack the train station. So they entered this train station, which I went to at 9:30, 10 o'clock at night. I'm like, why would you attack a train station at night? And just not understanding the traffic of Mumbai that's rush hour, that's everybody trying to leave. So it was, it was like nine o'clock in the morning for me in New York city. It was crazy at that time. So they go ahead.
Host: John Scardena (31m 12s):
Really blown away actually by that, because I lived in Tokyo a couple of times, and at night it is just as packed. And you said 50 people died right at the train station? 58. Yeah. That I would have actually thought it would have been a lot more if you can cripple it, if you can, if you went into like Shibuya, or if you went into one of these major train stations during a rush hour moment, I mean, that's as crazy as this sounds. I'm glad more people didn't die. I mean, packed. Right. So.
Guest: John Spencer (31m 45s):
Yeah, me too. I mean, you got to think of food. You've got, you don’t have them trained again these are privates in my mind. So they're spraying and praying with their AK 47. So I don't have the numbers of wounded. I had the number of dead. Got it. So yeah, a lot of people want it, but they shoot it, shoot the place up for 90 minutes and they basically go off script. We don't, we're not exactly sure, but they leave the train station and then basically go on a wild rampage. They try to enter a hospital, which is amazing and well, a big lesson learned is this hospital heard about the attack happening nearby. They went into security protocol and locked it all down, locked Every door, locked every patient in the room and then the terrorist tried to get in. They couldn't. So they saved hundreds of lives by doing that.
Host: John Scardena (32m 29s):
That's a good call-out, you know, good for trading of like you what's your coop essentially when something like this happen.
Guest: John Spencer (32m 36s):
The only reason I mentioned that they go on this rampage is that one of the security personnel is a chief of the antiterrorism squad. It was really important in this story is headed to one of the sites, right? Because we're just responding. He's driving to the train station, doesn't notice the terrorist, I've left the train station in his car, just they ambush his car and they kill the head of the anti-terrorism just by a fluke of random, bad luck. But that message goes across the radio, John. And this is, you know, we do this in the military. Like we don't send names across the radio when people die, we send, we encrypt the names, but his name as dead, dead had a huge impact across all of Mumbai’s security forces that were at each one of these sites. It had a huge impact on morale that he was dead.
Host: John Scardena (33m 29s):
Yeah. I mean the event is now winding up to be not just international recognition, but so many call-outs of, you know, psychological warfare, urban warfare, coop planning. I mean, there's a lot of lessons learned here. You know, you're talking about the hotel structure, typically, interestingly enough, we want floor pans to be very complex because that usually saves lives. But when it's taken over that, now it's reversed. Now you have a lot and you have to clear. So like, if people haven't done like active shooter or active assailant incidents, but the clearing of buildings takes forever because you want to go room by room and you're passing over people who are wounded. You have to, because you don't know how many threats are left. So if you have a really complex system, that's also going to take forever just in itself. One thing I thought was really interesting, what you're talking about, how they were told, quote, unquote, these privates for told to take the beds, right. And put them against the windows to light them on fire, to make it even look even worse. Again, psychological warfare.
Guest: John Spencer (34m 49s):
Absolutely. I mean, do you think, what is the purpose of these attacks? They're meant to die in place, but they wanted that international media attention and they got it. They get told that the two of four guys inside the Taj Mahal multiple times, have you started your fires and they hadn't. So they kept getting told to start fires, but taking the mattresses and put them up against the windows and light them. Eventually they do. So as an EMS guy, not only are you fighting active shooters, but now you're fighting a massive fire with everybody's trapped inside their rooms. It's just a nightmare scenario, but they got the image that they wanted, which was basically the Taj Mahal, this iconic, I mean, almost like the world trade centers burning.
Host: John Scardena (35m 31s):
Yeah. So just for the sake of time, we're definitely going to have you come back on and probably dive into this a bit, but we're looking at this situation here. I don't know I've compared it to several events actually for maybe the US perspective that people are understanding those events 9/11, Boston bobbing, but also internationally, you know, 7/7 in Paris and Mumbai is a, I still remember what had happened actually. And just being like confused of like, wait, is this a military takeover? I still remember the images of the Taj Mahal? And I'm like, wait, how is this working? At the time as a, you know, younger guy, I was like, wait, is that a mall? I actually thought it was a mall, not the Taj Mahal, which is one of the stupidest things in the world. But I'm now looking at it from a planning prevention, response perspectives. So in terms of lessons learned, you've already started to highlight several of the lessons learned. Can you go through and say, okay, if I'm talking to an individual who's on this, on this podcast, listening to this podcast and it's their job to do preventative of terrorist attacks, and they're working with the DOD and they're working with all these other groups who response organizations, we even have members of the FBI listening to this podcast. So if you're gonna give them an outbrief saying, you need to do X, Y, and Z in preparation for these kinds of style of attacks, especially when it's so well coordinated, especially when you have intelligence being fed constantly, especially when you know, these individuals are basically giving seal level training and, or, you know, communications surrounding, what can we do to limit the loss of life and you know, how do we protect our systems essentially?
Guest: John Spencer (37m 27s):
Oh, that's not a hard question. I'll drop.
Host: John Scardena (37m 30s):
It was a long winded one too. So that's good.
Guest: John Spencer (37m 32s):
But it's like, look, I'm not, I'm not an expert in security magazines, but I've studied this attack in detail. I think it was important that we visited 10 years later, really in the same locations. Could this happen again in the same city, unfortunately, based on what we saw it could. Some of that's based on, on echelons above us, basically national and city level investments in infrastructure investments in EMS. So one of the ways you prevent this, that one is the Intel sharing aspect of it and I think that was happening. Was it happening at the level that it should have, but the Intel was being pushed down in this case. It was not of course being action, right? Cause you can't action every bit of intelligence, but what you can do, and I think is important is layered security aspects, right? So you can't militarize your security and escorts that public versus private via the public. These hotels don't want an image of a security state, but we have figured out ways to do basically hidden security aspects. But this started, this started out in blue water in the Navy. And how did they get through the Navy, the coast guard in the shore police? Most of that was because it was under investments, right? Like 20 boats out there that weren't there at the time, you have good heroes that are hiring fishing boats to do patrols because they don't have gas for their own boats. And go ahead. That's ridiculous. Yeah, it is. It’s still a fact today. So the coming, you have all the solutions, right? The commission and the investments you're going to do to change this, you know, that you're supposed to buy more boats, but they don't have the gas for them. You're supposed to buy helicopters to get people, right. So you're not going to respond in New York city over the ground. Right? So either you have people on motorcycles or they do, or do you have air assets that can move your immediate response personnel quickly in a mega city like this, you're not going to drive there. That was the lesson so that you need helicopters. Oh yeah. But you need to invest in the money. It's going to take, to keep them maintain and to keep them gassed and ready to go. Cities decide well, that's a risk I'm going to take, I'm not going to invest in that. This is what we saw happening to the layered security system. Right. We had this in the United States and I really looked at the Las Vegas shootings, the shooter. We had, you know, a hero with a gun on him within a minute. Not, this was a three-day siege. There are many reasons for it, but I'm against you. You have to invest in training all the way down to the individual man on the street. Right. This is what we saw, even if you had a gun in Mumbai, you're a policeman with a gun you hadn't fired in two years. They didn't have ammo. Ease, no ammo, no training. No. Yeah. So the list is long, right? And I'm not criticizing, like I said, heroes in this event, all across the board, this is about investing in your layered security systems. Right. But if you have to understand the culture, right. From pacifism, your Buddhism, all those aspects, you had to have this layer of response. So even if you had the layer preparedness, you had to have your exercises in place on who's going to respond immediately. In lesson learned here is you can't wait, right? Because people are dying by the minute. People will have to even endorse disorganized fashion, have to respond, right? So we see that first respond your first active shooters across the world, right? Your school policemen. You have to move forward and close the distance and engage the enemy. Even if it's just to know where he's at. Right. That, that was another huge aspect of this. I think they learned that, but they created basically a Nash, basically that NSG, that black hats, they created one in Mumbai and they have first response teams, the recon one, things like that, that will respond faster. I still arguably think it won't be enough if this happened again, but it's all about how much you care to invest in your EMS.
Host: John Scardena (41m 42s):
There's several highlights there in my world, the emergency management world, we call that a business impact analysis where we go through and we say, what's the risk versus reward. The couple of examples I give people is that we have, the technology. We can put parachutes on planes on commercial planes, but we don't because the cost of maintaining parachutes and gas and weight and all that stuff, they basically unfortunately looked at it and said, you know, the rarity of a plane going down versus putting a parachute on every plane. It's not, it doesn't equal out in terms of financial perspective. The really brutal side of emergency management of, you only have so many resources, where can you put those resources you don’t have. People sometimes forget we don't have unlimited resource and so resources, personnel, resources, maintenance, resources, cost. So that’s a factor, I will say, in the US some of the things that you're highlighting, thankfully we already have in place. The fact that the black hats are like, oh, maybe we should have a group here in the fourth, largest city, or one of the top four largest cities in the world. Maybe that's a good idea as that's kind of nuts that that even had to happen. I like how you you've noted. I've been hearing you throughout this conversation, you've called every single person who's tried to do something, a hero. I agree with that. I agree with that a hundred percent, anytime somebody puts themselves in danger, whether they're trained, they're not trained, is a big deal. You're talking about rocks being thrown, going back to the Navy yard shooting. A person saved 30 people with a blow horn. When an active shooter came into a stairwell and pointed off pointed a shotgun, which is craziest shotgun versus a blow horn. The guy throws a blow horn and he misfires and then runs away. And there's 30 people behind them unarmed. And so doing something is always better than doing nothing, creating your own version of chaos.
The difference between an insurgency when they have their ear pieces in a typically an active shooter, active shooter is psychologically broken and they want body count. We have found more than one, which is absolutely disgusting that hey have a euphoric experience that, you know, bodily fluid, whatever they get excited. They don't want confrontation, this was very different. They were okay with confrontation. They were prepared for conversation, they were constantly being fed information to be able to not become psychologically broken. Right? So you have two totally different aspects of active shooter versus terrorists. This is why sometimes FBI designates active shooters and terrorists differently, even though they kind of have the same goal, sometimes that notoriety of what they've done. The last point that you're really making very strong here is training. I don't care where people stand on the issue of how armed security forces are Mumbai attack is a pretty obvious answer of maybe where you should fall. But training training, training, training means everything and the resources of training our company, Doberman, pushes training very hard. We have the Readiness Lab, which has these podcasts, which allow people to think about it. But we also go to the urban search and rescue trainings and we go, and we do trainings for first responders. We do trainings all over the place because, you need to understand a coordinated response in this stuff. Really great call-outs, so I'm going to leave you with the last word, talking about your perspective of Mumbai, and also just because I'm a fan of what you're doing and the work that you've done, if you can just happy to give a pitch, I'll even put this in the notes for the Urban Warfare Project podcast. So tell us about Mumbai and tell us about your podcast.
Guest: John Spencer (45m 55s):
Yeah. So Mumbai again, a fascinating study, not just because of what happened and actually walking the ground, and which is amazing. I tell everybody I had the dream job to do that because I did envision the most dystopian mega city of just complex, like downtown mega city aspect. That's actually, when you walk the ground, now, the feeling that I got with each site was actually pretty open. So that was something different that you just don't get unless you are. I have a dream job that I get to study this stuff and get paid to be a student. Right. I agree with you on training, you have a job, everybody and especially, even in the military, we value so strongly leaders and training that you're basically a student of life and you're always studying or training in preparations while you're doing your job. We saw that, especially you and I did in Los Angeles with this SWAT team and their training schedule was there either on an operation or they're training? I can't value that. So my podcast is just that it's my studying of the full spectrum of operations from the disaster repair, you know, disaster response to, you know, high intensity warfare. So I have X other experts come onto my show and I think that the whole world, we all have to continue to learn.
Host: John Scardena (47m 17s):
Yeah, good call out it. This is obviously a, a good moment to note that emergency manager dealing with 90% of what I deal with is natural disaster, hurricanes taking out critical infrastructure and populations, 10% doing with terrorists and the really, really big stuff of a nuke one-off in a city, whatever. But this is where the worlds collide. If you have an insurgency or you have, you know, a war happen, a good example of world war II, who's doing the recovery more to well DOD, but the DOD has really taken on an emergency management function of restoring critical infrastructure. So there's so much emergency managers can learn from historical events, whether it's Mumbai attack or otherwise, you know, war events. This is a, again, a huge fan of the work you've done and the Urban Warfare Project podcast definitely check it out if you're one of our audience members and we want you back on some time a job, because lack of time, oh my gosh. I just want to talk about this for like the next four hours. So just for everyone listening to the show, I already told you about the podcast, we'll put it in the show notes. If you have questions for John, you can reach out to him through our social media channels. We'll tag him in all of our stuff. You can also start listening to his podcast, which I'm sure he has contact information there. If you don't want to ask it to the general population, which you should, because there's going to be a lot of really good response there. But if it's an individual request, you can always send us an email at at info@Dobermanemg.com. We'll send it over to John and we want you back on every week. So, John, thanks again for coming on and for the audience, we'll see you again.
#84 Happy Thanksgiving! FEMA Administrator Brock Long Episode
Happy Thanksgiving! EM Speaks Webinar interviewed Pete Gaynor and Craig Fugate this week in NYC, so we’re highlighting Brock Long’s show to provide you additional content.
On our typical day of recording, we spent our time in New York City, supporting another webinar on The Readiness Lab- EM Speaks. They interviewed Pete Gaynor and Craig Fugate. We’re adding Brock Long to the conversation for a 3 dose FEMA Admin experience. Happy Thanksgiving!
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1m 41s):
Welcome back to the show, everybody, im your hosts, John Scardena. So when we typically record, we were actually in New York City for the EM weekly. Technically the EMS speaks webinar hosted by EM weekly, Todd Devo. You know, one of our sister shows part of the Readiness Lab. You make sure you check that out, but we were out there supporting that event where Craig Fugate and Pete Gainer, former FEMA Administrators were giving their perspectives. You should make sure you look that up. It's a really great live webinar that happened that I'm sure was recorded on EM weekly. So again, check out that show, but because we were out there, we didn't have an opportunity to record a Thanksgiving week. So we're going to pull in another few, my administrator Brock Long and pull up his content from about what was it, 9, 10 months ago where you guys can check it out. It's really good. So between Craig Fugate, Pete Gainer, and Brock Long, you should have a pretty good perspective of what a few administrators have been thinking about at least from a leadership perspective and the agency perspective. I think it will be really good content for you guys. We hope you have a really good Thanksgiving. We'll see you on Friday. It's a huge episode. We're going to be talking about the Mumbai terrorist attacks because it's the 13 year anniversary with the West Point subject matter expert, who actually went there. Really great show coming up, but in the meantime, check out the show by Brock Long. We'll see on Friday Brock, welcome to the show.
Guest: Brock Long (3m 13s):
Before we go any further, you got to send me one of those t-shirts.
Host: John Scardena (3m 17s):
Done, extra large done. I'll send you two and a hat. All right. So with the Disaster Tough Podcasts, we've had just before we get into our immediate conversation, we just want to say thank you to everybody on LinkedIn, on Facebook, and our Instagram page Disaster, Tough Podcast for submitting questions. We've had so many questions. I think I kind of like 50 questions in the first day or so and tons of comments. So just thanks again for everybody who reached out all levels of the spectrum, whether you're not an emergency management, clearly you haven't basic questions, which is great, or you've been in the field for awhile and you have really specific questions for Brock. So thank you for everybody submitting a question and for Brock taking the initiative for even answering some of those questions ahead of time. So thank you so much Brock for doing that. So FEMA administrator live in the dream there, and now you're with Haggerty. So let's talk about some of your career experiences because I was actually talking to Todd Devo with the EM weekly. So if you're not listening to Todd, make sure you listen to him guys, but he was talking about how you're a true emergency manager because you were an emergency manager from day one. So can you kind of give us just a little bit of a background, especially for those who, when they hear administrator, you know, they don't know what that is right ahead of FEMA. What does that mean? So can you kind of give us your career path and what led you to where you're at now?
Guest: Brock Long (4m 41s):
Man, I have an amazing career and a quick one too. It's pretty interesting. So I went to Appalachian State University in North Carolina, and as I was finishing up graduate school, I heard one of my classmates do a paper on reforming FEMA as a result of hurricane Andrew. The gentleman at the time had, had done an internship in Wilmington, North Carolina, new Hanover county, along the coast. I was like, hey, you know, that sounds really interesting, think you could allow me that internship? So that's how I stumbled into emergency management, went to Wilmington and then physically wrote letters to state emergency management agencies and states. I thought I wanted to live in Colorado, or Georgia. One of the Virgin islands and Jordan called me back and they said, hey, we're starting.
We've got a big problem down here. We ranked number one in most violent deaths in schools and we're starting the school safety unit. We want you to come in and teach teachers how to spot weapons on kids, you know, mitigation in schools, school safety mitigation. So that was the first job I had. Funny enough, on the day I moved everything into my apartment, I moved into a category one storm surge, and then had to rush back to Atlanta because hurricane Floyd was threatening the door and it goes, and it was one of the largest evacuations in history. So I often joke that every time I changed jobs, something catastrophic happened. So, I mean, literally I interviewed with FEMA region four on the morning of 9/11, became hurricane program manager in 2004 and Florida got hit with six, you know, four major hurricanes in six weeks. In 2005, everybody, you know Katrina hit. Then literally when I became the director of Alabama emergency management agency, I got Deep Water Horizon, you know, the BPD Horizon oil spill. Then of course, you know, when we go to FEMA, we had every disaster. I mean, we even had a volcano and a hurricane at the same time, and everything else that took place.
Somebody actually commented that on linked or no, it was Instagram, Cynthia. So shout out to Cynthia. She goes, you toured all regions in 2017 and we had the most disasters, the most impactful disasters in the history of FEMA. So maybe he shouldn't tour, but my thought process on emergency management and this is going to get into like definitely personal beliefs here for a second. But you know, sometimes things are organized in a way where the most prepared person in the room gets hit by the hardest disasters. So it's interesting that you've had this career where every single time you stepped into a new role, big things happened, and maybe it's because he were supposed to be there and help out, you know, what was it? Every two or three days, every four days in FEMA, you had a new disaster or pop-up. So just talk about the complexities and I mean, just never ending breaks, right? So it's this just amazing.
Guest: Brock Long (7m 43s):
Coming into an agency where you have 21,000 employees, you know, you cover half the globe, do a lot of people don't realize you had Tinian and sack pan all the way to the burden on half the globe. So you're watching all over the place. You know, if you look at the number of disaster dollars that are going to go out as a result of this 2017 and 18 to two years, I was in office. It's more than the nine previous female administrators before me combined. What that tells me is a couple of things. One, our industry, our profession, the business model is broken, the enterprise is broken. I had to concentrate on stopping the hemorrhaging. I really believe that the post-Katrina emergency management reform set them up for failure. It turned us into my one-on-one when we're not going to fell in logistics and I get it. Failure logistics cost you your job. We don't fire anybody for a mitigation plan, by the way, we only fire you for failed in logistics. So there was a lot of work to fix that and make sure that we were able to respond to the biggest event. Well, the problem was that we were sending internal staff and that's not a capability for the Rhonda mail, small disasters. When I inherited the agency, we had a large portion of our deployable staff out in the field before Harvey hit. So you don't see these things and people don't tell you these things, John. When you walk in an office and then two months after being confirmed, Harvey Irma, Maria hits the worst California wildfire at the time. But mixed into that, I think over the two years, it was over 220 different wildfires and declared events. So something every three days, like you said, John, I mean, you got to the point where even the smallest disasters, you really didn't have time to pay attention to you. You just were basically cutting a check to those communities while you were forced on massive multi-billion dollar events.
Host: John Scardena (9m 33s):
So that makes me think of the USA ID model where they call it a, a gift well card where they do, I think it's 50,000, it's pretty small. But what do you think about the idea of switching over to that kind of model where if it's under a certain threshold, you say, okay, we're just going to write you a check to the state and you take care of it where we can really pull back and work on that strategic level or the true national security incidents.
Guest: Brock Long (10m 2s):
Yeah. So we started to looking at analysis. It was like, why are we deploying all these people in the field for small disasters? Look, I have to be careful, a disaster is catastrophic. The definition of a catastrophic disaster is in the eye of the beholder. If you are a homeowner and you are uninsured and lost everything that's catastrophic. But when you sit in the FEMA administrator seat and you start looking at the data and you realize that 50% of the disasters that you declare a less than seven and a half million dollars, we've got to move past that. That's where you cut a check. Most of the work is reimbursing the loss of public infrastructure that was uninsured, which is another moral hazard. We need to come back to John. Then if you start looking at doing an even deeper dive, 80% of the disasters that FEMA declares is less than $41 million at the time I was in office. So it got to the point where we were saying, how do we not send a ton of staff down to run the disaster on behalf of the local and state government? How do we get the grants or the influence of state and local governments to bring up their capability, to manage the $41 million in less disaster so that we can concentrate on the big ones, you know, and FEMA was spending more money on overhead for the smaller disasters. Then we were putting out grant dollars to fix the problem. That's a bad business model that is not sustainable. I really believe John, that if a FEMA was a car engine, we've been red lining as soon as Harvey hit, right? We've never really recovered the static patterns in some of you guys, I mean, you were, I'm out west. You know, some of these FCO’s, hadn't been home since 2017 and that's not doable either. So we have to rethink how we manage disasters in the future. I believe there's a correct formula for that. It's not a bigger FEMA man. We tried bigger FEMA after Andrew in 92 after Katrina. You know, we're going to continue to pile more on FEMA's plate on the non Stafford Disaster Act category because the public health arena needs to be reformed, not FEMA bigger. Adding more to FEMA is not the answer. Adding more to FEMA's plate right now is going to really penalize the agency on being able to respond to the natural disaster world. You know?
Host: John Scardena (12m 16s):
Yeah. You just said so many things that I want to touch on, man. That was an incredible statement that is, about red lining, for sure. My thought process is from the guy who worked in DC and also worked out in the field and seeing the differences there, you're right, every disaster at the local level is catastrophic. When you lose your home and you don't have insurance, even if you do have insurance, I don't want to lose my home. Right. So this thought process of disaster tough behind me came from, I'm a big words guy lately, and resiliency has its place. Because you do want to bounce back if something happens, but at the same time, I don't want to have a disaster. How do you become a little bit tougher? What I have found is mitigation is everything. If you can mitigate disaster, if it's not impacting people or infrastructure, then you're way ahead of the game and rewarding people who want to do that. You know, we should really look at those complexities there because why are we not rewarding people for mitigating? Why are we stretching these sources to the max?
Guest: Brock Long (13m 30s):
Yeah, John, well, first of all, the whole disaster declaration process, as I said, needs to be reconfigured and is a moral hazard. We reward communities largely and FEMA's most expensive expenditure over time is fixing uninsured, public buildings and the contents within them. Okay. If you want to reduce disaster costs, then you start to force these communities. These self-insured communities to get reinsurance or insurance on their public facilities, because you're the taxpayer paying for them not to put insurance in place, which is the first line of defense, not only for governments, but also for you, John, a citizen that owns a home or a business. Because of that, FEMA's disaster dollars are exponentially increasing and we're picking, we're throwing tons of taxpayer dollars, three worth for that, instead of just saying, well, the disaster is so big. We should raise the normal disaster cost share from 75/25 cents, FEMA pay's 75%, the local and state governments pay 25%. We should raise it to 90/10 because the disaster is so big. What if we built incentives in to where we only lower the disaster costs to 80 or 90/10 or a hundred percent because that community has demonstrated over a three to five-year period, real money into mitigating their infrastructure, implementing land use planning, implementing proper building codes and residential codes. Then we start to reduce the cost share over time. What you do is is that you make a disaster declaration more expensive than actually having insurance in place and mitigation in place so that you start to force that a little bit.
Right now I just, I believe it. It's not only mitigation John. Is what are we training citizens to do and be prepared? Is a be ready campaign working? In my opinion, that's not, you know, I love the people that are behind it and they work truly hard inside FEMA to do this, but come on. What are the tangible skills John that are needed? When's the last time you've done CPR? If you haven't done CPR in the last three years, what you know is dated. Unfortunately Americans look around at somebody else to know CPR. When's the last time you sat down with a financial advisor, John, to understand how to learn, how to retire and become financially resilient. Only 1% of Americans meet with a financial advisor every year. I would rather you take your money instead of buying a supply kit for three to five days, I would rather you take that money and go sit down with a financial adviser and learn financial resilience and insurance and insurance.
Host: John Scardena (16m 2s):
I had this video that we made, I don't know, maybe a year ago now, just to help people like general public, especially when they were, when COVID was starting up. Geez, a year ago now. Yeah. I said, the number one thing you do in a disaster when you're hit by disaster, personally is not to tell Facebook, it is to call your insurance company. Like just understanding how these systems work and getting on these lists so that you can recover faster. The whole idea is to get back to normal, as fast as humanly possible. You're talking about building codes. I spent several years in Japan, especially impacted by the 2011 earthquake tsunami, Fukushima disaster. I look at their building codes in Japan and the earthquake, the 9.0 earthquake wasn't a disaster, it was a tsunami. And why is that building codes? Why is an Arizona, they're starting to put commercial sprinklers on new residential buildings, wildfires, why are these things not standard across the United States to help resiliency reduce the level of impact to people?
Guest: Brock Long (17m 10s):
Why do appraisers in this country evaluate your home the same as another person's home? Despite the fact that you've dumped, you've elevated it properly, you've put, you know, hurricane resistant glass in it, you've done the mitigation, you put a generator in there, but yet we're only going to appraise your home based on location and square footage and the number of veterans. In some cases, it's not just a government, I'm not a believer in government solutions. We can get into the vaccine on the that. We need to be using a normal logistical private sector, supply chains to get this vaccine in the arms of Americans, not a hundred percent government solution. So when you look at this even down to the mitigation, if you want to create change, then you got to change the narrative of, hey realtors.
Guest: Brock Long (17m 58s):
You know, any house can flood, despite whether the fact you're in a flood zone or not. So encourage it, hey, appraisal, you know, the appraiser industry, I mean, come on, step up and start mitigating these, you know. How does it or mitigate it are more valuable than the ones that aren't and reward the people when they sell their home, you know, have that fact, and so it's not as what can seem to do. But on that, I went to Congress, I think, eight times to testify and I had numerous meetings behind the scenes to create the dialogue behind the DRRA, and eventually the break program was started to really focus on pre-disaster mitigation. Now as a result, I think you've already seen the bottom industry coming in and boasting about 10 billion, being available for climate adaptation and different things. Well, that's because of the DRRA and the Brick funding was made available. But he can't just be that famous solution. It has to be down to the city county manager and the realtor at the grassroots level, protecting their community and their book of business.
Host: John Scardena (19m 1s):
Yeah. There's the Pomo Indians here in California, they actually just reached out to me a couple of weeks ago about creating a public safety, power shutoff plan. That comes out of that Brick Grant. So these communities are now are starting to look at these, these reservations or even communities that on their, what their own dollars say might have not been able to do something. But now with grants, they are able to actually look at problems and overcome those problems. I thought that was great that they were being proactive. They sought out the grant, they're trying to find a vendor. Maybe it's me, maybe it's somebody else, but they're trying to get these things in place for themselves so that they're, they are able to look at their vulnerable populations, say, okay, we're going to take care of you. That that's everything. I created a hazard vulnerability assessment for our home. You know, I did planning and then I did ops and then I went into GIS, which is the most bizarre career path you could possibly imagine. But I really learned to like the purpose of analytics. So when we went to buy our home, I looked at 36 natural and man-made disasters that could happen to our home. I looked at critical infrastructure. I looked at all these different things and we just had a major windstorm in here in California. 90% of our neighborhood was without power for three or four days. 10% of the neighborhood had power because we were on a different grid. Thankfully, my wife, it was like a proud moment. We were sitting there with the lights on. She goes, I'm so glad four years ago, you gave that document to our realtor and say, here's what we'll live. This is where we won't live based off of all these different parameters. It wasn't doomsday prepper stuff. It was just like, oh, power lines under the ground, or being on the same grid as a hospital, or here's a flood plain. We don't want to live even close to a flood plain. And so just like putting these imprint, these parameters in place, and quite frankly, that stuff should be standard. Hazard vulnerability assessment for realtors should be standard.
Guest: Brock Long (21m 3s):
You know, you may recall, I can't remember if you were with FEMA during the front, you know, the shutdown and everything else. One of the biggest problems that we have that is increasing the impact of disasters, is asset poverty, not income, poverty of where I don't make enough money to make ends meet, but asset poverty, where you may make six figures, but you're so highly leveraged because you drive the right car and you live in the right house. Then you cut back on insurance and you're living paycheck to paycheck, even though you make a ton of money. You know, the bottom line is that we see that is killing FEMA. I think FEMA has got to partner with the department of education. And it's great that we put an emphasis on math and science and our education we're arena, but we've got to go back and teach the fundamentals of how money works and how insurance works and just tangible life skills, not only in the department of energy, but providing those skills, access to those skills in depressed neighborhoods or not really depressed neighbor, all neighborhoods across America, because everybody is impacted. It's something that we saw take place. I think that FEMA, when you look at the health of the community, we've got to start looking at data differently. If you can see the comprehensive credit score of the community that I live in, what I often want to know is, is that comprehensive credit score going down over a five-year period, or is it going up? If it's going down, then you have more Homeland security problems. You have less sales tax and income tax revenue, which means greater demand or government service with less means to pay for it. You're going to have food deserts. You're going to have more likelihood of, you know, less ownership and a community, more civil to services, whatever it may be. So if we recognize that, then how do we get that going into the next level direction of going back up and it's through, you know, grassroots community outreach and education and access to the education on how insurance and finances work.
I mean, don't be dependent on the government for your retirement, John. I mean, he'll sit down with, you know, an advisor, which is a free meeting and learn how to do it, and that's where I think we've lost that. We've lost the tangible skills of letting the homeowner, letting you the citizen, whether it's an active shooter of or hurricane, you are the true first responders. If you're looking around waiting for, let's just say the police or FEMA to bail you out after disaster, you're way behind. If you look at some of the FBI statistics, like on active shooter events, over half these events are going to begin and end before police even arrived. So are you training your business? You know, the staff of your business are you training the staff of your government office on what actions to take, to try to reduce the impact of those types of events.
It's the same. We see it time and time again. If you look at like what we saw in harvest 80% of the households that flooded were, you know, not insured who did insure their homes, got about an average of $117,000 to recover, versus those who weren't got about three to $6,000 from FEMA to recover. That's the Testament. Insurance is the first line of defense. Any house can flood and you got to make insurance a priority in your budget.
Host: John Scardena (24m 19s):
I remember going out into the field and hurricane Harvey. I have a funny story where you, you have a ton of credit and I've been giving you credit. And I haven't, I've never even told you this story. So I'm about to tell you a cool story, but I was out in the field and there was a community where I was serving these homes for data collection. They lived next to the city dump. We're talking like fence line, city dump, and it was breaking my heart, you know, and you see these people who have nothing, and they had nothing before the disaster, and you're looking at the properties and you don't know if there was a storm that caused the damage or if it was like that beforehand. We have a problem here, where we need to address how to help people out, truly recover, not getting back to normal because it's getting back to normal. It just makes you just as vulnerable. That drives me nuts, to be honest about FEMA, get returned to normal. You're just as vulnerable as you were, if you returned to exactly as it was. If it's a hurricane or a natural disaster, it's predictable. It's going to happen there again, it's a weather. I mean, it's not, it's not like a black Swan event. So we have to do much, much better in our field about incentivizing and encouraging people at any level of the property or wealth spectrum to if they are impacted by disaster, to make sure that they're not impacted by disaster. Again, I want to tell you this story because it's kinda funny. I like to say I cheated is kind of funny. So in hurricane Harvey, you send out a memo saying, be innovative. We're stretched to the max. We have three hurricanes, all this stuff is happening. Be innovative. FCO took that and sent it out to the unit leaders across the team and said, if you have an innovative solution that will help do it and, you know, ethical and all those, all those things. So I went over to legal and I said, I want a drone. And they're like, what? I'm like, I want a drone. I can get data so much faster with so much less resources. Everybody, I get a thousand Cessna’s up in the air who take a half a million photos and they all suck. We were manually going through those. Those are terrible. We can, we can do better as satellites are not getting the images that we need. And so legal helped me to, to navigate that system. We got drone, we coordinate with FAA, we did the whole deal. Then I got deployed to the fires out in California. They were complaining about not getting the right aerial imagery because the Reaper drone, even though it, it flies and it can see infrared where the fire's at, which is really helpful. Obviously, sometimes if it's flying at an angle, you're seeing me on YouTube right now. It appears that the fires between that and the home. So it looks like the home was on fire. So how many homes really are on fire? So they're like, we just want to get better imagery. So our team was like, well, this guy has a drone. I go perfect. So coordinated with everybody, air FAA, the whole deal got out there and myself and one other person, 2017, we found 30 more homes than a 33 person PDA team. We did it in a third amount of time at almost no cost. Think how much cost it is to deploy that many people. More importantly, we saved several homes because the Reaper Joan had marked several homes destroyed being on fire. We were to prove that the fire had actually burned the home and stopped at the property line, shout out to those firefighters.
So you fast forward three or four years, the SOP now is to have civil air patrol, flying drones to collect data for FEMA one. That's awesome. So thanks for helping me out with that, but the other problem is it's, it goes back to the same oh, we're just going to collect all the images we can. If I want amateur pilots to get out there and get a beautiful picture of the sunset around damage. Great. No, no, no. Mark to the civil air patrol for that, but you need trained people who can get out there and get information as fast as humanly possible to recover as fast as possible. It's just that whole declaration processes a crapshoot.
Guest: Brock Long (28m 30s):
Yes, sir. So John, you know, funny enough, I mean, I think I recall I had a data put together by the individual assistance guys inside FEMA to say, hey, look, you know how many knots, if you are a homeowner and uninsured and you lose your home or whatever else, how many knocks at the virtual door would you get for all the assistance comes out. And it was something like 14 knocks at the door. Okay, you're going to get 14 knocks in the door. You're going to get local NGO’s you're going to get local government. You're going to get code enforcement. You're going to get all these different knocks all the way up to FEMA, instead of doing all these damage assessments and, you know, and, and trying to understand everything, how do we get it down to one knock in a system that cuts across all of us, whoever that's going to be, you know how they're rewarded one day, if you can get it down to one knock that says, if you enter this data into the homeowner, it can come across the NGO, the private sector and the public sector, or whatever, to help that individual, you know, you know, so there, there is tons of room for innovation. One of the things that we do here is, you know, right now, you know, please, if you're an ICS, the questions popping up about ICS, it's time to graduate from ICS. I love lights and sirens. I love response. You know, I love that, but it's the shortest phase of what we do in emergency manager, right? And you need ICS, it as is a staple of our profession, but you know what I need right now, you know, with Haggerty consulting, I need people that understand disaster cost, recovery, grants, management, and project management. I do not need an ICS, and that's not a slack debate. There might be a time where I need you, John, is that ICS guru.
But when you think about the complexities of what is, I mean, FEMA faces an impossible. Everybody thinks, well, FEMA, the recovery's going so bad. It’s FEMA’s fault, its FEMA’s fault. No, no, no. If you look at the three disaster relief on supplementals that were passed as a result of Harvey, Irma, Marie, the money went to 20 different federal government agencies to fund over 91 different recovery programs across the federal government. Now you can fast forward to COVID all of the CRF funding, new programs being in policy being created on the fly. But yet you still got the long-term recovery of Harvey, Irma, Maria, and all these wildfires, couple of the trillions of dollars coming down, we don't need incident commanders right now. We need people that know how to teach a community. What you're entitled to, how to sequence the funding that's you're entitled to together so that you avoid duplication and use it in a manner to not only recover, but also become more resilient. Absolutely. But the problem is, is that because of the legislation that was passed after 9/11 and the inputs that was put on the grants is we put such a focus on ICS after 9/11 and Katrina that the law is there. We're still focusing on our training efforts, you've gotta be NIMS compliance and getting Rocky funding. So that results in FEMA, training, more police officers and ICS, than we do an emergency management like the numbers, the business doesn't even make sense on this. So we've got to step back from that and let these grants from Homeland security, there should be a review on Homeland security grants every three years that says, is this realistic and more because a lot of the grant guidance that's put out or the law that established the UASII funding and everything else haven't transformed to understand cybersecurity, you know? And so there's a lot of innovation that needs to take place and an innovation and adaptation to what's going on.
Host: John Scardena (32m 13s):
Well, here's the problem though, with our industry. Maybe you can kind of answer this because what I find now, like I said, I'm kind of more of the data guy. Now, I'm looking for ways to actually change the field. I'm doing that through the podcast or interview interviewing people, which is great, but I actually want to find real solutions. I want to be able to say, here's all the training, here's all the mitigation you need to do so you don't have disaster. Hurricane rolls in, you can punch it right in the face and say, we're fine. You know, but here's the problem, like the reality is we have a huge portion of our field and traditionally, this would just be more correct. You have retired fire and police who get in there and say, well, I'm retired cops so we're going to focus on active shooter. I'm, you know, firefighters, so we're going to focus on evacuations. Now we're having these conflicting generations where people like you and me who are emergency managers and understand like the whole spectrum of emergency management. How do you combat we need to be innovative with, we found solutions that work, and we've always done it like this. How do you combat we've always done it like this?
Guest: Brock Long (33m 20s):
Well, I think the Congress and the oversight committees within Congress needs to make sure that the agency and Homeland security is allowed to evolve with threats to changing threats. Okay. The other thing is, is that you got to go through and scrub the agency of legacy programs that really don't have the biggest bang for the buck anymore. I mean, you know, there's all these legacy items that have been thrown into FEMA that we're running just based on old law and past disasters that happened 10, 15, 20 years ago that we need to go back and say, is this really necessary? So part of it is, there's a strong partnership with FEMA, but here's the thing, John, we've got to stop looking at FEMA as the end all be all answer to all our problems. Like I said, we tried bigger FEMA after Andrew. We've tried bigger FEMA after Katrina. Everybody wants a bigger FEMA after Maria. That's not the answer. I love FEMA. I love the agency alone, gold and art and people within it. But the problem is, is that I equate it to a chair. And I don't know if you've heard me use this or not, but imagine the terror four legs, the first leg on that chair is a prepared citizenry, a true culture of preparedness within our citizenry that does not exist. CPR, resiliency, proper insurance to, you know, not putting your business in vulnerable areas unless you've mitigated that business. The second chair has a strong state and local government, you know, true capability is their capability also growing.
In far too often, I hear well, budgets are tight. You know, budgets are cut back. Well, mother nature doesn't care about that John. So maybe the budget guys in these local communities need to start really going through and understanding what their true priorities and part of it is going to be protecting their citizens from natural disasters. So stop your enemy, a bellyache excuse as to why you're not taking their emergency management local governments take seriously. The third leg is the public private sector partnership and what we've tried to be innovative. There was through the community life lines. You know, FEMA doesn't control your destiny. We know nothing about turning the power back on in Puerto Rico. One, we didn't let the power grid rod over in two decade period. You know, but everybody wants us to get the power back on. It's not the federal electricity management agency. Well, who owns that power grid? If you look at who owns the power grid, where you are in California, it's the private sector. Well, we don't control the private sector, but 85% of the infrastructure that you depend on to run your Snapchats to your flip, the lights on is owned by the private sector. So in that public private sector partnership, that third leg, we've got to reconfigure our plans of saying, hey, John, you know, man, you run the power company what do you need from me to get the lights back on? And it can be, well, I need you to move debris from these areas so that I can access my, you know, my community. I need a place for my workers to stay or live. You know, I need a base camp. I need whatever we've got to change. The focus that we are not the incident commander. We don't controls squat when it comes to the destiny. In my opinion, no, we control some elements like search and rescue and those types of things. But the bigger element is, we've got to rethink that public private sector partnership. That's what we tried to do in the innovation community. Lifelines, the fourth leg is a part of our FEMA. What's, what's the right balance for FEMA. How do you set them up for success in the future, John? I mean, quite frankly, we're going to continue to add to it. Now we're going to say, hey, you got to go do COVID points of dissemination, you know, and all this other stuff or whatever, and it's like, we keep adding to it and the dartboard keeps moving. They just can't be, you know, successful. It's never going to be able to meet the demands of what's there. We've got to set up realistic expectations.
Here's the thing, in all four phases of preparedness from, you know, preparedness mitigation, response and recovery. Those four phases need to grow with a fifth one prevention. If all four of those legs are attached to that chair and the seat, your community is the seat. And that chair is pretty stable. But if you go into a disaster like we did in Louisiana during Katrina or Puerto Rico during Maria, and there's only one leg of that chair there, and it's called FEMA, it's never going to go well and everybody's going to be upset. Then you're going to have people saying that, you know, there's disparities in the response or whatever else. I would argue that FEMA has to work overtime and doubly hard on the Marias of the world and the Katrinas of the world when there is no prepared citizenry, there is no real strong state and local government. There is no real meaningful public private sector partnership. Again, on the public private sector partnership, it’s not, what can Walmart do for FEMA? It is what can the emergency management industry do to redesign their plans, training, and exercise, to make sure that, you know, the privately owned infrastructure is coming up in unison. We see it all the time. John, you know, you'll have the power company fixing one sector of the community and the communications industry is fixing another sector, the community, you know, their part. They're not even talking to each other because we've never set up a private sector, infrastructure branch. That led to the ESF 14 cross-sector community, you know, community infrastructure, coordination, you know what I mean?
Host: John Scardena (38m 24s):
So you're saying we're all screwed. That's pretty much, it's funny. So let me back up here for a second because you're bringing up some really good, good points. I think emergency managers like myself are just, I mean, you're hitting on all pistons here. You're hitting our pain points. I had a friend who's in Puerto Rico and they said that when they, when they deployed and they weren't even the first team deployed, so we won't even do that old mess, but they got there and Puerto Rico was like, okay, what are you doing? And they were like, well what's your plan. Like we don't have a plan. This is what you guys are supposed to do. So there was like, there was absolutely zero understanding of what FEMA does. So there's a resilience, there's a messaging problem. There a training problem there. You're talking about critical infrastructure and using those public partner, private partnerships, full-scale exercises, I've been to several national level exercises. I've also been to state and even local. I have rarely seen if ever those, the outside of like maybe a couple of low ads, maybe red cross has involved maybe a couple others. But if you have electric companies involved, if you have these other companies involved who have a stake in the game, and so they understand what's going on there’s the other very real problem though.
One problem I've been absolutely trying to address and trying to overcome here is that nobody communicates the emergency manager, that term manager is a misnomer. It's false. We're supposed to be emergency coordinators that best, the best emergency coordinator in the world is somebody who says here's, everybody's involved. It's supposed to be involved, get them all into the same room, make sure that they're not arguing or competing with interests. That the fact that states were out trying to outbid each other for COVID is just fricking mind-boggling to me. First of all. I know people right now who in FEMA, who are deployed to help out with the COVID dispensary of the vaccine. It's like, dude, you are not a public health expert. I know some loggies who are phenomenal, who can do supply chain management, but, why are we adding more to the plate to people who don't have this background? I did Ebola response as part of the National Cancer Institute. I understand the pandemic response and trying to get a stop pandemic response. But I had a specific background to that. Why are people who don't have a background to that, or don't have a scientific background to that, focusing on that. So adding things more to the plate, it's just absurd. Anyways.
Guest: Brock Long (41m 3s):
Let's talk about COVID for a sec. There's a lot of confusion. Let me ask you John, real quick. What's the difference between the CDC, HHS and IH, Asper, public health, state public health, who actually is in charge? Then you've got a white house task force, or are you going to look, you know, whatever, who do we listen to a second question? What's the qualification of a local public health official?
Host: John Scardena (41m 28s):
What's the qualification of an emergency manager?
Guest: Brock Long (41m 31s):
A lot of times it's a medical doctor, medical doctors, my dad and my sister are both medical doctors. I love them to death. They ain't know nothing about logistics. I know nothing about the science piece of it, but they would, the whole public health industry was never designed to run a pandemic and it's unrealistic the way that the planning structure has been put forward. So there's a couple of things that have to happen. If you want to give pandemic to FEMA, then you need to outfit them and you need to consolidate all these public health entities that most Americans are confused by. Okay. Two, it was a total breakdown in my opinion of the health and medical community lifeline that we identified John. It's not just, when you think of mitigation, it's not just brick and mortar, and we've got to adapt to sea level rise. It is mitigating critical supply chains. Okay. That you don't own it, FEMA, by the way. So when you think about the COVID event, total breakdown in private sector cost, supply chains, one hospitals don't store more than a week to two weeks worth of supplies. They depend on just-in-time logistics. They've never done continuity planning around their vendors that supply them, the bigger vendors that supply every hospital unfortunately have sold, you know, a lot of their contracts out, you know, to China, Malaysia. When you look at all the PPE, before we get into this, we created a strategic national stockpile that was never designed to handle a pandemic.
It was more of a biological chemical attack on a big city. But what we've done is is that our supply chains for war fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan for PPE and medical supplies to what we're facing now was completely dependent on private sector, on supply chains. Then the government panics and says, activate the DPA, get FEMA involved. Boom. And then FEMA is faced with this fact. I try to bring it up in a manner to relate to people that aren't in this industry. It's like, you know, John, imagine if you owned a cookie store and your first order was for 700 million cookies, you've got to coordinate that. You've got to make sure that the cookie doesn't rot and you think about everything that goes into that. It's so much more than the federal government and going forward. What I don't like is that we're not setting up realistic battle rhythms in our industry. Now for the future, this virus is going to be with us. We need to start going back to the private sector, to the Walmarts of the, you know, the CVS is in Walmarts and the Amazons of the world or the private medical providers and saying, all right, how do we open up these normal privately owned supply chains to get this shot in your arm rather than FEMA, DOD, you know, government options. There's got to be handoff and, or never going to get ahead and win that game.
Host: John Scardena (44m 19s):
All right. So you, again, you're bringing up so many points here, we could probably have you on a hundred times and talk about all this stuff, but let's talk about some of these solutions because we've identified several of the gaps and you've suggested several solutions already. But what I want to do, thinking about that local emergency manager, or the emergency managers for organizations, schools, campuses, that kind of level, I want you, I wanted to be able to have your advice to them as well, because what you're talking about is everything that at the federal level can impact you at the local level. So you need to become much more resilient or my, my opinion, tough against disasters. So how do you do that? Let's talk about a couple of use cases based off of some of the questions, again, that we got offline. Like some of the questions where we're really focused on that local emergency manager, you're just starting on the field and you got hit by COVID or, you know what? My first disaster was FEMA was hurricane Matthew. I was put as the GI UL there and I was like, okay, here we go. So what do you do when you get that 700 million order of cookies as an, as a new owner? Let's kind of start with that, well, so like, step 1, 2, 3, what do you think you should be doing as number two mantra right now?
Guest: Brock Long (45m 42s):
As an emergency manager right now, let's see. Well, there's a couple things. One let's back up. If you're a new emergency manager getting into the field, you need to learn how to write operationally because there are not enough planners right now. They can plan on the fly for doing points of dissemination to whatever is needed to, you need to learn project management skills. So these universities that are in disaster, emergency management, you know, curriculum, I need project management professionals, you know, as much as I need, you know, people that understand all elements of emergency management. To knowing what I know now, if it had landed on my plate, I would have called it in the big boys. I wouldn't call it in the Medlines of the world, the Cardinals, the big medical distributors, and I would have called him the big, you know, Maderna’s and those to come in to say, you got to tell me how to operate these, these privately owned community. You know, these privately owned supply chains. You don't get a flu shot by the government every year. You get a flu shot and largely because of the private sector. So how do we duplicate that except exponentially bigger. Then the other thing John is, you know, going back to the whole, you got to get 700 million cookies out for your first order is how you set the expectation of citizens, right? So here, again, the information is all over the place. Social media is less than accurate, and we can come back to that. And a lot of a third of it's influenced by foreign actors. Okay. That, that make us look stupid. You know, too, there are too many cooks in the kitchen when it comes to who's in charge. What is the ultimate, what kind of mask do I need? You know, like the guidance is coming out and in the hurricane world, I will tell you as John Q citizen, if we were going to issue an evacuation, you need to listen to the local emergency management director who is putting out the warning order guidance. Well, that's not the case here. It's very top down, it's coming from a white house czar, or the CDC or HHS, and not a local public health official who was not prepared to handle this pandemic. I mean, because they've got a big day job as it is, you know, pandemic planning is not one of their things that they sat around and talked about on Monday morning staff meetings, right? So we've got to go back and reconfigure, but you've got to set the expectations of citizens of saying, here's what we're trying to do and it's going to be a while in the meantime, do these three things, not 15 things, not 20 things, but do these three things.
Host: John Scardena (48m 16s):
Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. There's no such thing as plan B. I think what served me best in FEMA specifically, was that I had learned the skill to prioritize. Things, get left, let let go of, things fall to the side, you can't do everything. I think that is why I was able to talking from a career perspective, be able to propel myself to the point where I felt like if I said something that meant something, and I think that'd be the other point of advice to emergency managers out there is learn to prioritize as fast as possible. We talked about project management is going to be a little bit of a plug here, but we endorse Futurity IT because I was looking at some of their, some of their products and they have a product called Athena again, plug here. So take it as you will. But they designed an app that's like really intuitive. Tt's specifically project management for emergency managers. So the whole thing's customizable and it's task tracking. If you look at most of project management, it's designed by tech companies who like do agile or do these other type of waterflow methodologies where it's all about fail fast, and it's all about dollars. But for emergency managers on the blue sky stuff, like your day to day, you need to be able to learn what's happening. What's most important. So when you're in a disaster, you're able to say here's 1, 2, 3. I have to get these done, or I fail. So plug there.
Guest: Brock Long (49m 52s):
Yeah. So if you're a local emergency manager right now, and you're drowning staff wise, there is no reason for you to be drowning staff wise right now with COVID and natural disasters. Because one of the things that we did with say the DRA is we increased the management cost provision so that you could hire force account labor, or you could hire a consulting firm like us to come in and augment your response staff so that you can go back to your day job or manage or the cost recovery piece of understanding what you're entitled to after, you know, CRF supplemental comes out or whatever. So some states are incredibly well, everybody's going at it a little differently, but there's one state that we are working with that has, has put forward over a billion dollars in public assistance funding. Well, the management cost provisions attached to that would allow that state to hire probably 122 full time employees for two years, but nobody's teaching them this. They're all looking around and where's, where's FEMA, staff, where's state staff, whatever. There's no reason for you to have a staff shortage. You look at the, some of the money that just came out from the treasury emergency rental assistance program. 10% management cost provision. Every state spending a minimum of 200 million. Some states are getting like 2 billion, and we're saying management costs to hire the infrastructure or the spot of systems. You need to manage the disaster. And we don't teach that. We teach people preliminary damage assessments. We teach people the ICS, but we do not teach emergency managers how to take advantage of the management cost provisions. And it was strategic in the DRRA to get the management cost to 5% and 7% at the local and state level. For a reason, I did not have any more staff I could deploy for the $41 million in less disaster. You need to go use your management cost provisions to hire force account labor, or the private sector consulting firms that knows it. But yet there's this, sometimes government looks badly upon the consulting firms that are out there when actually they can help you out tremendously.
Host: John Scardena (52m 08s):
Well, you just showed your value. I mean, obviously a value is an emergency manager to Haggerty, but you just showed your value value there as well, because you're able to go in there and tell these states, hey, we can actually help you do this. We can do this for a couple of years. And so my, my biggest thing is just the bureaucracy is good because it weeds out some of the stupid. But at the same time, like it makes it really hard for an emergency manager. I bet there's emergency managers right now that lists listened to you and said what who've been killing themselves for a year who are exhausted. I've had so many people text me, call me what are friends across the United States who are just exhausted. It's like, dude, I need a way out. Like I can't sustain this. Like mentally, physically I'm done. So what you just said, right there is like one hire Haggerty, which probably people should do. But also like as, as a consulting firm, you can say, I can help supplement you. The dollars are already there. We're not adding to your budget. Like that's the whole whole deal right now is to help people figure out how can I add, how could I be a plus one to you without costing a plus one? You just call that out. So I'm going to make that a clip for part of the show because people need to hear that. But now you're saying some really good stuff there. All right. So let's, let's switch topics here a little bit, because I'm going to read a couple of questions here, if that's okay with you. Maybe we'll one on that mark. So here we go. Emily says, so you, you kind of called this out, but let's talk about more of a general sense with FEMA maybe. What states make the best use of their own funds, the federal funds?
Guest: Brock Long (53m 55s):
Do you have like a top?
Host: John Scardena (53m 57s):
Yeah. What states are most resilient on to, to emergency management?
Guest: Brock Long (54m 3s):
That's tough to see. I can tell you what four states get the most money. Historically, it's New York, Florida, Texas, and California. And you know, and then it goes back to that successful once the successful formula of emergency management, those four states have very strong, state level emergency management agencies and, and many widely respected local emergency management agencies as a result of the money that they get and experience that they've been through. I think other states can look to see how they're designed and how you can duplicate that on a reduced level to some degree. But those are the four states that historically get the most amount of money and are most self-sufficient in these cases. But when they, when they can't handle the big ones, they call in people, the consulting firms to be able to come in or hire force, count labor to augment their capabilities. Now, there are some small states that do tremendously. Well. I mean, you know, you've got not small states, but medium sized states, you know, Maryland, North Carolina, there's some in my home state does a tremendous job. You know, they're off the radar screen from Texas and Florida and those types of things, but they've been hit with a lot and you know, and managers are managing a lot as well. So there's a lot of good states. And then there's some that probably don't do it as well that I will keep to myself. There were definitely some squeaky wheels out there that, you know, you're just banging your head against the desk saying, yes, we'll come in and do it for you.
Host: John Scardena (55m 40s):
Yeah. It gets back into a loop. I've definitely deployed to some of those states. I could talk about that forever, which I won't. But what would happen is I would get in there and they get stuck in this rut of, we don't have the money, the personality type, maybe lack of training, whatever. They start to find all these excuses and then that just perpetuates. They don't ever try to find a way out. They don't find a way to break that loop and doing any one of those things will help break that loop. New, fresh blood in there would help trying to access grant dollars or getting somebody in there to do some training would help. So I would go there as a national IMAT guy, again, talking about FEMA day specifically, and I would start trying to help build relationships where relationships weren't. I felt a lot of my job actually was relationship building just between FEMA and state at learning what they could provide. I'm like, holy crap, that shouldn't happen in a disaster, but it happened a lot, unfortunately.
Guest: Brock Long (56m 50s):
That was the whole purpose of a FEMA integration teams to the state level. You know, FEMA that I recognized very quickly and throughout my experience, that I've always thought that FEMA's customer service business concepts were broken. Now think about this. I mean, when did you see somebody from FEMA? If you're the local emergency manager, probably at a conference, maybe at a regional, you know, meeting here or there, but largely, you know, a majority of local emergency managers never see FEMA until the recovery phase when everything's blown up and tensions are high. Right? So the whole purpose of the FEMA integration teams was twofold and hopefully there'll be continued.
One, why can't I embed staff? We're like one of the only federal government agencies that doesn't have state level offices all over the place like the FBI, or they even have them in big cities. You know, why can't we go out and work day in and day out, on the planning, training and exercise side with you said, and then when you get hit, I know exactly what you need. I understand how you bring in resources or what, where your gaps are. I often thought that the whole hazard identification risk assessment process was a major liability to FEMA because and Homeland security, because you were, you were requesting, hey, what are your gaps, John? What are your gaps? Well, my question when I was in office was, well, how, what are we doing to overcome those gaps? Okay. Each one of them was different. You know, somebody can say housing, somebody could say pandemic planning, somebody could say whatever. And so the 15 was, here's what your report said. I'm going to send you a housing specialist and a logistics person. What else do you want? You know, from that standpoint, and let's help you overcome those gaps. But OMB, the office of management budget fought me tooth and nail, basically trying to argue that I was doing the job or the state and local governments. It wasn't about that. I don't want to do the state and local government's job. I wanted to basically build a strong relationship as you said earlier, we are coordinators. We are communicating, we are collaborators to build teams to overcome problems.
Host: John Scardena (58m 56s):
So here's a personal question then. I asked this to Todd to vote again. I gave, I promise I'll give him a shout out. So that's the second shout out. That's it? That's how you get tapped. But I liked Todd a lot too. That's why I'm willing to do it, but this is the question. CEM certified emergency manager, I am not a fan of the CEM, and I'm gonna get a lot of pushback on that because to be honest, it's, it's pretty low level of like, I don't really trust somebody if they have their CEM. I can't trust their, if they're battle-hardened or not, but why doesn't FEMA get into that game? We had like the practitioner course, we have EMI. We have all these different things. Why won't FEMA actually come out and say, we are going to create a standardization of, if I get into a community, all county emergency managers have a grant to be able to go and take this course to be able to get certified state guys, the whole deal and start working through an academy that way.
Guest: Brock Long (59m 54s):
Yeah. So first of all, as a CEM, I'm all for accreditations and people, you know, continuing education and, and reaching a standard. No doubt about it. You know, and I met with IAEM several times regarding the CEM, I would like to see there be more operational, you know, logistics and qualifications that are there. I think that they can continue to evolve, but I'll be honest with you. Like, let's step way back. One of the things that if I could have stayed eight years at FEMA and gutted it out, and one of the most dynamic times to ever serve your country and I say that laughingly, you know. If I could have been there eight years, I would have totally exploded the entire hiring process at FEMA, not to say that we don't have great people inside
Host: John Scardena (1h 0m 41s):
The hiring process sucks.
Guest: Brock Long (1h 0m 45s):
But here's what we do at FEMA. So they advertise the individual positions, we need a mitigator, we need a planner, we need a recovery housing specialist. Unfortunately, John, if you flew coast guard helicopters in Katrina really well, you know, you could apply for a GS-15 recovery job inside FEMA with no recovery experiencing did it. It's not that you're not awesome. Why not helicopter and the coast guard. But I say that because the coast guard would never let me come out of FEMA and just fly a helicopter.
So the bottom line is, and I couldn't even go be, I couldn't even drive a firetruck right now. If I got a job with the city of Hickory, North Carolina fire department today, okay, I've got to go through the steps and qualifications to get where I am. So the whole goal eventually, and we started going down this path was, and this incorporates the FEMA integration teams again, is how do we go to an academy style hiring process where we hire people in groups of 30 and 40, you send them to Emmetsburg and they learn all things Stafford Act that you actually have to read the laws and the policies that govern what it is you do. Okay. I would argue that the majority of emergency managers had never read the Stafford Act. Then you sit back and, you know, you've got to learn the classroom. And then we send you to the CDP for functional exercises and training and role-playing and different things. And then we send you out into a FEMA integration team at the state level. And you're going to go out there for two to three years and learn how states receive FEMA assistance or guidance is the guidance working, you know, how do we receive that? And then how the state is going to be requesting. And you learn that you actually go out and sit down with local emergency managers. And then from there, you can apply to one of the three FEMA regions you want to live in and try to run a regional program.
Then from there you can go to headquarters and you can run national programs, and you've got to stop making the FEMA administrator a presidential appointed position. It sets the agency up for failure, just because of politics and political games that are unnecessary and going on all the time in DC. If FEMA screws up a response, the other party's bashing on FEMA, if FEMA screws up a reform response on this end and the other party is in charge. Then FEMA screwing up, you got to stop. FEMA needs to be a neutral agency that has the ability to support state and local governments without going through some arbitrary disaster declaration process to figure out how much uninsured public property you've lost. We've got to get it to a point where if you need a bucket truck, why would I hold a bucket truck back from you? Because you didn't have enough uninsured losses. It's stupid. The whole disaster declaration process was a great idea in 1979 time to rethink it. I also think that you got to get the word emergency out of FEMA job. You know, maybe it's the national disaster relief and resiliency agency or something like that. I don't know. But how do you do that? And then you start, you know, you hire people like in the academy class that John, imagine if you could hire, like, one of the biggest problems that we had is we didn't have enough bilingual staff when Harvey, Irma, and Maria hit Spanish speaking populations in California, Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. Holy cow, what if we could hire bilingual, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90 bilingual individuals out of college with whatever degree and then train them on emergency management and send them out.
Guest: Brock Long (1h 4m 19s):
So, Yeah, I mean, it's, our whole industry is ripe for innovation and change is you just got to get the politicians and in DC who have forgotten that their job is compromise, you got to get them to sit down and put their politics aside and start focusing on the American citizen and saying, how do we protect them from disasters and, and not just try to do it in a bubble like they often do after big events, like 9/11 or Katrina. They've got to invite the expertise in, to reorganize for the future and, you know, the experience and not just people like me, but it's people like you, John it's people that were out there, you know, wiping the dust off disaster victims, you know? And that's it.
Host: John Scardena (1h 5m 11s):
Yeah. That's, I mean, that's a great answer. Obviously. You've thought a lot about this and it's a, we definitely need to towards that. And so the, the original question about CEM, I think you're right. We need accreditation. I just wish CEM was more trustworthy in my opinion. I wish I could see a CEM and trust. It's the number one reason why I didn't, I haven't done it despite having 10 plus years because I can, I can work without it. But Todd crap, that's the third reference to Tod.
Guest: Brock Long (1h 5m 41s):
And, you know, it's probably, you know, it's money. Nothing scares me more than walking into a local emergency managers office and the whole wall is full of every FEMA independent training course they've ever taken. Oh man.
Host: John Scardena (1h 5m 57s):
I know exactly what you're talking about. I went and met with this guy, every, literally every single online course, he had taken every single thing. Like I said, I've been in this for a while. I have two degrees in emergency management. I've been out, I've been in with multiple federal agencies. I've been at the local level, but well, that's the whole deal. This guy was talking. I understood about a third of the acronyms he was using. And I was like, well, no wonder you don't get anything done. Like it was just, it was just hilarious to me. So, okay. I got to do a big shout out there for this question with Kevin Coleman. He was on the show before and he asks a question, he's a big fan of AmeriCorps. Okay. He was AmeriCorps. That's how he started off in the field. You're talking about working up in the field. That's as definitely what he's done. And he's a at headquarters now really, really great experience. Obviously I have a high respect for him, but this is what he asks. He said so much to unpack with this episode as an alumni advocate and current program manager for FEMA Corps. I'm curious if Brock has any thoughts and what the future of the program could look like and how young professionals be involved, engaged with EM, from the AmeriCorps perspective. So before you answer your question, I want to ask you one thing, in your opinion, do you see AmeriCorps as interns?
Guest: Brock Long (1h 7m 19s):
As interns? So from me, and I see it as a, the baseline entry level position into themed potentially into FEMA, but here's the problem. It's not that easy. You can go to AmeriCorps for two years and still not qualify for any job that comes open in FEMA, because you don't meet the qualifications. You don't have the years of experience. You don't have veterans preference. You don't have all of these things. And the problem with AmeriCorps and what we saw in FEMA is that again, they don't have a real shot at going to the next level and unless some FEMA staffer redesigned the entire position description to meet their background, to hire them. That's the problem. And, you know, and, and that's the problem, you know, it's you know, and, and even with the local hiring process was a question on local hiring process. I like the local hire process too. It puts disaster victims possibly in a job if they lost their job because of the hurricane or tornado, then maybe they can be a local hire and push forward. But what was interesting is there's disparities and denial of entry because of the way the federal hire and hiring process works. And if you're from the US VI, maybe you haven't had a lot of experience of writing a resume. Well, if you want to be considered at FEMA, the first, the first thing you gotta write, you gotta win.
As the writing contest that the software absorbs your resume and read through it, picks out keywords, and then you qualify and you go get an interview or whatever else. So even if, even if somebody goes through two years of the AmeriCorps and they're the cream of the crop or the group, you can't get to them because we we've made it too, too crazy to get hired.
Host: John Scardena (1h 9m 13s):
We're known to direct hire at the same point. There should be some kind of step process to be able to become more qualified, whether it's accreditation or academy or whatever, a long-term process, when we took away direct hires, I thought that was, it was, it was a poor choice. I got, I got hired because of a direct hire. I was out there with Georgetown, with my program, and I said the right thing, and I was working in DC, happy with that job, but tap, tap, tap right on my shoulder. Hey, you said the right thing, I want to see you in my office right now and I literally walked into the office at FEMA IMAT at west and they said, tell me more about what, what that thought process was. And we talked for 30 minutes and said, we want to hire you. And that was like the, the luckiest moment of my life, because I loved my experience at FEMA. In fact, that soon to be administrator Criswell is a former Imad. I was like, yes, but it, it just goes to show that like, you're totally right. I'm glad to hear a FEMA administrator say that. I'm glad that you said something actually Napa. I was like, oh my gosh, it's so true. You said you have to leave FEMA to get a promotion in FEMA.
Guest: Brock Long (1h 10m 32s):
I did. You know, and that's funny. I love being a FEMA man, I got to see FEMA at the best when I went in on the morning of 9/11 and interviewed, and then eventually got the job, man, you know. FEMA was one of the highest places to work at the time in the federal government. And I went in as a GS 11, 12, I worked my way up. My boss retired and I was able to specialize and go into his spot because we were designing evacuation plans. And I was rare. I went from an 11 to 13, 14 and five years then after Katrina, after Katrina, man, we just got beat up. Literally, escape goat issues came on, FEMA, we gotta have somebody, we got to have a bud kick. We've gotta have somebody to blame. And you know, then FEMA was absorbed on Homeland security and all this other stuff that was going on and it was not a healthy place to work. I just, I decided to leave and it, and in retrospect, it broke my heart, leaving the agency because I love it. But I also knew it was not the environment I wanted to work in for the next five years either. So I stepped out into the private sector. When I did that, John, you wouldn't believe the number of phone calls I got, man. If I had known you were going to leave FEMA, I would have called you to see if you want to come work for us. So funny enough, I joke that, you know, if I had stayed in the regional office as a 13, I probably would've breached 15, you know, 20 years later, a GS 15, you know, management later, 20 years later, somebody would have to die or retired and I couldn't see the ladder. I took that with me. We tried to solve it, but it's hard to solve, but I literally left. It's easier for you to apply for a senior executive service job from outside the agency than it is within the agency. Because, you know, I can take a consultant, give me five years with you, John, as a consultant. And I can put you on 20 different projects that you manage and then you build the leadership skills you need to apply for the senior executive service jobs. So forget the GS 15. You just go in into the SES and that's the problem with the entire hiring process. There is no advancement like the FBI or the secret service or whatever. We hire and plug people in at various levels from the outside of the agency. And then we lose a lot of people, John, as a result of that, we lose a lot of people. They can't get up there. I jumped out and I had jumped out.
Host: John Scardena (1h 12m 55s):
On honest, you weren't the reason why I left, but my wife got pregnant and we said, we didn't want to travel. I didn't want to travel. I want to be a dad. I want to be home. So that was the reason why I jumped out. But at the same time, I understood that it was the best career move for me to get out because I actually pigeonholed myself by again, planning, operations, and then doing GIS, all people could see was this GIS or this guy who makes maps. First of all, that's not what GIS does. We can talk about that forever. But at the same time, I was like, anytime I applied for a position at back in ops which is where I really wanted to do it. AI had had the most experience in they're like, but you do GIS, but you do GIS. And so I was like, all right, I'm going to jump out here for a while. So I'm really glad that you just told me that Haggerty is going to hire me for the next five years. Man, I'm going to manage 20 projects, but.
Guest: Brock Long (1h 13m 46s):
The new emergency manager coming out of college, you're not going to get a job with FEMA unless you are, you know, a reservist, unless you can get into the reserve cat, you know, the assistance cadre that goes out there. That's probably the best way in, but you're not going to apply it from a master's degree without any experience and get a GS 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 position inside, you know, it's that FEMA. So my advice is go look at the consulting firms that can't find enough good people right now to get work done on behalf of FEMA and the state and local governments. Not only that, but look at the industry, the private sector industry that's growing in emergency management. I mean, we do work for all kinds of restaurants and, you know, mall corporations, airports are hiring emergency managers. I mean, it's just, there's a lot needs to feel. It's a great time to be in the field because there's so much money and issues that are occurring now is the time to be in, but don't just focus on getting into FEMA.
Host: John Scardena (1h 14m 46s):
I think that's an excellent point that I think that's a good point to end on. To be honest, there are so many different areas outside of FEMA. FEMA has a lot of opportunities and so I'd take that, but I am really, really grateful that I had spent time with the red cross. I spent time with the national cancer Institute, which is under NIH, which is under HHS. So I know I do know a little bit about that. So I thought your point was hilarious there, but you know, I'm grateful that I was with reaching efforts. Now that I'm working as a, a consultant myself, I work as like a, basically a subcontractor where I go in there and I get to work on all these different projects outside of FEMA. So I have all this opportunity now to, to keep learning. And so there's all these different avenues. So whether you're working at a campus level or you're working for a hospital emergency manager, what name you just get out there and keep learning. That's always the message of this podcast. So thank you for again, Brock for coming on the show for spending so much time with us really, it's been a really great experience.
Guest: Brock Long (1h 15m 44s):
Thanks, John.
Host: John Scardena (1h 15m 46s):
All right. So everybody, of course, as always, if you liked this episode, we want that five-star review. So give us that five star review. You can also follow us on Instagram at Disaster Tough Podcast. We're reposting a little bit more about Brock and some of the answers he had, basically we'll be pulling that in from LinkedIn, from other sources there, Brock is a phenomenal emergency manager. Obviously you heard that today. It's all about the dollars. It's all about getting the job done. It's about mitigation. Find ways as an emergency manager to get the job done. That's how you become disaster tough. That's how you can help other people make sure to follow us on Instagram at Disaster Tough Podcast as stay tough. Thanks.
#83 NOTICE: DISASTER TOUGH HAS BEEN HIJACKED BY MOVIE AAR
Professional emergency managers reviewing disaster in movies- The good. The bad. And especially the funny ugly.
“Want us to review a specific movie or scene? Comment below! Movie: Twister Scene: Driving through tornadoes (water spouts and cows) This is our first episode of "MOVIE AAR" a show detected to the review of disasters that happen in movies from the perspective of professional emergency emergency managers. We talk about what's realistic and fake, what is happening in the disaster response, and share PSAs that will help you if you find yourself in a similar disaster. Sorry for the potato quality of audio during one of the clips! Best we could do during our, "pirate" episode. Movie Credit: Movie: Twister Warner Brothers Studio Hosts: John Scardena Patrick McGinn.”
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0m):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1m 33s):
Welcome back everybody. It's your host, John Scardena. I am so excited to hijack this episode like a pirate because I have Patrick McGinn on here. He's been on the show now you've been on, this is your fourth appearance. Yeah. Is that right? Patrick is one of my best friends in the world. In fact, I'm one of his best friends in the world. I know that because I'm the best man at his wedding coming up and we're really excited for that happening. In the meantime, you know, Patrick and I we've seen a lot of movies together.
We've hung out and we kind of have this fun thing where we get to laugh at these disasters that happen in movies that are super unrealistic and think about what would actually happen. For example, if the marshmallow man actually appeared in New York, is it a biohazard incident? You know, are rats eating it up? You know, if it was alive, so you have like all these ridiculous things that are happening. But then you also have like other movies that are definitely more disaster centric, like twister, or I even hate to call this out, but San Andreas, other movies like that. We look at the full spectrum and we're like, hey, we should make a show that talks exactly to this topic. So Patrick, if you want to move to the side real quick, your background. Yeah. So we created a YouTube show called Movie AAR, our movie after action review, where we look at disasters that happen in movies, we kind of make fun of them, we kind of walk through it. What's realistic, what's unrealistic? Then we talk about what's emergency managers are doing in that scenario and finished with a PSA. It's a really good way to introduce us to the public. I have Patrick on here, Patrick, what do you want to say about Movie AAR? And then we're going to jump right into the clip cause we're hijacking the show.
Guest: Patrick McGinn (3m 24s):
Yeah. Awesome. So Movie AAR is exactly what John said after action review of movies taken from an emergency management perspective, but also John and I just pointing fun at the movie and kind of the holes and what's realistic, what's not. And we actually have a lot of fun on the show doing this. So if you want to check it out, if you want to laugh, if you want to learn something about emergency management, check it out.
Host: John Scardena (3m 53s):
All right, let's tell it to the clip.
Guest: Patrick McGinn (4m 2s):
What's real and what's fake in this? They're driving towards the tornado. I don't think anybody would do that. The water spouts. They did split into two and there was actually a third one there while there were cows flying by. It never crossed their mind to turn around. In that situation, you want to turn around and drive away from the twister, from the tornado. That should be obvious. They didn't do that in this case because they love tornado so much. They want to be close to them and they aren't really affected by them. So that part was kind of faked. Johnny want to chime in there.
Host: John Scardena (4m 39s):
The cow. So if you're looking out outside of the (we're going to get like really nerdy here) tornado, if you're that far, the cow is that far away from the water spout. I mean, those were F1 tornadoes, maybe as zero tornadoes at best that Cal is not making these giant rings around. If you think of momentum, that cow is going over the moon, if you will. So that was a little that was like unrealistic for me, unless there was like, you know, the exact same cow at the exact same spots in their multiple cows. So also the cow coming over the water. Okay. So there was, that was unrealistic for me. Then obviously you got cows in the sky, as we noted before, and somehow the Chuck was totally fine. So like that way to that truck must be pretty heavy or it's a superhero movie about bill. That's kind of what I thought was fake in the thing. But this scenario is real.
Guest: Patrick McGinn (5m 44s):
Yeah. Yeah. That scenario could happen. Maybe not the cows flying. I mean, what were the cows doing on the water anyway? Maybe where they getting drinks of water. Maybe that's not important.
Host: John Scardena (5m 52s):
No, maybe that's not important, but we're here now. Right? Okay. So scenarios real. Let's talk about, you know, from the perspective of the emergency managers, there's tornadoes happening right now. What are we doing in the field as emergency managers? I would say generally, in a tornado event or tornadic event, we're trying to shut down power, trying to shut down water, kind of save that critical infrastructure and re reduce fires. That way that happens lightning fast. That was both lightning pun and an electricity pun anyways. So that happens. Notice notifications are going out, whether it's, whether it's small town or not, there's an individual in charge of making sure that like making the call, right. Hey, we're going to, we're going to make the sirens go off. NOAA’s going to be involved in that process. Yeah. Then immediately after tornado, like just like you said, all the stakeholders get involved in search and rescue and organizing. There'll be a local CERT team Midwest is really famous for actually using their CERT teams to community emergency response teams. These are volunteers that get trained by firefighters. Typically some towns, police, and they will be helping find their friends and sheltering operations will be set up all kinds of things that would happen and I would say general tornado response.
Guest: Patrick McGinn (7m 36s):
Oh yeah. If we're talking general tornado, not just some water spouts water spouts could come down….
Host: John Scardena (7m 41s):
Water spouts are fine.
Guest: Patrick McGinn (7m 43s):
and never ever make their way to land and just go right back up into the sky. So for talking actual tornado, yeah, we're talking shelters because people's houses have been totally blown away are talking. They need food, they need clothing, they need cots, they need pillows and blankets, they need hygiene kits. So there'd be a whole maybe donation definitely be a donation center. They've gone to shelters and emergency managers would be working at the county level or city level to get, maybe working with state partners or FEMA to get people registered for assistance, to get to just do damage assessments before you even turn it on electricity or water, you've got to assess the facility. So in this moment they're doing damage assessments to ensure that everyone's safe. Kind of safety is at the, the top priority.
Host: John Scardena (8m 36s):
You know what happens if the conditions are right? Humidity's there, the temperatures there, the winds there. You know, as we mentioned earlier, it's charged. I don't know why I said it like Trump, “it’s charged.”
Guest: Patrick McGinn (8m 49s):
You mentioned that earlier.
Host: John Scardena (8m 51s):
I'm part of the we here I am a person too Patrick. So let's talk about the PSA. What would you, what would you say?
Guest: Patrick McGinn (9m 6s):
I'd say if you're in your car on a highway and you see an underpass not to get out of your car and go under the underpass or overpass. The recommendation is to get out of your car and to get into a ditch on the side of the road, get to the lowest level possible. It sounds kind of counter-intuitive and it sounds really scary, but it's safer than being in a car. That's picked up by the tornado and being dropped from hundreds of feet up.
Host: John Scardena (9m 35s):
We might add that clip in there, just like that exact scenario happening because they didn't pay attention to the warning to clip. Cue Clip.
Video clip (9m 44s):
Doris listen to me. Get off this frequency Bill. I'm telling you, I know you can hear me, get out of there. Turn around now. Yells…
Host: John Scardena (10m 11s):
Okay. So the like that clip is crazy by the way. Yeah. That's what I'd call out. One last thing is know the difference between a watch and a warning. So that notifications coming your way, understand like, hey, I should be aware of it. They've spotted a funnel or kind of watch what's going on. But a warning you have to take shelter immediately.
Guest: Patrick McGinn (10m 34s):
Just know your city, they all have different sirens. There's not just one type of siren. There's usually multiple different kinds of sirens for whether the right conditions exist or whether there's one that's already on the ground, or whether there just could be a severe storm. So just good things to know your area. You want to know your city, you want to be part of your community. That's great. Know how to warn people know how to read the signs when they come.
Host: John Scardena (11m 2s):
Read the signs. So we just wrapped up the PSA. You always try to be, we always try to be smart. We'll let you know what's happening behind the scenes. Patrick and I have been in emergency management for about 20 years combined. We love what we do. We have a lot of fun looking at these movies. We hope you had fun too. Make sure you check out other shows on the readiness lab of what were associated with like disaster tough podcasts of which I host. It's a little bit more serious, but it has pretty good content there too. We'll see you for the next video.
Guest: Patrick McGinn (11m 31s):
See you next week.
Host: John Scardena (11m 40s):
Okay. Everybody. We really hope you liked that clip from our first episode of Movie AAR. We're calling it the pilot episode, we are working out the kinks. It's Kevin Hubbard, having a lot of fun laughing during the clip. But also this is also really big news for us because back in July, we announced that Todd Devo, of EM weekly EM student, Franzie was on here, who Dan Scott is also helping us out with now, movie AAR, some of these other things that are happening in the pipeline, we actually brought them in and we said, hey, we launched the readiness lab as part of government emergency management. So the Readiness Lab literally just is launching as we speak big announcement, email about that's coming out at a big sweepstakes is happening in November 15th. So just a couple of days from now so make sure you check that out. The Readiness Lab has all these different podcasts and shows and styles. We really want you to check that out. We're excited to announce movie are there. There's a pirate theme, not hijack. What's the word I'm thinking of pirates takeover, common deer out. I know we commandeered this episode, but we really hope that you got something out of it and you want to share it with other people. So check out movie, our, keep listening to Disaster Tough podcast and check out other shows on the Readiness Lab and we'll see you next week.
#82 Amazon's IT Risk Management & Supply Chain Considerations: Interview with Andrew Owlett
Andrew Owlett is the Senior Manager, Global Business Continuity and Risk Intelligence working in OpsTech IT, WW Operations for Amazon. He talks to us about business impact from the IT perspective.
Conducting a business impact analysis, understanding the Global Supply-chain, and working in concert with technologies is an absolute necessity for the emergency manager of tomorrow. Amazon is a behemoth in the supply chain world and Andrew helps run their IT systems from the perspective of business continuity. He shares his thoughts on supply chain, data science, and how the pandemic has impacted business.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
Radio comms just got a major breakthrough with the L3 Harris XL extreme 400P, is the newest and toughest radio out there built by their space and tactical teams. The XL extreme series can take a beating 1700 degree blast of heat, repeated three meter drops, rain, salt water, you name it, the XL extreme series by L3Harris can take it. Visit L3harris.com to schedule your demo today.
The battle to monitor and contain COVID-19 just got exponentially better for us. We are officially introducing an electronic reusable yes, reusable COVID-19 test through our sponsors. It's called the COVID plus test created by Tiger Tech distributed by FS Global. This is the first FDA authorized rapid non-invasive pre screener. It's extremely easy to use. Forget those one-time use swabs, this is a disaster tough technology. For more information on the COVID plus test check out our show notes.
Host: John Scardena (1m 38s):
Welcome back to the show, everybody. It's your host, John Scardena. I am very excited for this episode. We've been talking to Andrew for some time trying to get them on the show because we're really excited about the type of perspective he can bring to emergency management and business continuity. So Andrew comes from the Amazon world. Yes, Amazon the Amazon, and he can talk about all that perspective there. Andrew, welcome to the show.
Guest: Andrew Owlett (2m 7s):
Hey John, thanks so much for having me today. I'm super hyped to be here.
Host: John Scardena (2m 11s):
Yeah, absolutely. So we were just kind of joking around before the show. You have quite the title and roles and responsibilities there to job. Can you tell our audience what your title is at Amazon?
Guest: Andrew Owlett (2m 23s):
Yeah, so I'm senior manager of global business continuity and risk intelligence specifically within Amazon robotics. Even more specifically within the, really the Amazon worldwide operations information technology node. So we're the people that deploy source and then we recycle, I guess the technology that goes into fulfillment centers worldwide.
Host: John Scardena (2m 53s):
Okay. So a little known fact about me is I worked for another tech company. There are fruit and I was the head of business intelligence there for a while. I was doing project management stuff there for the internal, some of our 300,000 employees or whatever. So I can definitely understand the perspective of for-profit entities wanting to do business continuity and wanting to make sure that, you know, what we call them, tears, right. When something had happened, if it impacted the immediate business or long-term moments, who try to, we'd have to manage it that way. I got to see this perspective of emergency management from the perspective of systems breaking, not just critical infrastructure, but for organizational perspective. I think you can provide a lot of insight there. Just to start it off, the impact of business and global operations and in Amazon and your role there specifically, to robotics and making those systems work, what type of impact does that have on day to day? Are issues happening every day or are you looking at more of the long-term preventative or is there a lot of mitigation? What are the different components of the disaster life cycle? Are you hyper-focused on in your job?
Guest: Andrew Owlett (4m 19s):
Yeah, so my team and I focus a lot on super proactive sensing and intelligence. First, we believe that if you have really good intelligence on what's going on in the world, and you can map that to how that intelligence could impact your assets, whether you're at Amazon, like I am, or other companies, it allows you to be more proactive versus reactive when something happens. So we put a lot of effort into hunting for what are those threats vulnerabilities and have there's that change every day and then map that back to our business to see what the impact would be from.
Host: John Scardena (5m 5s):
Okay so let's break that down a little bit, because what you're talking about as a hazard vulnerability assessment, but unlike, I would say, what a government would do. So I'm trying to compare government to organizations. So government, we have our hazard mitigation plan, which says a firearm and it has a vulnerability assessment every five years. Well, you're talking about as a constant need to have situational awareness of both external and internal vulnerabilities. How do you get to the preventative side of that. So when you're talking about the intelligence gathering, what are some resources that you could provide to the field that say, hey, for an organizational emergency managers listening to this, right? It's their job to do what you do on a different scale or a different company, or some resources that they would have to pull in to have that situational awareness.
Guest: Andrew Owlett (5m 54s):
Yeah. So, I mean, going back to what you said, I mean, doing some sort, a THIRA or hazard vulnerability assessment HVA and the public sector, that’s the problem that I felt. So I came from public sector into private and the problem is that the threat landscape literally changes every day. If you only do an assessment once a year or once every couple of years, you're really not accurately painting a picture of what is your true risk to business impact, so we take the approach of constantly assessing. So we ingest data, we assess data through open source intelligence first and also closed source intelligence, which is a little bit different. We do that through a variety of different mechanisms, having analysts support, tech support, and then we provide actionable insights for our stakeholders to take based on what we're seeing external to Amazon. So if I was an emergency manager in a locality and I didn't have access to, you know, kind of funding and resources, the first place I would go to is something as simple as like a search engine, like Google and maybe build in an alert for X, Y, and Z of this sort of happen. I need to be notified about that it's cheap to zero costs. It takes a little bit of time and super helpful.
Host: John Scardena (7m 22s):
Yeah I think that's a good idea, a good idea to build on those alerts, whether it's a news alerts or otherwise, I take it, you know, if we're talking about building that foundation of situational awareness, being on the national team was the national strike team was purely for response. We had constant situational awareness between our settle and between my myself, who I did GIS geospatial intelligence for the team. So every day constantly, we were not just getting the notifications, but we are doing threat assessments based off of a US perspective of what could impact and where could impact the critical infrastructure of the populations of social vulnerability, all that stuff. When we inverse more in response, well, you're talking about is like a, I wouldn't say like a pseudo response, but you're constantly getting that intelligence. I'm sure you're doing fairly frequent briefings based off of that intelligence that comes through, I'm thinking of it almost like your ops periods, like a 24 hour ops period every morning. You're probably sending a brief out if I'm going to guess.
Guest: Andrew Owlett (8m 32s):
Yeah. So our cadences are a little bit different, but because specifically, even more specifically to just emergency management and business continuity, like at a high level, narrowing that down, we're focusing very much in the supply chain space. So we want to be on the cutting edge of supply chain intelligence that's outside of Amazon, but also there's a lot of sources that we get into Amazon directly from our suppliers that we need to assess as well. So meshing those two things and in some cases, three things together, because there could be another category there as well takes a lot of analytical insights, a lot of just understanding of the business. You have to understand the business you're in, you have to understand where those dependencies are and how they can. So, yeah, so going back to what you said, the frequency can be 24 hours, it can be every two weeks, it can be every week, depending on like the type of environment you're in, it's consistently customer.
Host: John Scardena (9m 42s):
So let's break that down because you're talking about supply chain and supply chain is very popular right now. I'm going to look at it first from the perspective of, as Amazon is both a supplier and works with millions of suppliers. You know, you have a unique circumstance where your supply chain is both could be interrupted by internal processes. But also if people let's say, I don't think we're even close to there yet. I mean, it probably won't be for ever, but Amazon prime is like the favorite function of everybody, right? You get Amazon prime and get things within two days. Now you have a population that is used to having that function and supply chain is interrupted even more for a major product within Amazon. Then you start to have a different side of the business impact of customer service issues, let alone, you know, your business SOP is now impacted. How does Amazon decipher working with you? Because you've said it a few times outside of Amazon now a few times, how do you decipher, okay, high priority product? Is it based off of revenue, like your business impact analysis? Is it impact on revenue? Is it impacted on time? Is it impacted on, you know, another factor that you know, that you have to consider that maybe the general population doesn't have to consider?
Guest: Andrew Owlett (11m 11s):
Yeah. So, I mean, with, with any, with any type of program in the space, I mean, if you have to, you have to know who your customers are and you have to understand what's important to them. And that's how we kind of build our programs. So we, we have internal facing customers that they, they want products and services at a certain time and a no-fail environment. And we have to prioritize those first based on what our customers feel are the most important to them. And there's, there's a lot of things that are important to our internal customers. And a lot of things can beat with each other, but as a business, if, if things are going to impact our customer, that's number one, that's, that's always number one, we're obsessed over them, whether they're internal or external.
Guest: Andrew Owlett (11m 59s):
So, I mean, we prioritize our efforts based on customer demand and priority and then also from a business impact analysis perspective, just anywhere, I mean, money, money is super important, right? If a particular function is going to cost the business a lot of money, that's a higher priority than something that maybe isn't as critical. It doesn't have as much financial offs, if any. So you were talking about business impact analysis. I mean, that's super critical. I mean, from a supply chain risk perspective, which is a lot of the world that I live in it's a basis for figuring out where your dependencies are, people, processes, technology. How do you rely on all of that? Whether it's third party, whether it's internal party, it's super important to have that kind of laid out first.
Host: John Scardena (12m 52s):
So let's talk about the elephant in the room, supply chain, it's all in the news right now. There's, you know, politicians will say things like, you're not going to get your Christmas presents or stuff like that. But every time I use Amazon, I'm still getting the things that I want from the Amazon prime is still available. So from Amazon's perspective of supply chain right now, obviously you have the forward facing message of everything's okay. But that's not the audience we're talking to. We're talking to an audience of emergency managers who get that not everything's okay. But still a lot of things probably still are. Okay. So from your perspective of talking to emergency managers in the field about supply chain, who understand supply chain from a disaster response perspective, especially a large-scale disasters, what is your view of like what's happening in the world of supply chain right now? Is that as dire as it's made out to the news, is there certain functions that they're not really focusing on, that they should focus on? How do you build redundancy? I mean, I have so many questions on this topic. I will let you determine why you want to talk about it there, but what do you think about supply chain right now in the world?
Guest: Andrew Owlett (14m 3s):
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we're seeing across the world right now, is that because of consumer electronics spending really skyrocketing during the beginnings of COVID, whether it's people working from home or taking classes from home, because they're in school or whether medical technology is needing, it increase their output to be able to fight like COVID. There was a lot of demands placed across a whole bunch of industries at one at one time, especially in the technology space. A lot of what we're seeing now are the repercussions of what started two years ago, almost two years ago. Then also seeing the ripple effect across other industries, because when COVID first started, you know, people may not be communicating to work all the time. Maybe auto use is going down, but now people are starting to commute into work again and auto use is going up. We also see in the geopolitical landscape, more and more of an emphasis on sustainability across the board, more an emphasis on electric automobiles and with all of that causes, you know, some other ripple effects there as well, because you have all of these different industries trying to ramp up right now, and they're all competing against each other. There's only so much at the ground floor level, quote, unquote, ground floor level.
There's only so much raw material that can be produced as it gets at a given time. So they're either constraints at the very bottom levels of the supply chain, like raw material or there's constraints with how are we going to transport all this product quickly to meet customer demand. There's only so much shipping container capacity in the world right now. That's a big, hot topic, certain on CNN, Fox news, CNBC, etc. You'll see that out there and if you can't go be a shipping container, what are your other mechanisms to get product from point a to point B while you still have air. In some cases you have rail, but costs for that and then speed are all completely different. So you start seeing your ripple effects across, you know, a whole bunch of industries because of what happened two years ago. Those ripple effects, you know, they keep going out and out and out, and then consumer demands changes all the time and what we want changes all of the time. The one thing that remains constant though, is that when we want something, we want it now and we want it quicker and faster than ever before. So I mean, in the future and in the next six months to a year, I mean, those, those demands will completely continually escalate and, you know, people want their stuff, they want it faster and that's not going to change. That's the one thing that won't change over the next year. So as supply chain professionals. So, you know, there's definitely a lot of pressure on the shoulders to figure out how to handle situations.
Host: John Scardena (17m 8s):
Yeah, definitely like, is that all next year, I predict the next 18 months, two years, three years, even trying to kind of work this out and trying to level out, maybe even beyond. So for the audience sake, I'll give you a real world example of how this, what you're talking about applies to them, especially if they're doing natural disasters and why that matters and then I'll talk about some of the work I just did in LA here, Puerto Rico, 2017, hurricane Maria, the strike team that was sent there, unfortunately didn't understand. This is why this is so important to understand the impact of supply chain and supply chain and how it moves the system, it moves, you're talking about air, land and sea, and it's an island. So they didn't understand both the regulations, the laws that had to be utilized there. Also the requests I had to be like, there was like a five day minimum request is 2017 is not pandemic life. There's a five day delay there and they didn't understand how early they need to start ordering resources in order to catch up. Now we don't have any resources for several days and the famous example is that the planning section, she was taking pictures on the beach because they had nothing else to do. Lo and behold, the entirstrike team was fired and they should have been, I'm super critical of that.
I was in hurricane Harvey at the time when I was blown away by the lack of speed and understanding of supply chain, because supply chain is response. Supply chain of use our team supply chain of infrastructure, supply chain of all these things that have to be put in place. So just even materials like food, basic food and water, and they didn't understand it. So if you're an emergency manager and you're in the Midwest or you're on the west coast and you have to deal with a major earthquake and all of a sudden, you know, your port's taken out or you're in Puerto Rico and you're on an island like these implications matter. So that's the real-world example. Then about a month ago, I was in a port of Los Angeles and I saw I was actually on a boat with the Coast Guard. I saw the million, you know, shipping containers out there and like, hey, and they were talking about the length of time added, before it was like 12 to 18 days. Now they're looking at 25 to 40 days on the water and to constraints it's having. As a supply chain company, I'm an Amazon is truly a supply chain company in terms of its major perspective and having to work with that. I mean, you have security risks, you have consumer increases, you have so many different constraints. Now you're talking about raw material and even getting that raw material to a place where it can even be fractured and so your delay could happen even before the process really even begins before you even have a product to deliver. This is really fascinating to think about for sure.
Guest: Andrew Owlett (20m 13s):
Yeah and I think going back to your example of yeah, Puerto Rico is an island and you know, that just adds so many degrees of complexity there as well, because there's a lot of things in the continental United States. Then in other parts of the world that we take for granted, and one of the biggest things is how we're, connected to major sources of infrastructure and, and so much more. I island so many unique considerations and there’s definitely a lot of different planning facets that need to go into that. But one of the things that I would suggest to anybody out there that hasn't necessarily placed a lot of emphasis into what is their supply chain look like? You know, going back to something you mentioned earlier, business impact analysis is super important to understand what you do and how you do it. Then who's involved and what's involved in that, who's involved, what's involved piece. It can mean that, you know, you're working with internal stakeholders or external stakeholders as well. How much do you rely on these stakeholders to X, Y, and Z? What do you rely on them for dig a little bit deeper there? Then, you know, that’s the most basic level of analysis and more moderately advanced level of analysis is looking like where do my supplies come from geographically? Because that's super important and how do they come to me geographically? What mode of transportation? Who's bringing the supplies to me? Do I have a backup supplier in case something happens, the primary supplier, you know, little things like that really go a long way. Then you can even take those level of analysis, even deeper to see, how does your supply chain really map together?
Host: John Scardena (22m 8s):
Yeah, you're talking a lot about memorandums of understanding too, right? I mean, that just doesn't happen. Amazon kind of has the weight there where they can call and say, hey, you're now the primary for the next six weeks. But in most cases, you're going to have to have MOU in place to say, hey, if a system is broken on one end, we need to have this already. The understanding of what the supply is, whether it's power or otherwise needs to already be put in place. So you're hitting on a lot of keys there. I'm going to geek out really hard here for a second thinking of my business intelligence and or business impact analysis hat. Do you deal a lot with Q theory and nor do you know what Q theory is?
Guest: Andrew Owlett (22m 52s):
I don't.
Host: John Scardena (22m 54s):
Yeah. So basically the example is a bank teller. If a bank teller takes 10 minutes to process a person and we have one person come in exactly every 10 minutes, you'll have no queue. You'll have no nobody waiting, but that's not reality. So we do in terms of a data science we'll use like AAR or we'll use some other scripting capabilities for data, data science. And we'll say, okay, if one, the math works out that a fee of one bank teller that takes 10 minutes on average, and you have people coming in like normal. By the end of the day, your queue will be five hours and 48 minutes in an eight hour day, just because of the backup that keeps happening. If you add one other bank teller, that bank teller also takes 10 minutes in terms of the exact same math, your longest queue will be three minutes, five hours and 48 minutes versus three minutes just by adding one additional resource. So when I think of supply chain, I think of not just like what's bare minimum, but what's the acceptable amount of time that something has to take to get from a to Z and how many essentially bank tellers do you need to make sure that's within the acceptable amount of time. If it's like a call center, it might be under a minute, you know? So like, hey, how do you make sure you never get up to like a 15 minute queue or maybe your queue can be five minutes?
I think of like call centers or bank tellers, and I think of supply chain that kind of the same way of how, how early do I need to order my resources and how many bank tellers do I need for those resources to be able to process that. Right now I'm finding like the biggest problem is that quote unquote, we don't have enough bank tellers to even process the information. So the that's what's truly sending, and I wonder what the math is to just to get it within an acceptable range anyways, something I geek out on, but maybe we can have that on another time due to the time I'm looking at the clock here, this is a really fascinating topic. I'm expecting a lot of our audience to maybe get back with questions. We'll have you back on talking about supply chain on both from the Amazon perspective and to, just to get you back on a really fascinating topic, especially during the pandemic. I mean, jeez, so I'm grateful that you're able to come on and make that time for us. If you're going to give your final word advice to emergency managers, thinking about supply chain, business continuity, what is one thing that you'd really hope the field would understand?
Guest: Andrew Owlett (25m 32s):
You need visibility. You need visibility into who your suppliers are, what they do, how they map to critical functions that your organization has and there's really no better way to start then, you know, doing the BIA, like you said earlier, John, I mean, that's, that's such a fascinating place to begin do a rapid BIA, do something simple, and then at least get some, get some visibility, ask more questions, and then continue mapping out. What is your true supply chain risk and what does that look like? So my biggest word of advice.
Host: John Scardena (26m 6s):
Great. Call-out and I'm going to, I'm going to add one more that you, you said actually earlier, I want people to remind me, this is constant situational awareness, getting alerts, maybe adding some geospatial intelligence and understanding those systems, and you will really have great situational awareness so that you can move with disasters and prevent disasters from happening. Andrew, thank you so much for again, for coming on the show and talking with me for everybody's situational awareness became situational awareness. If you have a question for Andrew, you can always reach out to us on social media, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, obviously a LinkedIn's a really good one there because you can we'll tag Andrew. But if you have a question for him, you can put it there. You can also give us a five-star rating and if you liked this show would you should. If you have any questions that you don't want for the general population, because you're too afraid to ask or otherwise you shouldn't be because we're a good community, but you can always send us an email at info@dobermanemg.com and we'll send it over to Andrew and hopefully get your answer your question, and we'll see you next week.
#81 Building Local Emergency Management Teams: Interview with Andrew Donawa
Andrew Donawa is a local emergency manager, building programs from the ground up. He walks through what it takes to create disaster tough communities.
Andrew Donawa has worked in local programs in the Carolinas, Nebraska, and most recently Iowa. He is an excellent resource on building emergency management programs and leading with an eye towards disaster risk reduction. Andrew builds disaster tough communities through leadership, training, working with stakeholders, and addressing the whole community.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
Radio comms just got a major breakthrough with the L3 Harris XL extreme 400P, is the newest and toughest radio out there built by their space and tactical teams. The XL extreme series can take a beating 1700 degree blast of heat, repeated three meter drops, rain, salt water, you name it, the XL extreme series by L3Harris can take it. Visit L3harris.com to schedule your demo today.
The battle to monitor and contain COVID-19 just got exponentially better for us. We are officially introducing an electronic reusable yes, reusable COVID-19 test through our sponsors. It's called the COVID plus test created by Tiger Tech distributed by FS Global. This is the first FDA authorized rapid non-invasive pre screener. It's extremely easy to use. Forget those one-time use swabs, this is a disaster tough technology. For more information on the COVID plus test check out our show notes.
Host: John Scardena (1m 41):
Welcome back to the show everybody. It's your host, John Scardena. Man, I am so excited to have Andrew on the show. I've known Andrew now for a little bit. We've definitely bonded recently over several emergency management tasks that we've had to address and I'm really excited to announce on our show that Andrew, you just got a new job in Sioux city, Iowa, technically for the county. It's really exciting news. I think you're kind of the perfect guy for that because you have a ton of experience building local programs and so we want to talk about that today. Andrew, welcome to the show.
Guest: Andrew Donawa (2m 15s):
Thanks so much. I'm excited to be here.
Host: John Scardena (2m 17s):
Good because you have a lot to offer our field and you come from not just a responder background, I believe you're a paramedic in a previous life and now as an emergency manager and that kind of that cross training, which is what we've been really focusing on a lot this year in our podcasts, as we've had firefighters and USR and paramedics, and former SWAT on the show. So it's great to have you and your perspective. Let's just like kick it off right now, as an emergency manager who just got a new job and as emergency managers who are possibly looking at either to get into the field, either they're in college or they're switching jobs themselves, what are the first like things that you're going to want to look at from a general perspective of like, hey, I'm going into this program. I need to make sure I do like X, Y, and Z so that I can start off with high competency.
Guest: Andrew Donawa (3m 11s):
One of the things I would probably say is, you got to know your worth as a person. I feel like sometimes that when we see new emergency managers come in, they're scared to speak up and say, hey, I think we should try this because sometimes, you know, in emergency management, it's all about what the idea is to make sure that we help everybody out. Right? So know your worth is probably one of the biggest things and then another thing would be that you go in confident, right? So you just have to go in confident and try to get some pre-training before you even attempt to go to an emergency management agency. Right? So if it's at least going to get CPR, at least, you know how to do CPR, at least. So you can say, hey, I volunteered with the red cross or I volunteered with whatever VOAD organization there is because sometimes it's really hard. You see people posted on Facebook all the time, hey, I'm trying to get this emergency management job, but they have zero experience in the field. When I say the field, I mean all of emergency services so they have zero experience. Of course it's really hard coming right out of school, getting that experience. Yeah.
Host: John Scardena (4m 12s):
I liked the idea of, oh my goodness. I'm sorry. We're going to have to edit that out. Hold on one second. Holly, you just interrupted my podcast. Can you say hi, say hi podcast. Now what's up. This is Andrew, you need to meet, this is Holly, by the way, for all the people who are listening to the show, hilarious, Holly runs speaking spark. She's a good friend of Doberman. Move it off your face. There you go. Say hi to 20,000 emergency managers and Andrew. Andrew should be one of your speakers on the speaking spark by the way. So I'll connect to you guys, but we will talk later. How about that? All right. Thanks. All right, bye. All right. Should of put that on airplane mode. Sorry for everybody. I don't think we're going to edit that out because that was awesome because we like Holly.
Going back to that perspective of like even like basic training. That's actually what I did when I was in college, I went to the red cross, I was actually an intern with the red cross. I went to like all like the local, like community level trainings, whether it's CPR, first aid, sheltering planning, all that kind of stuff really helped me understand who the field was, like the volunteer perspective and just like meaning people with more experience and be able to network. I think that provides a lot of perspective when you move into a field where largely you're dealing with local populations as volunteers and dealing with different stakeholders, so great call out there and also knowing your worth, you know. I went full back into podcast mode, by the way, that was pretty smooth. So like understanding your worth is a big deal in emergency management because a lot of people don't know what emergency management truly is and to say like, no don't, I'm not gonna apologize. Usually we're the smartest guy in the room, but do we know that and do they know that? At least in my we're the smartest guy in the room, it's not because we were inherently more intelligent, which by the way, I am just kidding. Not kidding. Thank you. You got a laugh out of that. But like really what it is, is like for, for what I do, nobody else does. That makes me the smartest guy in the room for this. Now am I the smartest guy for understanding engineering of my local plant. No, that's why I refer to them. So I think that's really great in terms of some of the products and the processes that you might want to review, what are you going to be looking at of terms of like, okay, like how good is their program?
Guest: Andrew Donawa (7m 4s):
So it all depends on how in depth their program gets, right? So sometimes you get programs where they have a cookie cutter model all over the state, and then sometimes you have programs where it's like, hey, we have enough time, money and staff and employees to make sure that this tailor fits everything that we could possibly think that's going to happen. So I think that's one of the main important parts is, is if you want to be an awesome emergency manager, you got to get somewhere where they are truly invested in emergency management and what it truly means and what it believes.
Host: John Scardena (7m 39s):
Yeah. I think that's, again, a good call out there. Immediately off my head, I'm like thinking like EOP, HMP, THIRA, HVA and using acronyms, everyone's going to be like, hey, can you tell me what those acronyms are? I always get that. Yeah. Maybe in the show notes, but seriously, going through that process. I mean, when you said cookie cutter, my eye starts to Twitch a little bit. What are your thoughts on the difference between cookie cutter and standardization? Because both kind of have a place, but there's pros and cons to both.
Guest: Andrew Donawa (8m 14s):
So my thoughts on cookie cutter is as you know, for example, the agency I'm at now, we have a cookie cutter program that's been in place for who knows how long, their true emergency management agency just started in 2019. So I got here and tried to develop an emergency management agency for them and try to get away from that cookie cutter agency, local operation plan altogether. Of course that's how you and I got connected was, we're trying to make sure that we're out of the cookie cutter. So back to what I was saying is you have the cookie cutter program that maybe the state pushed down for you, and they want you to model what their program is, but they also don't want you just to copy and paste everything that's in that program. So that's, they're saying, Hey, this is how we want it to look, but you need to tailor it to your specific needs.
Host: John Scardena (9m 6s):
Yeah, I think that's exactly what my thought process was, the difference. If a standardization is great, if they say, hey, here's the general model, this is how we build common language. You need to figure out, you need to do analysis, you need to figure out like what, who your specific stakeholders are, what the impacts the local community are. Those are all good cookie cutter. I once saw a plan for a state, I'm trying to keep this generic and half the plan was definitions. I was the emergency manager responding to a large crisis and I get their EOP, and I'm like, why do they have a, why do they have a definition for a volcano in here? They don't have a volcano for 2000 miles. It's not even in… it will not impact their disaster operations on a normal disaster. Right? So I think when we talk about these two things, I mean, we'll talk about that. Like maybe there'll be a trend of this conversation for the sake of our audience. What we're going to be talking about is how do you build standardized programs or looking at best practice without cookie cutter cookie cutter? Again is lack of thoughts, a thought versus requiring you to think in common language, you're going to Sioux city, you're going to another state, there's another processing, another whatever you're going to have to develop the programs there you just mentioned. However that you just you're leaving a job. You're exiting a job where you basically had to build it from ground up. Now I'm also in that same position where, when I was with the federal government, I worked for an agency and I also built that program with five other people from the ground up. So I kind of understand how that works. What were some of your successes and what are your, some of your general gaps where you would say, hey, you should be aware of this. If you're walking into a program and maybe your advice of how to overcome some of those gaps.
Guest: Andrew Donawa (11m 10s):
So I'm in a smaller county right now. So emergency management and smaller counties and rural and rural states are, it's totally different from being down south or being out on the far west where the California wildfires are, stuff like that. So here, I'd say, as an emergency manager, sometimes I feel like you're the catch-all for everything emergency services. So one of the biggest things, when I got here, they honestly were like, hey, we haven't had a radio system update since 83. I was like, what, how does that work? How is that even possible? That was one of my biggest challenges when I first got here was we have to get a new radio system put in for the responders. I feel like on the emergency side, that's one of the major keys is if our responders don't have any way to talk, I can't do my job to get what they need either. So that was one of the big successes was as of yesterday, we put in a brand new state of the line radio system that will be online for every vehicle on every first responder in the county by next week. So that I'd say that was one of the big successes. Then, one of the other projects that we're working on right now is our local operations plans and Disaster Tough and Doberman consulting is the one that's helping us with that. So I'm all about if I don't know how to do it, at least I can find somebody that can help me do it. So that's a big thing for me right now is as I'm transitioning out is to make sure that the local operations plans are being updated and whoever the new emergency manager is sees what the process was and how we're doing it and hopefully that will be a smooth transition for them. Yeah.
Host: John Scardena (12m 50s):
Yeah. We were honored to both have the opportunity to present to you and then to give this review done for the emergency operations plan, especially as knowing you're transitioning out, like as you hand off the reins to the next emergency manager. Now, something I had to deal with from the private sector all the time is trying to convince people again, the sales side of why you need external help. The problem is, I'm a former government guy, ;ike I get it. I know why as a private guy, obviously they're like, okay, you're obviously just trying to sell and that's not really our motivation. So from a public facing side or from the public sector, what was your catalyst to saying okay, besides I'm transitioning out of here to saying okay, I think it's time for us to use a government emergency management where you used somebody else in the private sector.
Guest: Andrew Donawa (13m 58s):
My biggest catalyst for that was, is, hey, I can't work a hundred percent on the local operations plans. I got to work on my threat assessments, I got to work on everything else. Then all the day-to-day operations that are going on. Then when you're a one man crew and you don't have anybody else, but maybe an intern, I was fortunate enough to have two interns this year. That's all you got. So you're, I'm teaching interns try to better themselves for the career field. So when it comes to everything that's piling up on your desk with day-to-day operations and other things that are going on and other plans and meeting with stakeholders, sometimes you just don't have time to devote full 24 hours a day, pretty much to a local operation plan. That's why I decided to make the move to help with consulting.
Host: John Scardena (14m 44s):
Yeah. I think that comes along with understanding the role of a consultant and it's important for the consultant too, I mean, it's kind of like a dirty word in our company to be honest, but it is what it is. Like we want to be a value added. You don't want to be the thing, we want to be a part of the thing, and just one more tool in your toolbox. We both have kind of this funny perspective because people who haven't been in leadership roles will say things like, why don't you just get more interns or why don't you just partner with another public, you know because how dare consulting go in there? They're just for money, even though like, hey, by the way, been doing this forever and very good at it. Like how do you address those people who might say that, who don't come from that leadership background?
Guest: Andrew Donawa (15m 47s):
I would say you really have to sit in the admin shoes when it comes to hiring somebody to do a private thing. So you look at it from the highest to female all the way down to the local levels, and you see that there's consultants there and it's because they don't have enough time to do whatever that may be. Yes. They want to work a hundred percent on it. But guess what? Your consultant, 95% of the time was an emergency manager on the local or the federal level. 95% of the time for my consultants that I've always used, they have been genuine people that actually want to care. They're not in it for the money, of course, we all have to pay our bills, they're in it because they want to help. So that's what you really have to look at. You have to vet these companies of course, and make sure that it's the right pick for you and the right pick for your agency. But that's the biggest thing is they're not in it for me to make millions. I mean, if we are in this job to make millions we're in the wrong business.
Host: John Scardena (16m 45s):
Yeah. I should've gotten in the tech industry. Yeah. You just said something so controversial there that are people like you can always just get more interns. Yeah. I don't want this to be like a pitch for Doberman. People can look up Doberman if they really want to, or whoever they want to work with. But that's basically, if you're looking for value added, that's part of the vetting process. If something can be a value added, if they're not going to give you cookie cutter, then they're probably somebody use while you work on the other things that you need to get done. That's kind of where we'd like to see ourselves as well, we try to build, you know, from that perspective. But any case building a program is tough. You know, working for another federal agency, we didn't have in-house software engineers so we hired a company that gave us COOP software, continuity of operations software, you know, that that kind of stuff happens. I think that's an administrative thing in terms of building your program, whether it was in your current role or into your new, exciting role, what are some benchmarks moments that you're like, okay, this is success for an emergency management organization besides, you know, the career high of coming on the disaster tough podcast?
Guest: Andrew Donawa (18m 5s):
Yeah. So one of the probably successes that I would say benchmark goals was getting to the point where we had our new radio system put in here, at least to be honest with you. I mean, it was one of those things where it was scary to think that I had first responders, I couldn't call for help on the radio. They'd have to respond to calls me and says, hey, I had to call 9-11 last night because my radio didn't work to get out on a CPR in progress call that that's scary. So for the benchmark for me was when we had hit our new budget season and everything was approved and we got to move forward. So I think a lot of emergency managers will say that budget season is probably one of the most stressful times for them because they're trying to get everything that they need or what they think they'll need for the incoming disaster season. Especially out here in the Midwest, tornado sirens is a big thing. So if you don't have tornado sirens and you can't warn people, what are you going to do? So one of the big things is we have tornado sirens in this county, but we don't have enough. So one of the big things that we did is we went with a, a private company that does alerting and it's like IPAWS stuff, stuff like that, that we can actually push out alerts. The weather service at the same time can push out on alert if they're not in that area where there's tornado sirens. So that would probably be another one is just that the preparedness side of things that we can make sure that people are safe
Host: John Scardena (19m 28s):
You're really talking about consultants being support, but as an emergency manager, you're supporting all the other functions of emergencies, including communications for your first responders. You know, every week we have this ad from L3 Harris on near that does radios. We're a huge fan of what they do because not only do they have, again, not just, not just a fanboy over here, get paid by them, but like, they actually have a really crazy capability where it's an indestructible radio where you can help out. But it's also now being able to talk to people's cell phones. It's really great to be able to communicate with people who, when your budget doesn't allow you to buy all these radios and radios are expensive and charging them, when you can have an incident commander with a radio who sends out a message to, you know, someone with a cell phone, because everybody has a cell phone and all of a sudden you create better comms. So I'm a big fan of them and that's where it is and why we endorse them. We've been working with them for, I don't know, about a year and a half now. In fact, big plug to L3 Harris is that they are donating 20 radios for the medical use, USR, urban search and rescue training, that's happening for a friend who's doing that for the national teams. Yeah, it's pretty cool to work with organizations again, this is kind of a public private partnership conversation, but going back to like year end huge win, to be able to go in there and say like, hey, to be able to, if in fact you did the assessment even understand you're not communicating that’s step one. Every after action is talking about coms, huge win for you to, to do that. You're going to have to keep that same methodology as you're moving forward into your other job of identifying gaps, budget constraints, all that kind of stuff. What gets you excited about building programs? The way you want to build programs?
Guest: Andrew Donawa (21m 34s):
I would say what gets me excited is just saying, so I'm not from here. I'm from the south, I'm not from the Midwest area. So just to go in and see how our program's functioning and to see what truly happens on their day in and day out and how, if I can better it, or I can learn from what their experiences are too. Right? So sometimes, you know, you get deployed somewhere that’s not where you’re from like I am now, I'm in Nebraska and I'm moving over to Iowa. One of those things is there's just total polar opposites from the south, from the coming from the south to out here to the Midwest. Ot's just because of the different type of emergencies and sometimes it's slower pace and sometimes it's not. So I think that would be one of the big things is I'm excited just to see how the different programs out here run and how I can better help them and how they can better help me grow.
Host: John Scardena (22m 30s):
That's awesome. It sounds like you keep on highlighting what we've been preaching so long on the show of a collaborative environment. Smartest guy in the room understands who the stakeholders are, understands what their roles are, wants to see that 30,000 foot level. We're going to be talking about that a little bit, already talked about that a little bit, last couple of episodes. I think what you're talking about is really strong stuff here in terms of next steps for emergency managers, as they are looking to build a local programs right now, somebody is listening to this show. Like I have no support, I was given this role, I was really excited, it's really hard, I'm doing budgeting, like might be shaking their head about the pros and cons that you're talking about. How can they find easy wins now to be able to gain support for the work that they want to do in the future
Guest: Andrew Donawa (23m 24s):
Frustrated stakeholders? So one of my big things is, like I said, came in here, new program and the board was like, whoa, we don't need any of this stuff, but you go out and you talk to your police chief. She talked to your fire chief, she talked to your VOAD’s and say, where are our gaps? How can you help me make sure that this is secure before our next big disaster comes? If that means going to meetings with your stakeholders and having your boards come to the meeting, the board of supervisors, county, commissioners, whatever it may be, have them come to that meeting and say, hey, look, this is where our gaps are and we don't want to be vulnerable. We don't want to lose life, we don't want to lose property. We don't want to do any of that so if you trust your stakeholders and have them go and support you a hundred percent, that's when you're going to see change happen. It's not going to happen overnight with one person. It's got to be a group collaborative. You gotta have your stakeholders in there to say, hey, this is what we need, Andrew, John X,Y,Z, they are not kidding when they come and say, hey, we need these things.
Host: John Scardena (24m 28s):
Yeah. I think that's establishing credit is a good thing. I, you just mentioned it without really mentioning, you're allowing them to see how the sausage is made. That is really telling and you're thinking about this deeply, you're using analytics. It's not just oh, you know, something that I kind of call out with people is that when you go to your board and you say, hey, we hadn't make an all hazards plan. What they hear is that emergency manager thinks every hazard is a high priority. We don't think that we know the county flood is going to be the most likely scenario. We have to deal with that. But I think we could articulate that better to people, hey, I think one way to do that is that sausage being made, here are our tiers, this is most likely with the highest impact, protecting life, property and continuity of operations. Hey, having radios so people can talk is not a doomsday thought it is people should just be able to communicate and I think sensible ideas to get people on board and love them to see those wins is a huge call-out for sure. So, all right. We’re going to be editing a lot of this episode between the cost of the phone calls. So we might not edit any of all because you know, that's how our MO is anyways. So moving on to our last topic here, Andrew, obviously you come with a natural mindset of emergency management routine about this collaborative environment. You're now building, you've nailed either built or building multiple teams, you understand the roles of stakeholders and you kind of had to, I've actually seen it personally with you go through the mud sometimes of people that you have to get on board who maybe traditionally don't understand in terms of the emergency manager of the future and how we can do better and moving our field. What would be your advice to the field?
Guest: Andrew Donawa (26m 38s):
My advice to the field would be, have they experience before you take the job. Have they experienced before you say, yeah, I'll be that director or, yea, I'll be the coordinator or, yeah, I'll be the emergency management specialist. Because if you don't have the experience in the role, then whoever your administration is like your bosses and all that stuff, they're going to expect you to know everything and do everything and if you're guessing at that, and then an experienced emergency manager comes in behind you to say, oh, that's wrong, we gotta make sure this is right. That's when all the tension starts to play in is that if you don't have that experience, you got a lot of tension coming back, backlash, stuff like that. So make sure you have the experience and the knowledge. And I'm not saying you have to be the world's best emergency manager, but look at that 33,000 foot view and then go down and break it down into your levels. So make sure you have the experience just because you have a degree in emergency management does not mean you're an emergency manager.
Host: John Scardena (27m 37s):
Oh man. Shots fired. It's like when I say, just cause you have your CEM doesn't mean I think you're a competent in emergency management. So yeah, that's a great call-out and that's kind of been a theme for a lot of emergency managers I've been talking to lately is like, don't be afraid to crawl, walk, run, and allowing yourself to build. A great emergency manager is a great coordinator, a great emergency managers, a great planner, strategic planning. So if you want to get to the running, you should be able to interview or listen to other people or try to get some career advice and say like, how do I get there? You just called it out. So really good thoughts, Andrew, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. I'm going to have you back on the show, maybe without so many interruptions from Holly and speaking spark and also like just random things. So yeah, maybe we'll have you on the show maybe six months after you're in the new role and say like, hey, how's it going? What are your after actions and kind of touch base there. That can be really great. So thank you again for coming on.
Guest: Andrew Donawa (28m 40s):
Thank You so much for letting me be on.
Host: John Scardena (28m 42s):
Yeah. Okay. Everybody switching gears now to the audience, if you liked this episode, which you should have, because Andrew's talking about a lot of really good talking points. He's saying a lot of really good things that are helping you as you build your own programs, whether you're in a very established program or you're looking to build your program, working with stakeholders on trying to find the wins, recognizing that there are going to be gaps in competency with maybe your administration and how to deal with that, and being a true support, hiring government, emergency management, all those great things. I got the smile again from Andrew. So if you're looking at those things and it makes you think a little bit more about emergency management, you got to do a couple of things. You got to give us a five-star rating and subscribe, which we say every single time. So please do that. Don't be a jerk.
Also, if you have a question for Andrew, if you, if you're trying to build a program and you're getting some pushback or you want to build a program, you want to crawl, walk, run, you don't know how to do that. You can do it a couple different ways, the first and best ways to reach out to us on social media. When we promote this episode. So you can say, hey, Andrew, I have a question about X, and so Andrew can respond, or we can respond. You can also have a co if you have a question that you want to ask the group, or you want to send it to us privately, and we hand it over to Andrew or whoever you can send us an email at info@dobermanemg.com and of course, we'll see you next week.
#80 Injects! A Roundtable Discussion with State and Federal Partners in Indiana
Injects! Injects! Injects! This week we explore exercise and training experiences with Jessica Kindig and Jeremy Swartz.
Jessica Kindig comes from Indiana’s Department of Homeland Security & Jeremy Swartz is the FEMA FIT lead assigned to Indiana. They work together as State and Federal partners to provide training.
In this episode, we talk about past exercises in Indiana, such as a long-term power outage caused by an EMP and talk about the need to include stakeholders in emergency management and coordination.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1m 41s):
Welcome back to the show everybody. I am so excited for this week. A couple of weeks ago, we were talking about inter-operability from that NATO conference so you should check out that episode, but really what we were talking about is pulling in stakeholders, people with different competencies, especially as they're moving forward in their selected sphere of influence within emergency management. Today, I'm very honored to talk with Jessica from the state of Indiana and Jeremy from FEMA, he's the fit, you can talk about what a fit is, the federal whatever. We will talk about that in a second. Yes, like I said, informal here. So we're going to have a good conversation talking about how those two pieces work. We have a state perspective, we have a federal perspective, we have to deal with general populations and how do we both train emergency managers and the general population in those exercises. A lot of things to discuss here, Jeremy and Jessica, welcome to the show. Well done. So, okay, Jeremy, what does fit stand for again?
Guest: Jeremy Swartz (2m 48s):
FEMA integration team.
Host: John Scardena (2m 48s):
Integration team, oh man.
Guest: Jeremy Swartz (2m 51s):
We're integrated right with the state emergency managers right in their state office and work with the state on a day-to-day basis.
Host: John Scardena (2m 58s):
Great and so you're at a FEMA region five, which I'm aware of it's in Chicago. So if you're integrated with the state there, when you say a team, how many members of the team are actually with Indiana?
Guest: Jeremy Swartz (3m 12s):
So my team currently has three personnel on it. Other states, you know, the makeup is different for each state, but Indiana has three folks for preparedness specialists, which I am recovery specialist and a grants manager.
Host: John Scardena (3m 26s):
So you got a small team there and then Jessica you're in charge of exercises and so just for the sake of our audience, can you give a perspective of what your scope of work is?
Guest: Jessica Kindig (3m 39s):
Yeah, sure. So for the state of Indiana, we are divided into regions. If you can think about our little state, we have the north, central, and south. In that we have divided that up into districts and so the way that we run our program is we do what we call a crawl, a walk, a run. We work with our planning team, we come up with a hazard and Jeremy and I will talk about how we do that later because Jeremy is involved in that, in assisting us with that. But we talk about hazard, we help write the plan, and then we will seminar. We will workshop that plan, fix it tabletop, or do a couple of games, fix it, go back, do a drill, do a functional fit, fix it. Then we full-scale that plan. So for us, an exercise, one exercise series lasts three years. First year, we're figuring out the plan, writing the plan second year, retraining the plan, right with our tabletop or discussion-based exercises. Then that third year is where we're going to get our hands dirty, get tactical, blow things up, or respond to it, figure out what we didn't know, fix the plan and just continue that cycle.
Host: John Scardena (4m 54s):
That's an awesome way to look at it. I like the three-year perspective on that. Often what I found it, and Jeremy could probably speak to this too, those FEMA days, it was like, hey, every single exercise was a no notice. It was like hurricane, no notice tornado, no notice an earthquake in California. Yeah, exactly I'm like, hey, we usually have 120 hours out for hurricanes. Usually see the tornado coming, but every time it was in the middle of the night, no training, just throw it right in there. I love the idea of well crawl, walk, run. I liked the idea of hazard base. That's really excellent and you said that Jeremy is gonna be talking about in a second, but in terms of historical, if you're on this three-year process that you're working through that, what hazards have you already addressed in Indiana? I'm guessing a flood and maybe tornado.
Guest: Jessica Kindig (5m 47s):
Exactly that kind, so we get our data from our threat hazard identification, risk assessment, so our THIRA data and we hold a now it's called an integrated preparedness planning workshop, where we have private sector, healthcare, feds, state level agencies, the airport, and things like that. We all come together and we talk about what are our top five? So what's the thing your agency manager, local emergency manager, what is the top five things that keep you, you know, you got gaps, you know what happens every year? You need training or you need equipment. How can we almost prove that by taking this plan, let's exercise the plan. We find, oh yeah, if this fire department let's say had another aerial truck, life's life safety and incident stabilization taken care of. So it's a little bit of, of let's all get together, let's figure it out. We do it on that regional level, we do it on a state level and then a regional level, and then the district level. So there's myself, I'm central region, I've got a partner that's north, a partner that settled in the state exercise officer takes care of well, all of the babies and all of the state level stuff as a team, they do that all together.
So everything from damage assessments with severe weather because tornadoes, all of the time, we've done a lot of that. We are currently working towards communications, a communications outage, long-term power outage, and the cascading effects of that, which we're this little exercise we're working on. Now, we're going to stand up a logistical staging area and figure out how all that works. When you talk about whole community approach, you're going to have volunteers that are running the thing. You're going to have EMS that are in the EOC and IMAT team maybe, or 90 helping to do your daily ops, while there's an LSA staff going on. Then you have your commodity points of distribution. So all of the things and cyber, oh my gosh, cyber, cyber, cyber, cyber, cyber, cyber cyber. So we are doing workshops all over the state. We did them virtually through Microsoft teams and we're going to keep doing those, so that is sort of a side project. That was number one hazard on everyone's list was cyber course, then real-world pandemic. There's that part of it too, so those habits we touch on, yes.
Host: John Scardena (8m 37s):
So you hit so many different areas there, but, everybody's listening to this show, you know, probably has the same respect of your pandemic heads, it still has the cyber issues, pandemic edge, so the flooding issues. How does the pandemic, what I would call it now have a constant dual threat scenario or multithread scenario. Are you looking at that? I mean, you said you talked about a hazard before, but now your cascading events from a single issue now rolls into all these other issues. What does that look like in your exercise design?
Guest: Jessica Kindig (9m 15s):
I will tell you that it has somewhat supported the idea of, we don't want to, we have to find that that area between we're pushing, pushing, pushing, and it's not realistic. Right. But holy cow, if 2020, it didn't teach us that realistic is not one at a time we have a pandemic response, right? We have civil unrest response. We have power outages due to whatever in the summertime, all happening all at the same time. So back in the day, in the before times, what I call when I would say, I got a great idea for a scenario, now hear me out. It's something happening that's somewhat complex. That would never happen, Jess, that would never happen. I can tell you now I do not get that any more out of my scenarios. So we just tabled it, a tabletop for a long-term power outage during a heat wave. The power outage was due to a solar event, so space weather, I no longer get that will never happen. That's not a thing. I don't get that anymore. So I think that mentality has somewhat shifted that holy cow, we're in a world where we have to be ready, right. That ready state, but not ready for just that tornado, but that tornado and that cyber attack that happens at the same time and multi trying to multitask respond to with the resources that you have.
Host: John Scardena (10m 54s):
Yeah it's funny that you brought up a space. Whether I get like that topic is usually like very polarized, ironically, because it's dealing with the earth. I will say, though, for those, those naysayers who bring that up though, because inevitably I'm going to get people, emailing me or putting this on social media, real world all the time. We have to look at flights and moving cargo and impacted GPS, weirdly enough. There's a group in DC at an agency that tracks space weather and they have to inform people who own carrier pigeons, these hundred thousand dollars carrier pigeons, they’ve been spaced while there happens there's to the magnetic. Yeah. So people get really angry. They're like, hey, where did my carrier pigeon go? That might seem minor to some, but when you're talking about flights that fly over the pole, when you're talking about cargo ships are automated and growing across seas, and now all of a sudden they can't track it.
Guest: Jessica Kindig (12m 2s):
I don't know where they are, that is exactly right. Yes, it is, so I agree. There are going to be naysayers, but I have to say there would not be a space weather center if it wasn't a thing, you know, and, and a scale of how bad it can be and what that means for communications and the world that we live in, where we've got phones that are little computers every day. Like you were saying, you know, what happens if that trucker that's bringing my commodities into my logistical staging area to help save the lives of my people is running on a GPS with no map cause who uses maps anymore. You know, that everything's lost.
Host: John Scardena (12m 48s):
So when you said long-term power outage, Jeremy, I'm going to get to you, I promise, this is the long-term power outage. Are you talking about a week to week? I mean, what does long-term mean to you? What turns your exercises a month?
Guest: Jessica Kindig (13m 2s):
I think it's funny that you asked, because that was actually a question that was given to me during the tabletop and the way that I approach that is, we are very much disasters in situations that begin and end locally. So a two week power outage could be nothing for my central Indiana folks because they've got the resources, but in two weeks, power outage down south or up north, and those real rural areas could be a big freaking deal. So in the scope of the space weather it was months where things were going to be bad for months. But I did sort of just leave it kind of, open-ended asking questions to that county specifically, it's a long term power outage for you Southern county, which like I said, could be different from other counties that have more resources handy, if that makes any sense.
Host: John Scardena (13m 59s):
Yeah. I would also push back on the two week thing, I mean, you look at the state of Texas, I think after a week of no power during the winter, I don't think any state would be like, heyy, a week of no power. I mean, that impacts everything. That could be due to several issues. I think of a couple, again real-world scenario of long-term power outages, obviously from a hurricane Katrina, one of my favorite stories of all time is when the governor of Louisiana, who she got up there on the national news, if I see any looting we're going to shoot onsite and she's she blasted this out to the media? Well, there was no power in Louisiana, Mississippi, or one other state of the time. So in the tri-state area, no power, nobody's watching this news conference and it was purely for like show. It just cracks me up of like, who's your audience here? You know? So it's really interesting to think about long-term power outages and impacts of critical infrastructure, which is definitely see I'm smoothly moving over to Jeremy here, the federal protective of critical infrastructure. We definitely have the, you're talking about cyber or, but honestly like just systems working at DHS critical infrastructure lists to ESF’s, those community lifelines. Jeremy, were you involved in that response or in that exercise? If you weren't, can you talk about in general, just like power outages and how FEMA approaches getting those systems back online?
Guest: Jeremy Swartz (15m 40s):
Yeah, definitely so I've actually been a part of the state of Indiana’s exercise process since I've been with the state. So during their IPPW, I provided briefings on community lifelines that way their county emergency managers had a better understanding of lifelines and how to incorporate lifelines into their planning efforts, as well as, you know, during a response. Then additionally, working through with them, partnering with Jess and her and the exercise staff Indiana, you know, working through their exercise with respect to what types of resources they might make might need, for example, generators especially with their logistics, staging area exercise, they just conducted to kind of taking a look at that. Maybe suggesting a ways of different ways of doing things with respect to, maybe focus on seed pods at the county level, because that's really the goal that we want to get the counties really up to speed on working seedpods and being able to support the community and then let the state work on the larger logistics, extras, or staging area to support the state overall. So that's pretty much been my role supporting the state with exercises, at least. Then at the larger scale, just looking at power outages in general, trying to identify the types of facilities that, that critical infrastructure within the state that might need a generator in the event, that power is out for an extended during a time. Obviously the Army Corps of engineers is able to do assessments on facilities, and hopefully the state will be able to be able to have the Army Corps come in potentially next year or in the future, we're gonna do a generator assessments on various infrastructure that they identify.
Host: John Scardena (17m 29s):
So, as you're talking and you’re thinking about, as I was seeing my critical infrastructure and human populations, heat waves, cold waves, cold snaps, that kind of stuff. As we look at that, me being from Ohio, so putting on my Midwest hat here for a second, the time of year and the time of day would dramatically impact how we deal with that power outage. If you have a power outage, for whatever reason, we don't need to go into the reason, but power outage happened during an Ohio state football game, mayhem, it would be absolute catastrophe, not just population, but like where did the game go? You'd have couches burning in the streets, you probably blame Michigan…. ran into you know a power station, by the way, if you're a Michigan fan, I'm sorry, you've lost now for 3,598 days, I believe it's the count the last time they won, yeah, hardcore, like I said. So it'd be a big problem during Ohio state game.
Guest: Jeremy Swartz (18m 45s):
Actually though, you know, there was a large power outage back in the Northeast, back several years ago that I actually went through when I lived in Ohio and it was out for at least four days. I think the entire part of the north part of the state, so it may happen in the future, hopefully not like it did then, but you have to be prepared for that.
Host: John Scardena (19m 7s):
Okay. Real talk about the Browns. That game went off, who cares? They suck like, okay. I was in California during a five day power outage due to heavy winds and 90% of our neighborhood was without power for five days, 10% had power. Now as an emergency manager who has a GIS background, so you're talking about a THIRA before that's a threat and hazard identification risk assessment, I like to do an analytically based hazard vulnerability assessment, not just for myself, but for the communities. I think that's really part of that THIRA, really a hazard mitigation, really part of a EOP as well. Anyways so in that has a vulnerability assessment for our house, a localized HVA. We looked at about 15 different things that just to be aware of our hazards. When we bought our house, there was one utility company who has been found liable for like 90% of the wildfires, all our outages. Then 10% of our neighborhood was with the other power company that had much more reliable systems, newer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We moved into that 10% into our area in our neighborhood. That shows that you don't have to be doomsday preppy. I'm like super anti inducing doomsday preppy, but it's just knowing your local hazards and saying, hey, like I'd rather live on top of the Hills. Instead of at the bottom for the flood, I'd rather live at a utility company that's more reliable. It was like my life, but it was definitely impacted all my neighbors. Right. So you're talking a lot of now we're talking like in terms of an exercise design, social vulnerability, you're talking about the local level, man, I'm going off all the checklists off of my head of like how a power outage could impact. I'm sure, you know I'd actually ask people if you're listening to the show, if you have ideas of how a power outage impacts your area and what to do to mitigate that, that'd be excellent to get that on our social media feeds to hear back.
But in terms of a generalized exercise design, you presented Jessica, this three-year concept. Now with Jeremy providing you your background of like, hey, how you've integrated, what are the steps moving forward? I mean, you both already touched on like stakeholders and using them, but if you were going to give advice for emergency managers in the field, first responders, we have a lot of first responders actually listening to this show now, which is really cool. As they learn about and try to work with stakeholders, especially during the exercise design process. What do you think are like the top three priorities to working with them? And what are some gaps that you should be aware of when they're walking into that process? I'll probably start with you Jeremy, go from there.
Guest: Jeremy Swartz (22m 9s):
Well, I would say, they definitely want to take the opportunity to make friends with their counterparts during the exercise because they don't want to wait until the event actually happens to do that. So I think that's the biggest thing I would say is a benefit of exercising is to make those relationships during that process before an incident occurs. Secondly it's a great opportunity during exercises to identify their gaps. You know, as the exercise plays out, how they were able to respond to it and then what gaps do they need to improve? The one, do we need more equipment? Do they need more training? Do they need more personnel? That’s another opportunity that they can identify during an exercise and I think finally just, be willing and open to learn new things and try things in a different way. That's something that I think is beneficial. I've learned things in exercises from other people that I wasn't expecting to learn and, or, or want to do. Until I actually saw them do it, and I think it's a benefit to go through an exercise and be able to learn from other people. So it's, it's all things that are positive to come out of exercise.
Host: John Scardena (23m 25s):
Okay. I'm actually going to pump the brakes on my question because I have a side question, I guess, for Jessica. Yeah. Is, are you going in tangent? That's right. Yeah. If we're adding an inject to our exercise, you were talking about in a process identifying gas, Jeremy just brought it up again and that process of that through your process, you go through, see an issue. You clean, see an issue in clean, which by the way is amazing because I see far too often, those after actions come through and it's like, that's a lot of nice to knows, and nobody does anything about them. Right? It doesn't do anything about it. So if you're going through and you're cleaning that process, you're identifying gaps, maybe gaps in capabilities, maybe gaps in competency, maybe gaps in expectations. And you have the artificiality of, of an exercise, sometimes that doesn't provide the amount of stress that happens on people, the adrenaline that happens to people in a real time, when you identify those gaps with your stakeholders, how do you approach them? I have some experiences of working great with friends and then you, and then the other time you see like these issues, you're like, Ooh, like you really don't even understand your own role either you're new to your role or there's a capability issue. How do you walk through with them without eroding that relationship you just built?
Guest: Jessica Kindig (24m 58s):
I think that is just a super question. So for me to tell.
Host: John Scardena (25m 5s):
One quick question, Jack.
Guest: Jessica Kindig (25m 10s):
That is a good inject. Very good for me. The thing that I have found is that there is a respect thing that's going on here when I'm taking an organization or a jurisdiction, whoever that is through an exercise series, we know up front, we're going to find something somewhere for me, it's very easy to hear or see, oh, so technically they know what to do. They just don't have it written down anywhere. They don't have a plan that judge, depending on who my individuals are that may or may not be how I approach it. It could just be me saying, you guys got this civil unrest thing. You know what to do, it's clear because if I ask you at a tabletop, tactical, operational questions, there's no hesitation. You tell me, boom, boom, boom, boom. We do this and I call him and I do all of the things. But then when I ask you questions that revolve around the planning piece, what does your plan say about this? But if I ask the same question of, well, what happens if this happens? And there's an answer here, but not here then I know. That's how I can say, we need to work on your plan and let me help you with that. But I'm also going to hold them responsible too. So in state, we also have a corrective action program. So as you were saying, the after action reports, the improvement matrix are like, Ooh, okay. Then we've put it up on the shelf and say, we did this exercise and that's all that it is. But what we're trying to do is a corrective action program to say, this is when it's going to be addressed. This plan is going to be, and this is by who, by when, and then we'll tabletop it again. So there's a plan there to make sure that we talk about, we've got to write this plan down because I hate to say it, the guys and gals that have been doing this for as long as I've been alive, aren't going to be doing it forever. There's going to be people coming in, like you said, that are new, that need to be able to pull a plan because they don't know to call the sheriff over here if something in this area goes awry. So the way that I'm speaking to you nine times out of 10 and Jeremy, Jeremy knows, cause I'm dragging him all over the state. This is the way that I am with my, with my folks, because I have found that honesty and respect and saying, this is, you guys are awesome, here's the thing. You guys are great, but you could be better here and I can help you with that and that's my role. That's next level, as far as I'm concerned, doing that corrective action program together, helping. I'm from the state, I'm not here to take over. I'm a resource for you guys and I drag FEMA everywhere. Even if Jeremy's not there, I throw his name out there because I'm like then Jeremy Short’s at FEMA.gov can help.
Host: John Scardena (28m 19s):
It sounds like a party, I'll just give it in the back of the back of the truck if I can and just tag along. So you're talking about honesty, you're talking about respect, you're talking about just calling it out for what it is, Jeremy, I'm going to piggyback off of that. We're going on a full inject here. Right? So we're all like I would say 90% of this field is a type personalities, right? We all think we're the alpha. We all think we're the top dog, the head honcho, the big cheese numerator now. Right? Historically the field, again, I've been addressing this quite a bit on the show and most of the conferences I've been going to. Before DHS, before these college programs, you know, the field is definitely changing, but historically it field is led by retired fire and police who come from a command and control an emergency management's all about collaborate and cooperate, which is what Jessica is talking about. So as you're approaching people and you're saying, hey, you're awesome, but. I love the thought by Jessica actually, hey, let me be, let me be a support and a value added and not just tell you your problem, but also provide a solution, which is I'm a big fan of. As you're dealing with these different personality types, do inherently walk away saying, okay, they, their pride level is pretty high here, I'm going to need to have a contingency plan because they can't recognize their gap. Or if, for whatever reason that relationship as you're talking to them, you're able to see that they're putting up those walls again. How do you as a fed, by the way, going down to the golf big FEMA on my shirt, not very popular. How do you overcome maybe initially at the exercise or as you're having to approach capabilities again, piggy backing up for Jessica said, oh, how are you as the federal guy in the room overcoming, hey, I'm big brother.
Guest: Jeremy Swartz (30m 27s):
Yeah. So it's actually a great question. I've been with the state now, I've been in Indiana here now for going on to a two point plus years here in the state of Indiana. So initially, I met those robot blocks. I've come across those barriers and I had challenges dealing with the individuals at the state and local level, but throughout my time, unfortunately with COVID that allowed me to build and foster my relationship here with the state, you know, it wasn't something that was going to happen overnight. But through the course of the last two years, I've built relationships at the state level. I've been able to get out to the county level and build relationships at the county level that, they do have that feeling that I'm from the fed and I'm here to help that, we don't want that help from the federal government, but truly I'm here in a supportive role and be able to explain that to them in a way that helps them understand that I'm just here to offer suggestions, waste on, make improvements, reduce your gaps and increase your resiliency. I think through time it has helped to build relationships throughout the state at the county level and at the state level. I just want to say with my other federal agencies that are in the area too because they have a dog in the fight as well. So bringing all those players together, other federal agencies, the private sector and the local level, that whole community approach to training, exercise, planning, preparedness, it's something that just doesn't happen overnight. It's a work in progress and it will continue to be a work in progress for years to come. Unfortunately. But, as long as people are willing to be supportive, make change, identify their ways to improve, I think that everybody will eventually be successful.
Host: John Scardena (32m 23s):
Yeah. So what you're both talking about is this Axiom. So Rodney Melsick, like I call him the godfather of planning because he's still secretly like influencing all the planners around the country, even though retired, he's definitely the godfather there, but he has an Axiom that says the process is more important than the product. I have taken that for myself, seeing as a business owner and saying like, hey, your outcome is important. So what I say from my Axiom is the process is just as important as the outcome, still have to have good outcomes. While you're really both talking about is that process and trying to get to win as in win, and really like, you know, basically trying to take on the Ohio state football team methodology of just content winning, right. Improvement and winning. Until you get to a ball game, we're not to talk about that. That hurts, the reality here is just putting in my 2 cents. I'm one of those guys who always provides my opinion. Yeah. Dealing with a bunch of personality types, dealing with a bunch of different competency levels and experience, exercised. The more you can work with people time, you say resiliency, Jeremy, I say Disaster Tough, like this is how you build disaster tough communities. I don't want to have to bounce back, that's like my end state. I want to not have to have a disaster and really the best way to do that is everybody coming to the table. You already know them by first name and Jessica, Jeremy and John, get in a car and get to go meet everybody because you guys sound super cool. I'm in St. Louis, I'm not too far away. No. Yeah. Great. Yeah. So, but like seriously, that's how it is. I also think it's really important that emergency managers, sometimes emergency managers think they have a monopoly on different skillsets. Really you can take it a project manager and throw them into emergency management and they'd probably be very effective. You could take someone who has an economics background, like our chief operations person here, Doberman, Franzie, she's very good at understanding analytics of a disaster. So walking through that and just understanding different skill sets and how they apply, we could probably better as emergency managers or at least the best emergency managers are truly the best coordinators and building relationships.
Guest: Jessica Kindig (35m 3s):
It’s so funny if I may. It's so funny, Jeremy, I'm flashing back to this very similar conversation in which we've been focusing, so we worked together on the FEMA region five youth preparedness council. Last year we were talking about how you don't have to have a degree in Homeland security to make a difference in emergency management. You can have a computer background, you can have a writing background, you can have all these different backgrounds and there's a place for everybody somewhere so long as your point, John, we open our minds, we have the same end goal. We get to the table and we talk and that's exactly right.
Host: John Scardena (35m 41s):
Yeah, I agree with that and I agree that diverse backgrounds. I'm not a person who usually brings up diversity because I think the more you focus on that, the more divisive it actually becomes just by looking at like the social vulnerability index. There's a really good book called social vulnerability that talks about that, but a diverse, just understanding that you should have a diverse backgrounds and opinions and cultures does help, but focusing on is totally different thing. But understanding then the benefit that it has is incredibly important. I will say that our emergency managers of the future, like the degrees that are starting to be produced, and the outcome is a guy who has two degrees in emergency management. I am a fan of that. I think emergency management in terms of an academic perspective has to deal with the stress of making big decisions from afar. It's very different than your first responder. You're pulling people directly out of the mud, you have to be able to see a dot on the map and say, that's a person. From a guy who works 16, 20 hour days for weeks on end during responses, you have to be able to handle that stress and understanding the laws and the policies. There's a lot of Stafford act, all that stuff that specifically applies. So yes. Bring your background, bring your knowledge, be a value added. Also get more training from Doberman, from the government, from the state. Good calls out. Good call out. Well, as we wrap up here, I just want to give both Jessica first, you, and then Jeremy, your final thoughts on how you can or what the field can take from both your perspectives because again, background and perspectives, different perspectives, and really what you would hope to see in the field moving forward, Jessica?
Guest: Jessica Kindig (37m 43s):
Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you for allowing me to chit chat with you about this topic. I think for me, it's really kind of what we've already talked about is just breaking down this wall of yes, I'm from the state, I'm not here to take over. I think that, we get lost in semantics of oh yeah, the whole community approach, but there is something to that because disasters begin and end locally in that community before maybe I at the state or, or Jeremy, you know, we even know that something's going on. So I think if we can just collaborate and, and see me as a resource, I'm not threat. I'm not, I hang my ego up it's and let's just be open and be honest, let's get ready. Let's be disaster tough for that thing that's coming that we don't maybe know yay that we don't maybe know is coming, but we can be ready for it if we just sit down, we talk about these things, we go through these exercises, we train and we plan together. We're already on the team before the game even starts and we're already hooked up. We've got those relationships and we're good to go. That's, what's going to stabilize that incident. That's, what's going to save lives and that's what we're here for. Emergency management is hard, so why not bring more people to the game.
Host: John Scardena (39m 3s):
Yeah. One team, one fight. I love that idea. Alright, perfect. Jeremy,
Guest: Jeremy Swartz (39m 9s):
I just think as the profession, emergency managements going to continue to be refined and increase its foothold in, in society in the years to come. With the changing of disasters, constantly impacting the country, our territories, etc. We're seeing hurricanes, wildfires, everything that's going on right now, we're going to be looking for that collaborative individual that wants to take on a role, at that 30,000 foot. It has division of a 30,000 foot person who can see the whole picture, and be able to go out or respond to an incident in ways that support those first responders on the ground to increase their response and then the recovery aspect of being able to recover better from that incident when it happened. So emergency management suspect continue to be a field that I think if you're coming into it now you're going to really, yeah, have a brighter better future going forward.
Host: John Scardena (40m 19s):
I love that. I love the both of those perspectives there. Talk about like throwing LOBs to each other, knocking out of the park, kind of it shows that both of you from the state and from the federal perspective are looking at this both from your different angles, but you're able to build off each other. That's really what you're talking about here and that's really the message of both emergency management and this episode. We're probably going to have to come up with a clever name because we hit on several different topics, whether it's from a power outages to a house taping. Amazing. I love that. You both agree with that. Yeah. Go buckeyes. Yeah. Michigan sucks. I think that's the whole phrase. Yeah. So we covered a lot of topics and you're talking really about big picture stuff.
You're talking about 30,000 foot level, Jeremy, and then you both just gave a powerful examples of collaborating with other people at that 30,000 foot level. Being able to see all the stakeholders that you'll be involved with, those exercises that you do really help identify who your key stakeholders are, the contingency plans, the gaps to be able to refine, refine, refine. I'm a big fan of that. So congratulations to you both for doing well. I'll probably see on the road, jump in the back of your SUV here. So definitely going to have you get both back on the show sometime because we talk about exercises and a lot, and I think there's a lot more to be said about that.
So thank you so much for coming on the show. If you liked the show which you should have, this is my shameless plug. You need to give us a five-star rating, you need to subscribe, you need to ask us a question. If you're on social media, whether it's LinkedIn or Instagram, Facebook, whatever, for the Disaster Podcasts, or you have a question about our work or the Doberman Emergency Management, reach out to us, ask a question. If you have a follow-up, you can always send us an email. We get lots of emails from info@dobermanemg.com, but please ask the question on social media and let Jessica or Jeremy answer directly. We'll see you next week.
#79 The Next Level in Earthquake Planning: A Roundtable Discussion with FEMA Region's X, IX, IIIV
A roundtable discussion with FEMA R-X Amanda Siok, FEMA R-IX Anne Rosinski, and FEMA R-VIII Sean McGowan.
The complexity of earthquake planning takes a wholistic approach because earthquakes can impact the full spectrum of emergency management practice (life, property, and continuity of operations). FEMA earthquake experts from Region’s X, IX, and IIIV talk about what they are doing to plan for (and mitigate) these events.
This is truly a roundtable discussion and a great example of emergency management practice because our three guests are each experts and representatives for their FEMA Region, yet bring a different perspective to the topic of earthquake safety.
FEMA Region X: Amanda Siok is an urban planner
FEMA Region IX: Anne Rosinski is a geologist
FEMA Region VIII: Sean McGowan is an engineer
By bringing their unique perspectives to the table to FEMA earthquake mitigation, safety, planning, and recovery- they are each able to focus on different aspects of the topic while adding value as a whole, working together to reduce risk for the communities they serve.
This Podcast had moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1 min 41s):
Welcome back to the show everybody, it's your host, John Scardena. Amanda, this is a long time coming, we had Amanda on the show a year ago, we were talking about earthquake safety and she covered all these really great areas. We said we were going to have her back on the show. We are, which is really great. She is the Leslie Knope of earthquakes, AKA the Buffalo bill of earthquakes, if you saw the last episode, you can call her BB for short. She's super cool, but she's definitely an earthquake expert out of there at re FEMA region 10. We were talking, we're collaborating about this episode and we've been talking a lot about interoperability lately and she's like, hey, I have an urban planning background, but I have two really great partners counterparts and FEMA region nine with Anne and FEMA region eight, I believe with Sean, and they have respectively geology and engineering background. So even in the singular topic of earthquake safety, we have all these different perspectives that we can bring in. So I'm really excited for this episode group. Welcome to the show.
Guest: Amanda Siok (2m 39s):
Thank you. Nice to be here.
Guest: Anne Rosinski (2m 39s):
Thank you.
Host: John Scardena (2m 40s):
Yeah, of course. So Amanda, you being the, one of the three points here in this group, can you introduce your counterparts for the show?
Guest: Amanda Siok (2m 51s):
Yes. I would love to introduce my counterparts. So the three of us are the represent the collective Western half of the U S with FEMA and we are all one man shops for FEMA's earthquake program in the regions. So I'm in region 10, which is Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska. We've got a whole bunch of earthquake issues there and then I'll kick it over to, oh, and I guess you said I'm an urban planner. I have a geology background, also English major, but so I feel like I'm really good at helping talk about like the social interdependencies on infrastructure and kind of linking the people and the built environment together. I'll kick it over to Anne to introduce herself in region nine
Guest: Anne Rosinski (3m 46s):
I'm the earthquake program manager in region nine and region nine is California, Arizona, Nevada, but also Hawaii Guam, the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana islands and American Samoa. I have a master's in engineering geology, and I also have an English degree So Leslie Knope and I have that in common, but one of the things that's great about region nine is we have pretty much all different types of earthquake hazards. We have based in a range in Nevada. We have strike slip, San Andreas, we have subduction, we have hotspot, we have volcanic. So never a dull moment here in region nine.
Host: John Scardena (4m 27s):
All right, wait, wait, Sean. First, are you an English major?
Guest: Sean McGowan (4m 32s):
Far from it? I'm Sean McGowan and I'm a structural engineer and I'm the earthquake program engineering for a FEMA region 8. We're based in Denver, Colorado, and our states include Colorado, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, and north and South Dakota. Yeah, happy to be here and love working with this team.
Host: John Scardena (4m 49s):
That's awesome. Yeah in fact, I did a little bit of research after I talked with Amanda. Last time you guys are really trying to work on some innovative approaches and earthquake safety and understanding building codes and trying to move communities forward towards better earthquake safety. Now as a guy who lives in St. Louis, I'm definitely east of all three of you largest, I believe liquefaction zone in the continental US, whereas our earthquake person here, but maybe I can represent from the private sector side. So like just trying to think of earthquake safety and moving that forward. Maybe actually I'll go back the other way this time. So Shawn, can you talk about some of the innovative approaches that you guys have been trying to do the three of you together?
Guest: Sean McGowan (5m 40s):
Yeah, thanks for asking. So I think we'll realize pretty early on, but as Amanda said, I think Anne's the only full time earthquake program manager and the regional offices and the point of having a regional offices to have a closer connection with the states in that area. But then we realized pretty quickly there's a lot to do and the risk is huge, but there's only one of us at most in our offices. So we realized pretty quickly, hey, we have complimentary skillsets. So how do we work together? Instead of saying, let me try to learn about geology and urban planning and how it all fits together. Like why don't I lean on my peers? Then they can lean on me when it's their turn and really something we really work hard to make sure that wherever you're making the wheel and we make sure that we're leveraging each other and just saying, hey, I know it's short notice, can you help me out with something? Or, hey, do you know anything about building codes or how about this geology or what was your planning take on this? That's a really cool dynamic way to really bounce ideas off each other. I think it's kind of how government's supposed to work and we're pretty excited about that.
Host: John Scardena (6m 34s):
That's awesome. So I'm going to throw FEMA under the bus. It probably not a good idea if we're talking about lots of human people, but historically like I've been saying very publicly said it to the DOD, said it to NATO recently saying to FEMA, in fact, Brock long said to himself on this podcast, that FEMA is really a funding organization. What you three are trying to do is what I would say is truly emergency management of looking at it from an emergency management perspective and not just a grants program. So maybe could you kind of go through, and I'm not talking about the grant side, but from like actually like mitigating earthquakes, what are some of the projects that you guys have been working on together?
Guest: Anne Rosinski (7m 19s):
So we look at it from different perspectives. So one of the projects I've been working on is earthquake insurance and I'm not an earthquake insurance expert, but I have earthquake insurance myself. I realized, and I live in the bay area in San Francisco and earthquake, we were lucky in California that we actually have the California earthquake authority. We have formal earthquake insurance pathway, but the other states don't have that as much. But that doesn't mean that earthquake insurance is out of reach and earthquakes can wreck your finances. What we want to do is encourage people to look into what their options are, because whether you're a homeowner or a renter, whether you're a student or a, you have a young family, or you're retired, look at what your circumstances are and what you have to lose. You can do a lot to give yourself a cushion. So one of the great things is that there are different policies. There's a new policy type of policy out there called parametric and it's a flat rate. It's just something that you pay a certain amount every month and if you are in an area where a certain level of earthquake shaking happens, you get a payout and you can use it on anything. The thing about earthquakes is that even if you're structured, your home is safe and nothing is damaged, the rest of the community might be, and it might. So I live in Oakland, our office is in Oakland and I live in San Francisco. So if I had to get to the office and the bay bridge is out, all of a sudden, my commute becomes a lot more expensive. So having that cushion is one, you know, one great resource to have. So that's one project. Sean has also been working on unreinforced masonry there. He's got really done a great job starting that project and grassroots and building community support. Amanda's been doing a lot with building codes and helping to retrofit schools. So all of these topics are important to all of our regions, but each one of us is taking the lead on one of those topics and then we can share them across. The earthquake insurance project, we developed a little one-page graphic, and the idea was to create something that was a template that can be used in the other states for their earthquake insurance needs as well. So really trying to help each other and expand on what we can need to do.
Host: John Scardena (9m 54s):
So tangent number one, right? Inject. We'll call it an inject because the audience, going out to the wildfires in California and responding to those, I was out there most recently in July Cal OES gave me a call and said, hey, I heard you going to be with working with a tribe, can you stop by and review some stuff for us? I was lucky enough to go over there and look at that, but a big problem we've had historically in time on insurance, on earthquake safety is, most people don't have fire wildfire insurance in California. At least they didn't until a recent law was passed and that's a big issue. You know, a small problem becomes a very big problem. When you have a big problem becomes catastrophic without the support of systems. I'm going to round this whole collaborative environment back to the Buffalo bill. I should stop calling you, it's an endearing term. Amanda you nodded, which means you recognize the title. Anyways, Amanda, I'm going to bring it back to you and say, okay, insurance has a major issue, but also there's things to do to like prevent with wildfires clearing debris around your house for 20 meters dramatically increases your chance to stay you. I talked a little bit about this before with building codes, our building codes on, especially on an individual level, not even critical infrastructure, how can that change the impact levels of an, of a major earthquake?
Guest: Amanda Siok (11m 25s):
Yeah. So great question. Building codes are often intimidating to talk about, right? I'm not a structural engineer. For the longest time, I've heard people say, well, you have to look at the codes and I'm like, I, how do I, how, what, where, what are the codes? Where do I even look, you know, they're frequently referred to as, well, according to ASCE 7-16, which is the American society of civil engineers and that is the chapter of codes, because there are so many that talk about like lateral loading forces specific to tsunamis. So I only know that because Sean is a structural engineer and he's been like, oh yeah, well, if you, you know, he can point me to what these resources are. For starters in emergency management, so much of planning is done by either the emergency manager or by the community planner and none of those people, neither of those people are engineers or building officials. So for starters, bringing your building official to the table to talk about emergency management is so important. So you should not, as an emergency manager, be expected to learn all of the things about codes you bring in the expert that that's what emergency managers do, right?
You bring in the smart people. But to that point, FEMA, I think it was this week, just released a fact sheet on like five reasons why building codes matter to you and it gets into like social and economic interdependencies on infrastructure. I think that specific article that FEMA pushed out is specific to flooding for the most part for earthquake hazards, building codes are bare minimums focused on life safety. So what that means is that building codes are designed to the structures, designed to not collapse. So it's meant so that you won't die in an earthquake. But that being said, older buildings like unreinforced masonry buildings or soft story structures, those were designed before we really fully understood the performance of buildings in earthquakes, right? Like science has advanced. So we know that there's all these older buildings that need to be reinforced or retrofitted to be able to withstand earthquakes. But then there's also current guidance on, well, what should building codes be for, for earthquakes? FEMA has the new her provisions, which I have tried to read. I'm not an engineer, too much for me, but as an emergency manager, I am able to say to the community, this is what you should adopt, bring in your building official to talk about how we can implement this and FEMA can help with training. The mind can help you with code analysis to know where your weaknesses are and what opportunities there are. But then also as a result of the Christchurch earthquake, and I know where I'm going. Okay. So as a result of what happened, yeah, just listen to this.
As you fall asleep, after Christchurch earthquake happened in New Zealand, we saw that the buildings, the death toll was minimal for the most part, the deaths that did happen were around a few unreinforced masonry buildings, but they had to demolish so many structures and then the demolition costs, and the landfill costs that were huge. NEHRP, which sounds like a disease, but it's the national earthquake hazard reduction program, that is composed of FEMA and NIST and USGS and the NSF, they were told by Congress, you need to look into this issue of building performance. Why are we designing buildings that aren't with standing earthquake shaking? Why aren't we thinking about functional recovery is what they call it or being operational after the earthquake. So this guidance came out again, very engineering heavy, but the point of it was that we need to be considering more than just structural performance with our building codes and modern building codes don't do that. So it was really important that as emergency managers, we bring in our stakeholders to talk about, okay, post earthquake, what do we want to be operational? How much downtime are we willing to accept? And if we're not going to change our codes and build stronger and smarter, then how are we planning for response and recovery because we know how much damage and impacts to be expected.
Guest: Anne Rosinski (16m 44s):
Okay. If I could add onto that, I think it's also, it also goes to social equity because we know that socially vulnerable populations are disproportionately affected. And in all of our, in the west coast, you know, real estate and rent is at a premium it's bananas, and that's just under normal conditions. So if, to the extent that we can improve our building stock through better building back better, and building back from this building, not even just building back, but fright from the base build back better. So that things survive. Then we have a housing stock that's going to be reliable before, during and after because people are going to be displaced.
Guest: Anne Rosinski (17m 28s):
So it's not just about the earthquake, it's not just about when it happens. It's about before and after as well and it is something that it only takes. It’s only a few pennies on the dollar, more in terms of costs to do that. But what you achieve from that is tremendous and I think it's, we really need to emphasize to people, earthquakes are different from other parallels. They will simultaneously and instantaneously impact an entire region of fire will happen. You might have a lightning strike and it can spread very rapidly. Or, you could have a flood that will evolve over time, but you can see the weather forecast, it's coming, earthquakes are truly no notice and the impact that they have it say simultaneously installed instantaneously can devastate a region. So if we can get people to do this at a time, it's a great model.
Host: John Scardena (18m 25s):
I need to stop you. I watched San Andreas and excuse me, ma'am, amazing technology out there that can tell us that at that the 10 is coming.
Guest: Anne Rosinski (18m 36s):
That’s right.
Host: John Scardena (18m 37s):
Yeah, that's a good point and I'm sure John's going to jump in here real quick. I could tell the thinker, all three of you are thinkers, so this is good, so my perspective of emergency management is if I had to give a definition, I tell people, emergency management is protecting life, property, and continuity of operations. In the last three minutes, both of you, Leslie Knope, Amanda Siack, you just hit on all three of those systems simultaneously. In terms of a natural disaster, I'm trying to think of like another one that would hit all three instantaneously.
There's the man-made stuff that we definitely look at that can do all of that instantaneously, including now, we're looking at other systems like cyber, you turn off the power and you inflict a lot of pain to a hospital system that can affect life, property and continuity operations, for sure. But you knowthis is a truly unique situation that we're having to deal with. I will say that maybe I'll just go round and round Robin, back to Sean here. The issue is you have, well, how do I say this? You have a friend on your side, which is typically not on your side, which is social media. And social media is allowing other people to realize earthquakes happen all the time. I responded to Haiti this summer, that was an earthquake event and it was also a definitely a manmade incident as well, because the gangs, and you can look at that podcast episode, if everybody's wanting to know more about what happened there, but in terms of the earthquake building codes mattered a lot. So social media is a big proponent of helping you out, realizing it happens. But historically earthquakes are so far apart, it's hard to get traction. I mean, when you're earthquake country, it's a lot easier, but St. Louis, for example, where I live is sitting on top of a very vulnerable piece of land and they build a city there and it's like, oh, you know, this could be a problem in the future. So how do you work with stakeholders on, and maybe internal and external of saying, hey, earthquakes important because they're there. Notice, unlike San Andreas, that documentary was a really good documentary, by the way….
Guest: Sean McGowan (21m 13s):
Twitching right now.
Host: John Scardena (21m 16s):
Oh my gosh, there's another podcast called movie art. That's coming out where we go through all the disasters that happen. All the events that happen in San Andreas, including by the way, this a huge tangent, how he left his post and stole federal vehicles to go save his family and San Andreas too, we'll be escaping from Santa Clara because he's totally stealing all the anyways side note. So how do you convince all these people that this is really important stuff because hey, you could be like the guy on the volcano, right. I've lived here for 40 years, it's never gone. Why do I have to leave Mount St. Helens? How do you convince people that this is really important?
Guest: Sean McGowan (22m 1s):
To some extent, that is the question, because, I can throw structural engineering facts at people. I can say, hey, building codes were never meant to be aspirational and they're supposed to be acceptable. That's the minimum that you're supposed to be getting. I think we treat building codes like, oh, if you've done that, you're saying, as Amanda pointed it out, like some sister agencies are working hard on that issue. I think helping spread the word that even current buildings aren't necessarily going to meet the standard of what we want as a resilient community. I think that's really important and then say, now imagine your brick building that was built in the sixties. You might be living in a death trap rather than just freak people out and say, hey, your family is going to die in an earthquake. It's much more effective to say, we understand, we know you're at risk. We want to share this information. We know you're just trying to make like pay bills. You're in the middle of a pandemic, maybe you're out of a job. Like here's some resources, funding availability, here's like low cost options to do things in your home that can make it safer. I think it's always about, hey, here's the problem. But then how do we link you to the solution? I think that's like you mentioned, FEMA has a pretty decent size checkbook for grant programs. I think it's sort of an old school mentality of, we just give out checks and we walk away. I think maybe that's old FEMA, where's new FEMA is like, hey, we have a check, we walk alongside with you and we say, here's how to put that money to good use and work with states on technical assistance. You know, we're doing that right now with the state of Utah where we're giving them money to work on. I mean, forced masonry buildings, which are old brick buildings that don't have steel rebar in them to hold them together.
During earthquakes, they're vulnerable to earthquakes. We say, hey, here's some money to help fix that problem. But also like I'm an engineer. My colleagues are engineers that have been planners, GIS folks. How do we bring a team to walk with you on that process and help you make the best use of that taxpayer money and actually keep people safe and make them, we ultimately want everybody to sleep at night and you know, I'm a father. I want my kids safe for my kids school safe and that's all anybody wants. It's just to be able to sleep at night knowing that their family's taken care of.
Host: John Scardena (23m 53s):
Yeah. I think you're hitting on a chord there for sure, you brought this up to pennies on the dollar of like impact versus, so in fact, Amanda brought this up on the previous episode, the church of Jesus Christ, latter day saints, the temple there right in south salt lake and I'm a member of the faith. So I got to see all these cool pictures that they talked about it recently. I was like, oh, hey, Amanda is talking about it, FEMA's talking about it, and seeing like the actual updates on the pictures. It's like, okay, this is really important to these, to these people to make sure that buildings last lasts forever as what they're saying. Right. You have unreal UN unenforced, masonry buildings, and you have to add systems to be able to make them last longer. I was just in LA EOC, just added up a bunch of things the last couple of years, as they redid their facility, to be able to deal with earthquakes. So people are starting to turn to look at it, whether it's, I don't know if it's private sector, but, churches are looking at it, state agencies are looking at it, local agencies are looking at it. People don't want their stuff to be impacted. I think that's a really easy pitch, to be honest, it's like, do you want your life to be difficult and annoying and going with a bunch of litigation and maybe death, or do you want to like go to be out at night? I think president Nelson said it himself, the leader of the church, he's like, I want to go into the temple and not have an issue. I would just want to be safe in there. I think that's a great way to look at things but going with.
Guest: Amanda Siok (25m 36s):
And then I'm going to add something in there. Sorry to interrupt you. But I think right now is there there's this really, this past year has been insane. I mean, with COVID and the wildfires and John responded to an earthquake, you know, in the first few weeks of the pandemic, but there is this global attention being given to resilience right now. Most of it is through the lens of climate change, right? So we're seeing a higher frequency of disasters. We're seeing higher intensity storms, and there is this, especially within the US, there is this attention being given to infrastructure and resilience to climate change. A lot of that focuses on reducing carbon emissions or strengthening buildings for climate change and my dream here is that we can integrate seismic reinforcements into that. So if you are reducing carbon emissions of a building and working on installation in it, so that it is more efficient with heating and cooling, make sure the roof frame is connected to the wall frame, seismic issue right there. So, we don't have to do seismic projects separate from flood separate from climate change, separate from wildfire. We should be looking more holistically at multi-benefit mitigation, multi hazard mitigation, and you know, FEMA right now. Granted, this is not a FEMA only issue, this is a community local, it starts local, right. But FEMA has so much money in mitigation right now. So because of the COVID declaration, there was like $3.4 billion given through hazard mitigation grant program funds HMGP and our current brick building resilient infrastructure and communities grant is a billion dollars. So as a mitigator, we'd been asking for money for so long and we finally have it. I'm terrified that all of this money is going to go strictly to flooding and that if you want to lead the bureaucratic retrofits, like I support it, but it's just right now, there is money available. It's really important for local emergency managers to be applying for this money, like show that you have a need. If there isn't enough money from FEMA that will volumes, that there's not enough money to solve this issue.
Guest: Anne Rosinski (28m 44s):
If I could, and this is how, Sean and Amanda and I work, we finish each other's sentences and we spark off each other. So to add to what Amanda said, there is no such thing as earthquake weather, but climate change does have some connections to earthquake. So as sea level rises perils liquefaction, earthquake induced, ground failure, the Waka groundwater becomes more shallow, farther inwards, so that area that's impacted by liquefaction increases. So tying this back to the funding, that's available, building resilient infrastructure, community brick, you know, that you can tie together climate change challenges like sea level rise to seismic issues. You can get additional points on your application by addressing those multi housers approaches and also nature-based solutions. I've always been fascinated by the use of different by botanical solutions, like to reinforce stream banks and things like that. Those, some of those techniques could be used for other types of ground failure as well. So being creative, thinking about how some of those other issues might affect you and even something like is as the climate changes and warming occurs. There's also permafrost, that's melting. So a lot of foundations in areas like Alaska, where they designed foundations to address permafrost and be, you know, as the ground melts. So then there's potential for liquefaction. Again, this comes back to building codes because building codes required to do a site investigation so that when you're designing your structure, you know exactly what you're designing for and you can get more bang for your buck.
Host: John Scardena (30m 35s):
Okay. Then I'm going to ask you the up question to that. You were talking about liquefaction, by the way, my ear is always like, you know, because St. Louis guy over here, look for facts and yeah. You talk about liquefaction I'd think of was in 1978, Alaska that they had a major issue there basically 78, 64. No that's thanks. Thank you, Leslie. No. Okay. So Amanda the thought process in there is with piggybacking off of what Amanda said, I'm an emergency manager, right? Let's say I'm an emergency manager at a county in California. You're my region 9 counterpart. Great Shakeout is happening, we got that plug, thanks for Sean. We can talk about that in a second, but telling people to go under a desk and deal with shaking is clearly not enough. What can emergency managers do right now to say, hey, I don't even know you say, what liquefaction is, someone's going to overview their bottle of water. They don't even know what you mean by that. There's really basic language that is missing. I will say caveat watch Amanda's episode from last year, you know what that means, but how can they start learning right now, especially while we're thinking about earthquakes.
Guest: Anne Rosinski (32m 3s):
That's a great question. Before I answer that, I do want to give a shout out to you. Since you keep sending your mention, you're in St. Louis. We have colleagues across the country. So even though the three of us are rec regions, eight, nine, and ten, we have colleagues in all the other regions. So Shape Coma, who's in region seven, and we have Art Moore in region six and Jose LeBron who's in up in region two, who works with all the challenges in Puerto Rico. Across the country, big and small, all of our earthquake program managers are really knowledgeable. I just want to emphasize in this podcast, even though we're on the west coast, our counterparts and the other, the rest of FEMA are just an headquarters. They’re a great group. But to come back to your question too, there's a lot of great resources out there and what emergency managers can do. There are scenarios, so for instance, there's the USDS hassled scenarios for Cascadia, which I'm sure you've heard of the Cascadia subduction zone. We have the hay wired scenario and those scenarios have improved over time. They talk not just about, what's likely to happen with the earthquake in terms of the shaking and the ground failure, but what are the social impacts? So what they noticed the value of those scenarios has expanded over time because they talk about those impacts and they include dependencies that talk about the specific types of damage.
So as an emergency manager, I would look at those things. I would pull off the haywire scenario and I'd look and see something like, well, one of the dependencies talks about the number of buildings that have in the number of people that are going to get trapped in elevators. So as an emergency manager, it may be meet with your public safety team, your GIS team, your fire chief, get together and say, okay, let's see if we can map out where are the tall buildings? Because with elevators buildings that are taller than seven stories, the elevators tend to be electric. They have to be, but if they're a shorter building, seven or fewer stories, they tend to be, the elevators are typically pneumatic. So when the power goes out, the elevator's just going to go back down to the first floor. So as an emergency manager, you can start thinking ahead of time, okay. Where are the tall buildings? Where are the buildings that are likely to where people are going to be trapped? What is our game plan? You know, are there are those hospitals? Hospitals are built to a different standard, but start thinking about these so you can also activities like building inventory. That's a vanilla baseline. I call it the sort of gateway drug to mitigation, because you have to know where your hazard is, you have to know your vulnerabilities. Building inventory is a great place to start and one of the fields you can add is the age, and so older buildings tend to be shorter because as engineering has improved buildings have gotten taller. So there's a lot of information that there are lots of different ways you can slice and dice that information ahead of time and be making more informed decisions and planning what your game plan is going to be. You can be thinking ahead of time, it's helping you develop projects. You can develop for mitigation and then afterwards, what types of projects you want to start highlighting and prioritizing for those disaster funds? So it's taking a holistic approach.
Host: John Scardena (35m 37s):
I have three FEMA shirts on screen right now, I have two English majors on screen right now and what you're talking about is what I believe in mitigation. A lot of the field is still learning this and or, there was his argument here for a second because of the requirements of FEMA. I'm not trying to discredit FEMA here, but in a hazard mitigation plan, I don't care what FEMA says. The local emergency manager says I'm going to get my required hazard mitigation plan. So after the disaster I can mitigate and what I've been saying is, if you look at the word mitigate, it's supposed to be having before, and you also said something earlier, you said, build back better again, under federal law right now, we don't really build back better. We build up to as is, that's the requirement. Sometimes we have mitigation groups who are like, hey, let's turn that highly vulnerable area into a park and then that local area says, no, I want to go back to their high ninth ward Katrina. So you're talking about that, by the way, you mentioned something else that really rung a bell in terms of using the natural environment, does it, those are tangent all about injects today. Apparently the New York city with the oyster reefs and Katrina with, or sorry, Louisiana with their marshes, that's how they're trying to stop the impacts of hurricanes. So there's definitely the natural environment. They're also randomly erosion and pulls back into Yellowstone.
So there's a lot of things that you're talking about here, but mitigating disaster before an incident is what I believe mitigation should be. But honestly, I have three FEMA shirts here and I'm a former FEMA guy, myself. Are you talking about the FEMA of the future or the emergent route? Don't talk for FEMA for yourself. Are you talking about the emergency of the manager of the future needs to look at mitigation? I'm hoping you say yes here, before the incident?
Guest: Amanda Siok (37m 42s):
Mitigation should be before.
Host: John Scardena (37m 44s):
A hundred percent. I can't figure out why recovery and mitigation are synonymous in our methodologies. When I see my practice, right.
Guest: Amanda Siok (37m 56s):
There are triggers in the recovery process that require the things to be built to modern codes. So we're not always putting back what we’re think we are working with.
Host: John Scardena (38m 10s):
Well not one hundredth like infrastructure yet. We're not talking about that, but if somebody shouldn't be living in an area because of X or the building code, as Sean mentioned, is the baseline, the minimum also to your point, Amanda, I had great George Siegel on the show and he's like, oh yeah, it makes sure that you do building codes for your home. I'm like, whoa, where do I find these building codes? So I'm going to contact Sean. Everybody on this podcast, 20,000 fund managers are going to call Sean for building codes. Now you guys are all talking about these concepts that historically don't match what emergency management was.
I declared to NATO that a traditional emergency management is dead, you're talking about future actions. You're talking about where we should be headed, so I'm going to go to, and then maybe the Sean here, future actions of emergency management, you have different backgrounds, you're tackling it all differently. You're talking about a collaborative environment. What do you like at the core of what your message is? What do you wish most from emergency managers right now,
Guest: Anne Rosinski (39m 22s):
Looking at the process holistically. Again, she's going back to the same thing before, during and after, you know, with earthquake. One of the challenges that we have is, because you mentioned they don't happen very often and that affects the amount of funding that's available. It's unlike other carols that happen. Seasonally earthquakes happened so far apart that we don't have a large sustained pool of funding, dedicated to earthquakes. We have to compete for that funding. There is a lot of money out there on the table, but what we really need to do is take a more strategic approach. You know, there just because we don't have that big pot of money right up front doesn't mean there aren't things that we can do. So looking, taking a different view of how to tackle the problems. So looking at doing an inventory, as I mentioned, that's something that is applicable to all different types of hazards. You know, thinking about bringing lots of different people to table, Amanda has done this fantastic in her region, stringing together different sources of money for different elements of a project. So you could use brick or knee her funding say for doing a hazard assessment that goes into a building benefit, cost analysis for a different type of project. There are a lot of different activities that can be funded. Pre-planning mitigation activities that can be funded that are, that don't even require a BCA. So by doing all of those little things, that break, first of all, then you don't have this, oh my God, it's overwhelming of this huge thing I have to do all at once. It's this huge project, breaking it up into smaller parts. You can bring more stakeholders in, you can spread out the, you can build participation and support you, you get more people willing to keep the project going and take up different elements. So it's easier to achieve. You can achieve more. You can bring in, you can amplify your efforts more is what I would say.
So looking at it, not in that traditional sense of, oh, I have to put together one big giant application and solve the whole problem right now, instead start thinking about what are all of the different actions that are required and how can I start breaking that up and doing it incrementally? So it's a little bit easier to accomplish.
Host: John Scardena (41m 46s):
This is a really interesting theme as happened in the last now four episodes, every guest has brought up this theme of crawl, walk, run. They've brought it up different ways, but whether it was building a community program or whether it's tackling mitigation their right way. Thank you so much for all, I know you really are experts because you're talking about mitigation in the roadway, like incrementical, incremental achievement on my gosh, the English majors in the room just died inside. Like
Guest: Anne Rosinski (42m 19s):
Like Incrementical? Laugh.
Host: John Scardena (42m 21s):
Changes that you can make is huge and I think that's kind of what emergency management is, a look at the resources you have available and say with what's available what can I do? Who can I partner with? I also think it's really important when talking about partnering with people like, oh, hey, by the way, maybe we need to change our messaging on this a bit. Again, I think one of the rare things that's helping out social media is a knowledge that earthquakes happen all the time. Also USDS has a really cool active map. Yeah. So going back on that same vein of innovative thinking of, for emergency management perspective, Sean, can you kind of round out some of your thoughts? You have the great shakeout behind you. What's the great shakeout perspective for the emergency manager?
Guest: Sean McGowan (43m 16s):
I think the great shakeout perspective, at its heart, it’s a preparedness drill where, you should know how to do this when the time comes. It's like a smoke alarm. You know, you hear, there's earthquake coming, you feel the shaking, you get an alert on yours, quick, early warning app on the west coast. Like you dropped down, get out of high risk lanes. We realize in most modern buildings while they're not going to be amazing after the earthquake they're designed to save you and so get down low. So the lights and the bookcases that maybe should have braced, but didn't get down low, go to seek shelter under a table and hold on. We know that's the default. But then we've been talking more and more about and do one more thing. So maybe, like when you're under the table, you know, look around and what could have fallen on you, you know, is there a mirror hanging up next to your desk? Are there, do you have deer antlers over your bed for some reason? If so, you may want to take those down. I have seen pictures on the field. I'm not kidding. Getting back to the last question, I think there's this mentality of, in the past emergency managers grabbed your cargo pants and you run out the door. It's like, whereas I grabbed my calculator whenever and out the door, it's a different. But at the same time, again, it's like the core skill set for emergency managers is like, are you a communicator? Can you collaborate and connect? Like, I don't need to be an expert in search and rescue. I need to know who the guy or girl is to call. Like when there's liquefaction concerns, I call. If I need to know about it about know zoning laws, I called Amanda and I think it's like, I think that is the core tenant.
While there's been a shift in the fields to get a little more technical, a little more like, all right, let's think longer term and more holistically, I ended up core skillset, hasn't changed. How many of your guests I always say is the best time to share a business card, isn't at the disaster. You may need to be doing that months and years ahead of time and I think mitigation is a really good way to do that. We're doing that in Utah and I know Amanda's working on that with Anne for the Cascadia rising earthquake scenario exercise they're doing next year. Like the real thing is when you say, okay, here's this exercise, it's aimed at response planning and or bridges, or how are the radios going to work? Then you have us in the corner being like, hey, we know how to fix that. So when you soak, it'd be great if we get search and rescue this way, but we're going to lose five hours. We have to go around this way, and you see that all the time and exercises, and it's our job to be outspoken and say, and there's funds to fix that. So you don't have to worry about, and I think more and more responses as, hey, these guys we thought were nerds. I love our response folks cause they looped me in on exercises and they say, hey, Sean, I'm like, we're going to use this school parking lot as a staging site, are we at risk of the bricks are going to fall down. I don't know where they were planning to use this as a shelter, is there a concern there? I think we're more and more integrating, I think it's like all the best of emergency management in decades past is still with us. You have to be able to be a people person and work together. Then we're kind of getting more technical and more collaborative as we go.
Guest: Amanda Siok (46m 4s):
So I want to interrupt for a second and I just want to put a plugin. So this is perfect. So because there is this upcoming Cascadia rising exercise in June of next year, FEMA region 10 is hosting these quarterly emergency management meetings. We have one on the 26th and 27th of October and on the 27th and John, I will make sure I send a link so you can, and I'll post it on my LinkedIn as well. But on the 27th, I am leading a series of different discussions that are talking about earthquake response and opportunities to improve, to inform response operations so that they are smoother so that you can plan better, whether that's mitigating ahead of time or just making sure that, hey, do you have a plan for all of the building inspectors that are supposed to be out doing inspections after the earthquake? Then what happens if there's an aftershock, which we know will happen? What has to get re-inspected again? How are you protecting the people doing search and rescue operations during that time? So October 27th, FEMA region 10 risk meeting, hoping for all.
Host: John Scardena (47m 26s):
Cool. I will definitely put that in our show notes and just send that over to me.
Guest: Anne Rosinski (47m 30s):
I wonder if I could just also add to what Sean and Amanda said, so Shawn's got shake out behind him and it's a scenario as I mentioned before, but the thing I want to tell emergency managers too, is that scenarios a story, but it's not written in stone. As a geologist, I can say that you have the chance to change that we can change that story. That's what mitigation is all about is here's what might happen if we don't do anything, but Amanda's made this point many times that, and Sean, Sean has too. The thing is looking at, when we invest in mitigation, it's always hard to find money to fund things. But when we invest in mitigation, we know, and this is what our building science is documented for every $1 you invest in mitigation ahead of time. When you say what $6 at a minimum in repair costs going forward. Yeah. That’s not chicken feed and I'm all about the preparedness. Don't be a chicken, be a little, right-hand be prepared.
Host: John Scardena (48m 32s):
Awesome. By the way, based off your pun, geologists are so sick of all like the basic puns, but you really shouldn't take them for granted. Let me bring it back, real-world here. As we round out this conversation, obviously a a fan of the great shakeout and great shakeout plus one great ideas about building codes and risk meetings and trying to move the community. Let me provide a real world scenario, I'm going to back up to may this year, Doberman emergency management has a relationship with disaster medical solutions, big fan of their podcast, solid responder. Joe Hernandez is like the father of medical USR for the United States. He invited me to speak on emergency management, best practice to use our counterparts because we deployed them. It's good to know what they do by virtue of being there, I was able to be in the rebel pilots with them all week, while they were talking about shifts to buildings and impacts to buildings and building codes matter and two inches of movement, you hear a lot of screams essentially because that two inches means it's somebody who's impacted, who's in the rebel pile. It's really scary stuff. You fast forward to July, a third of the people were on the rebel pile training are now responding to Surfside, building collapse, a firefighter. We don't say his name. He unfortunately pulled out his own daughter or the rebel pile. Okay. This is like really heavy stuff. So again, social media teaching the world that things are happening real time, building codes matter. I'm just trying to bring this all real time because an emergency manager, I'm going to push back a little bit on Amanda. What she said, the smartest person in the room is the emergency manager. If they know who all their stakeholders are, the smartest person in the room is the most clever. The most clever person in the room says, I'm not a structural engineer, but I'm doing a damn assessment. So I'm going to be talking to Army Corps of engineers.
I don't work in the private sector. I don't have say what they do, but I'm going to talk to the building manager. I'm going to do regular assessments. I'm going to work on building codes. I'm going to understand the difference between different types of hazards and how that impacts systems and that's the smartest person in the room, right? So you guys are truly the smartest person in the room for dealing with earthquakes in your regions, because hopefully you're able to connect to people for the right areas. You were clearly articulated that today, for those who are listening to the show, seriously, look at Surfside. Building collapsed, look like what happened in Haiti for those NATO partners who possibly are listening to this show who came up to me because I was the only emergency management guy there at their NATO conference, like, oh my gosh, there's a 4.5 earthquake in LA and they were all freaking out. I was like, man, this is nothing. So like this real-world stuff's happening, mitigation should happen. Now if you're an emergency manager and you're an earthquake country, or you don't know that you are even on other things like understanding how soil can impact roads, that's a whole other topic about sink holes and that kind of stuff. Warth matters, right and earthquake matters. What Ann and Sean and Amanda are talking about today could really save a lot of people's lives. It impacts property definitely, and absolutely continuity of operations. It's something to spend your time on.
I'm really adamant on that because I saw Surfside up close and it's near and dear to my heart right now, it’s hard deal with this, especially while we're talking about it. So again, Amanda, thank you so much for bringing on Anne and Sean onto the show and for coming back, all three of you, thank you so much for taking the time we've been paring down the episode a little bit shorter, but it was we're were longer now because you guys have really great inputs. We hope that if you're an emergency manager, listening to the three of them, that you contact them, we'll put their information in the show notes or your specific FEMA region. You can also send a question to info@Dobermanemg.com and send us questions there and we can forward it on, but I'm actually going to change the topic here really quick. I'm going to let the three of them maybe answer their final call-out of what they think is most important and we'll close it out from there. We'll start with Amanda.
Guest: Amanda Siok (53m 3s):
Thanks. My final plug is, we are doing this for shake out, shake out is earthquake drill, October 21st, 10/21 at at 10:21 AM local time. A really good exercise to just get people thinking about what to do in an earthquake. Start that conversation and bring the right people to the table. Perfect and maybe under the table,
Host: John Scardena (53m 36s):
The right people under the table. Yeah, not under the water though. That's messed up and Anne final thoughts?
Guest: Anne Rosinski (53m 43s):
But even again, to talk about the shakeout theme, it started with drop cover and hold on. But I do want to give another plug to there the way it's expanded. There was now the secure space, so segwaying from again, just in the moment to what can you do? What true mitigation can you do beforehand? So making sure your heavy appliances don't fall on you making sure that you have a path from your bedroom out to your front door. So thinking in terms of not just drop cover and hold on, but look around your space, secure your space beforehand.
Host: John Scardena (54m 19s):
Perfect. Okay Sean?
Guest: Sean McGowan (54m 22s):
I would say since they had Shake out covered nicely, I would say that I like in a lot of building codes and mitigation, like oil changes, they're expensive, but you know, over time it adds up, but it sure is cheaper than having to buy a new car. I feel like there's a lot of pressure lately in different states, local municipalities to get building codes and make them so buildings are cheaper and under the disguise of being more affordable. I think it's a red herring because short-term, it's cheaper. Long-term, it's much more expensive have to rebuild buildings. I've been on Mexico beach days after hurricane Michael made landfall and I'll tell you why I like the modern building codes, the buildings that were built to withstand modern disasters, those buildings stayed, but the ones that were built to weaker building codes or things that had gotten amended out back in the day that were fixed later, those buildings were gone. I think that there's this campaign of weak building codes and just try to save a buck. I think we all know long-term that doesn't pay off and then we're all on the hook to pay for it later. So just stick with it and do the right thing and make your building stronger.
Host: John Scardena (55m 23s):
I think that's also the message of designing Disaster Tough communities, all three of you, what you're saying is do the right thing now mitigate. Now if there's an event or there's an expert, you can talk to find out now. Don't wait and you have to deal with resources and get to deal with a million different other projects. If you're listening to the show and we get that, but this impacts the entire field of emergency management. So again, just finally, thanks again guys so much for coming on the show and spending the last hour with me and we'll go take it from there. Everybody. I'm turning my attention to the audience here for a second. Thank you so so much for listening in.
If you got something out of this episode would you should have, because FEMA region 10 and 9 and 8 were all on here, and they're true experts. They've given you lots of different areas to dive down, so if you got something out of this episode, you got to give us that five star rating and subscribe, it's lame, but we ask every time it helps us understand our metrics. If you have a question for one of them, again, go to the show notes. You can also, if you have the gravitas and you know, go for it, look up one of our social media channels, tag them, or tag their FEMA. Say like, hey, I have a question about X. The community can help you answer your questions, they can answer your questions. If you do have a question that you need to go straight to them, of course, email info@dobermanemg.com. and we'll see you next week.
#78 Thoughts on Preparedness - Interview with Kyle McPhee
An internal look on preparedness efforts, the strategic perspective, and the causality of levels of civil preparedness.
Kyle McPhee is the Director of Preparedness Programs at Hagerty. On this episode, we share insights on why preparedness must be a focus, how preparedness and the Pandemic have impacted the US perspective on preparedness, and review how emergency managers can build upon their own programs in order to become Disaster Tough.
This Podcaast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1m 44s):
Welcome back to the show everybody, it's your host, John Scardena. I am so excited for this episode. We've had a couple other people from Hagerty on here before, former FEMA administrator Brock long was on here, we had Jessica and Aleppo on the show before Jessica reached out to me and said, hey, you got to have Kyle on the show. Kyle is the director of preparedness program. Sarah Hagerty, obviously we're a fan, worked with them in the past. We've talked about that on the show, and we're happy to have a representative back on because Hagerty has this great capability of touching a lot of different areas, especially different projects. I believe Kyle has been with them since like 2013. Maybe he can probably correct me that in a second, but he's been there for a while. He's been working on different projects with them. We can talk really in depth about preparedness and its role in emergency management. Kyle, welcome to the show.
Guest: Kyle McPhee (2m 37s):
Hey thanks a lot, John. Happy to be here. And a 2009.
Host: John Scardena (2m 40s):
So 2009, an additional 4 years active working on Hagerty and you have additional feather in your cap. Something I really liked is you're from Missouri. Am I correct there?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (2m 52s):
That's right. Yeah. Currently reside in Kansas City.
Host: John Scardena (2m 54s):
Okay. Kansas city, Missouri. Now my wife grew up here St. Louis, and she was always adamant that Kansas city Missouri is very different than Kansas city Kansas. So way to be on the good side of Kansas city, I guess. So if you're growing up in the Midwest, Midwest is dealing obviously with, earthquake or not earthquakes, tornadoes and floods, mainly with the possibility of the earthquake here in St. Louis at some point happening. Sure. If you're growing up with that, possibly that preparedness mindset, I'm sure you did a lot of drills in your school with covering your head. Did you ever do that as a kid, the tornado drills?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (3m 39s):
Yeah, absolutely.
Host: John Scardena (3m 40s):
I was telling a youth group about that in California, they didn't understand what I was talking about. I was like, man, that was every three months. As a kid growing up in Ohio, you know, got to cover your head, wait for the tornado, pass over these, these drills. So you have a preparedness kind of background, just growing up with that sense of preparedness. You went to school to study, I think counter-terrorism correct.
Guest: Kyle McPhee (4m 7s):
Well, I went to a St. Louis university actually, and biosecurity was my focus at that point. That was really my first introduction to the merger of, of some of the complex decision process that led me to, to Hagerty in the preparedness division. .
Host: John Scardena (4m 23s):
Yeah. Then once you got in, you stayed there, so that's great. Yeah. You worked your way up. In terms of like the major projects that you've worked on, some of these highlights that you've done, what really stands out to you of like, oh, that is preparedness done right?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (4m 40s):
Yeah. That's a great question. So, you know, in my time with Hagerty and seeing the company grow over the past decade, plus we've had a tremendous number of opportunities to help clients from coast to coast. So in that time, I've been able to work with jurisdictions, large and small all levels of government non-for-profit, for-profit entities. You know, from each experience we learned something, as much as we're there to support our clients at the same time, we're picking up bits and pieces along, even if it's just something as simple as what's important to our clients or where are some of the pain points they're struggling. I like to think about it as just sort of an iterative process that you're not only do we get sort of the temperature of preparedness across the nation, we also get a really extract what seems to be working well and where individual clients have been very successful. As I look back over that time, there are certain efforts that stand out that were highly complex and, and really rewarding results. For instance, we led one of the largest planning efforts in the nation's history, eight states and four FEMA regions involved and planning for an event that's sort of near and dear to Missourians. That is the new imagined seismic zone earthquake scenario. We've also done a number of more nuanced efforts around active threat and more recently, I think we're really stepping back from the incident response and looking at overall capability building, which is an exciting development for the field, I would say as we're maturing and sort of looking at risk at a structural level as opposed to the individual incident.
Host: John Scardena (6m 23s):
Okay. So in terms of the project sustain up to you, new mattered, obviously you mentioned that in terms of what you did for new mattress, what was your specific role in walking through that seismic zone? Because as I understand, there are two very different opinions in how to deal with earthquake zones, especially in the St Louis area. What were you working on and what were some of the gaps that you identified in that preparedness process?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (6m 52s):
Well, I think it's important before we dive in to just note that, you know, this has been a long identified risk to the region. There's been a lot of planning that occurred before we were involved and it continues to this day, both at the federal level and at the local and state level. My specific role, I started out at FEMA headquarters working on some of the strategic concepts as to how the nation would respond and support the regions, especially around the issue of resource adjudication. In other words, just an acknowledgement that the need would exceed the availability of resources. So there had to be a decision process built around how to allocate those resources based on a series of, of prioritization decisions process, then went to the regional level and worked specifically with the state of Missouri. So that was a real opportunity to, to sort of see that strategy translate to implementation and sort of feel like the nuances of how the individual needs of Missourians and other communities would be met if that catastrophic worst-case scenario were to unfold.
Host: John Scardena (7m 60s):
Okay. So you're going to be start talking about FEMA language versus what I've been kind of addressing on the show here a little bit is FEMA's five areas of preparedness. One of them covers response, and really what you're talking about is a response scenario and preparing for that response. But really once you get into response, you're outside of preparedness, right? So what are your thoughts then if you're looking at the five FEMA areas of preparedness, which again, they say responses, one of those areas, at one point you had to start acting, and what you're talking about is the acting part. How are you addressing that with the need of preparing Missourians for the new Madrid incident? Like what are the steps to mitigate that issue?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (8m 50s):
Well, I think that when you get sort of the overall vision identified as to what the intent would be, then you can start working through how to go about implementing those identified priorities. So, you know, when we really start translating it to sort of tactics, in other words, how does this mission get carried out at the field level? What we're talking about is capability building, so the preparedness mission is really about defining that mission as specific as possible and testing and validating that that capability exists. Ultimately when you test something, typically a component of it will fail or break, or it could be improved otherwise. So what you're trying to do is sort of just identify how to make that capability more robust over time. That's really where preparedness has a lot of value to communities is because especially for these high consequence, low probability events where, we may never see in an entire career, the actual event unfold, we don't get much practice. We have to be ready to go when it does occur and that's the value of preparedness is identifying what those capabilities are and incrementally working at, building a building that capability over time, and just the contrast to sort of the FEMA process versus that approach at the local level. This is agnostic of Missouri or any other jurisdiction. But I think the fundamental task that we have is to scale it, right, for the stakeholders and resources that are available in that community. Many times, you know, we're working with organizations who are balancing emergency management duties with many other competing priorities. In some cases, the emergency manager is a volunteer. So you really have to take these systems, processes, frameworks that have been developed and make them work for sort of the practical matter at the field level.
Host: John Scardena (10m 45s):
Yeah. You hit on a lot of points that ring well with me. In fact, Brock long talks about, I talked about on the show, you know, you fail, if you fail logistics, similarly, Tim Britt from the national strike team, national incident management team red now, technically. He was on the show and he said something similar as you, if you fail, you fail at tactics, which is directly to your point, there are nuances for every community. But really again, to your credit, when you go into different jurisdictions, there are things that resonate in every single community. You have systems in place, you have policy that that'd be aware of, you have to understand the capabilities and gaps. That definitely rings true with what I've seen in my experience, going around the country as well, responding to disasters is, okay, we have to deal with the cultural impacts. We have to deal with localized views of what emergency management is. But the other thing is we have to deal with, and man great call-out, was that the local guy is often a volunteer or, and, or it's a, it's a multiple hat wearing scenario where it's, hey, you're the sheriff all the time, but in a large-scale disaster, all of a sudden now you're the, you're the emergency manager. You walk in there and he's like, hey, I'm the county emergency manager. Great what's your hazard mitigation plan? What's a hazard mitigation plan? And that's no discredit to the sheriff, he just has a million other things on his plate. So now I think that's great. You're preparing to understand the capabilities, you're understanding those nuances and how they interplay against the things that happen in every single disaster, every single event that we're trying to reduce. But at the end of the day, we have to do something right emergency managers? It's always better to do something than nothing in a disaster, especially in preparedness and we just left national preparedness month. Right. That just closed out. So this is like a great follow-up to that. If we're thinking of this perspective here now, just for like the US’ sake, and even your sake, the way that disaster tough podcasts looked at preparedness month is how do you prepare the emergency manager to deal with the threats of the future in terms of national preparedness month during a pandemic second year of the pandemic, people are exhausted, all that kind of stuff happening. What would be your kind of immediate after action of what you thought this year's preparedness month was like? Then as a follow up to that, that AAR, what are the next steps of emergency managers need to take, especially if they're wearing multiple hats?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (13m 35s):
Yeah. Great question and point. Just to build off of that, I really think COVID and the events of the past year and a half or so now have exacerbated the trend or the area we've identified here. That is that already limited resources and expertise in the field, especially at the local and state level, they've been exhausted. There is atrition, there's fatigue, and you can completely appreciate why that is. Many people have been fully engaged in response for that entire period, you know, 12 plus hour days, many cases every day of the week. That does have a long-term tale to it, even if COVID were to resolve tomorrow, I think within the industry of emergency managers or within the practice emergency managers, you know, we're going to feel the effects for some time to come. I think it's also changed, the underlying assumptions of the populations that we serve and that is that COVID-19 has had a significant impact on communities from coast to coast. There were trends that were already in place, such as an aging population, the recent census showed that the population that's 55 and older grew 20 times of that 55 and younger. You know, our populations are aging. That's sort of a universal trend, but COVID has really highlighted things like it's made substance abuse problems worse. Housing and homelessness has been exacerbated by some of the underlying conditions that, that have been complicated by COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions, etc.
Now, more recently we're seeing exacerbated supply chain issues, cost of living increases. All of these things are changing the underlying population that we're supporting and evolving sort of the profession, the way it looks. There are sort of things that are occurring that we can take pride in, or I think look at sort of shining light on my amidst, the chaos, if you will, for instance. The national preparedness survey came out this year, showed a 6% increase in preparedness. I think some of that is individuals recognizing that conditions are a little unstable, that some of the assumptions I had from my friends, family, colleagues, they may not always be true. So I need to take a second look at getting prepared and ready for uncertainty. So I do think that there are from a preparedness perspective, some sort of glimmers of hope, and in all of this is that it has sort of elevated that idea of personal preparedness to the forefront of discussion, but we've got a long way to go. I think the most recent statistic I saw was only 4 in 10 Americans have a thousand dollars in savings. So this idea of socioeconomic resilience is absolutely vital as we look at again, the impact of COVID and what has changed from let's say two years ago to now. In terms of some of those immediate learnings, you know, they're extensive.
I think that one of the biggest trends we see right now, currently with our clients nationwide is, is a goal to institutionalize what has just occurred. In other words, we've spent years, in some cases, you know, 15 plus years building capability and COVID-19, and all of the COVID response that occurred with it. So we're talking about floods, fires, hurricanes, basically nationwide and it's been a very intense season since 2017, really. So all of that packaged together has allowed us to test the system from one side to the other. There's a lot we can talk about in terms of what sort of bubbling to the top. But I think, the macro trend right now is even though we're still in response, there is this desire to try to take a snapshot of, hey, what has happened? What have we learned? What can we build upon and institutionalize as to continue to build capability in the future?
Host: John Scardena (17m 47s):
Yeah. I mean, again, you're talking about mike drop moments here of, of good, bad and ugly, right? And the good is that the outcome of COVID-19 in terms of the emergency management perspective and understanding how culture plays in the mindset I'm talking about the US mindset really, of preparedness. You have to have something unfortunately happen for people to kind of wake up. That's been true of so many incidents on the last, you know, a hundred years. I think it was really well-documented in American disaster that book, but, but what we're talking about is building again, this whole idea of disaster, tough communities that say, hey, I just went through a year and a half, two years of COVID, I don't want to have to deal with that. Or I'm in COVID and there was a five day power outage, and we have a supply chain issue. And, oh my gosh, I don't have like really basic things. I also think that, you know, Brock Long, you're definitely a student of Brock Long, or our cohort with Brock Long, because he talks a lot about financial resiliency and the ability to bounce back economically. That is the number one thing we talk about with people is get on that list to call your insurance, if you're going to be impacted by a disaster. Right? And so when you're dealing with a first come first serve, and you're dealing with an environment that is highly stressful, that it's moving, it's hard for people to say, hey I'm watching my house burn down. I need to call my insurance right now. They want to watch the house burn for a few days in process, but we got to get people to start thinking, hey, what's your next step? How do you use emergency preparedness to make your life easier and not doom stay preppy? I'm very against doomsday preppy, but I'm all about making your life easier and preparedness and done the right allows that to happen. So great call-out on that perspective, in terms of capabilities, a lot of lessons learned, you said we had a long way to go. I totally agree. How do you raise the level of preparedness in this country in general?
One way that we've been trying to attack it is say, hey, let's look inward here for a second and say, are we doing the best we can do to position ourselves to be that person in the room that says, hey, you should pay attention to what I'm saying, versus just like trying to blast the community all the time with like, hey, buy your go-bag get better savings, get the right insurance. So our messaging might need to be updated there a little bit, but that's kind of my perspective. In terms of your 14 years of working in preparedness, or let's see, 12 years working in preparedness, I had to do the quick math there for a second. What is that looking like for you in terms of, hey, how can we be better as a community and preparing other people?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (20m 50s):
Sure and just to clarify, John, before I started with consulting, I did have a series of roles at the local level. So it's provided me a lot of perspective that I've taken to this current position, to really understand the nuances of implementation and the limitations of resources. So I'm a huge advocate of that because of that experience early in my career. You know, I think that what I would say is sort of a fundamental understanding coming out of COVID is that our focus as emergency managers needs to be more on resilient structures instead of functions. What I mean by that is that COVID is a non-linear disaster. It has really highlighted, I think the nuance of the coming era, which is that we're dealing with a period of time where there are going to be compounding crises. There is a physical environment, which we can talk about trends and climate adaptation and sort of all that funnels into that physical environment. There is the technology and human environment, which is becoming more complex, interconnected and I think a number of real-world events that have occurred in the past 12 months have shown how vulnerable it is. You sort of take those two components together and overlay them with the demographics, which we touched on earlier. What we see is that we really need to begin to think of emergency management and institutionalize emergency management across functions. So we're not looking at this anymore as sort of isolated response to a single incident. But rather, you know, the entire apparatus of a corporation or of government is incorporating these concepts and looking at resilience, redundancy, et cetera. I think this idea of sort of focusing on preparedness response, recovery, and mitigation, it's much more cyclical, and you may stack many incidents on top of each other that have competing timelines and different demands for resources.
I really think that what what's happening and what's likely to happen as we continue to move forward, as we just move more and more to this sort of holistic mindset where we're looking across the entire function of government and identifying ways in which they're contributing to resilience, community resilience. We're looking beyond sort of traditional emergency management functions, sort of the lights and sirens, incident management type of emergency management, and thinking about emergency management more as a resource adjudicator as an entity that is uniquely suited to address both strategic and tactical implementation, and really has that ability to bring a surge of resources when it's required to me some sort of degradation of service. That can be caused by any number of things, whether it be supply constraints, a physical disaster, a hack or cyber incident. I just think we need to create a more dynamic and sort of structural approach to preparedness and to emergency management.
Host: John Scardena (23m 59s):
Yeah, that's a great call-out and I liked the idea of looking at structure versus systems and understanding that they are different. My perspective, most disasters are not definitely linear social vulnerability. I said this at the NATO conference, I mentioned on a previous episode, I had a huge opportunity to be able to talk to our military counterparts and talk about that portion where you don't really create new social vulnerability issues, you highlight and exacerbate the issues that are already there. To the point of preparedness of addressing those issues, there's a really great book for people to read called social vulnerability. They looked at disasters happening all over the globe, and they did a ton of research, a ton of data to look at it. It's kind of dense, but it's like a really good resource of understanding how any issue that's highlighted in disaster was already there. It was simmering either on the surface or on the surface, and it just exploded in the disaster. So if your finances, for example, we talked about finances, if they're not in order, you're not really aware of them before the disaster, and you don't have redundancy built in then in a disaster, it's going to highlight that if you have a lot of redundancy built in and you have multiple streams of income, or you have a great savings, you have good insurance, you understand those processes, then that will also be highlighted you’ll recover faster. So that's a really great call-out.
Guest: Kyle McPhee (25m 38s):
John, just to build off of that, I think the same is true, sort of looking at emergency management at a macro level. That is a concept such as mutual aid. Well, it's built upon this assumption that there is liquidity in the system, that there are more resources at a national level or interjurisdictional level that are required for the disaster response. But I think this current environment has shown both the constraints of public budgets, reducing the number of available resources, as well as competing demands across a number of jurisdictions simultaneously, it's created a gap of a breakdown of that assumption. So, as we look forward to what preparedness and emergency management becomes, it's going to become increasingly reliant on those resilient structures, organizations, communities, first of all, taking responsibility for what's required to meet the needs of the population of their services, but also looking to nontraditional resources to meet those needs. I think that, you know, concepts such as public private partnerships or utilizing companies such as Hagerty or other public service firms to meet surge requirements are becoming the standard as opposed to the exception.
Host: John Scardena (26m 53s):
Yeah. It's funny that, you know, the pushback that coming from a government perspective, you said you worked at local level, which is awesome. Coming from a government perspective and now in the private sector myself, it's really funny the concept of consulting, which is kind of like a dirty word in our company. Not because we're emergency managers first, but inherently consulting or providing support or providing staffing or whatever. All those concepts are really pushed back against people with no experience, because they'll say like if I need this budget, then I will just hire somebody. well, hire somebody doesn't equal a team. I'm like, yeah, sure, you could do your EOP. It'll take you three years, you could do it with us for six months. Hagerty's the exact same way you guys are really big with staffing. You're able to bolster those requirements and now there's a ton of funding to be able to do that. Anybody with experienced knows that you bring in outside resources to be able to work on that. This is not a pitch for Hagerty cause I'm not with Hagerty, but noting Hagerty is very strong with New York and California and that’s part of the reason why they're so capable is because they're able to bring in additional staffing resources and be able to help out. It's the same thing, whether we're helping out with a training exercise or we're dealing with that on our side of the house as well. I think as the emergency managers around the country are listening to this podcast, be aware that one, the money's already there and you could probably speak to that and two, have a value added by a team coming in and not just an individual that you hope can get it done and before something hits. Right? So in terms of what I just asked there, can you provide some resources, some either grants or funding that's available for emergency managers to access that kind of help?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (28m 53s):
Well we have experts that, you know, whether it be ARPA, IRAP, there are a number of different programs out from FEMA right now, more traditional funding streams, such as PA and IA. You know, all of those can be leveraged in different ways to bring in external support, whether it be a consultancy or other provider. What I would just really focus on is what we discussed earlier is if there is hesitation to go down that road, just really looking at our earlier conversation about questioning some of the assumptions that we've had historically, and looking at the limitations of available resources, using those historical assumptions. I mean, as we go forward, I don't see that limitation being one-off. Yes, it was particularly highlighted by the limitations and simultaneous impact of COVID across the entire nation. But I think as we look towards a more vulnerable future with increasing disasters, increasing disaster costs, the need for the private sector to be engaged in your jurisdictional activity is going to continue to be paramount. It's not unique to technical assistance or a consultancy like Hagerty. When you look at COVID-19 medical supplies, vaccine surge support to operate vaccines sites, all of these were private entities in large part, you know, supplemented or supported government services. So there really is a significant need for and footprint of private sector resources in that broader response.
I think, again, as your traditional assumptions on mutual aid are called into question, this is sort of an alternative strategy to make sure that those services are provided the community and the needs are met. You throw on top of that, that 85% of the critical infrastructure in the nation is owned by the private sector owner and or operated by the private sector. There's really no alternative to having a very robust engagement process and thinking through how those partners are going to be engaged in the overall response and that's best done pre incident. That's really where you're able to avoid and navigate, you know, some of the challenges that potentially have dissuaded the use of contractors in the past.
Host: John Scardena (31m 3s):
Yeah. It's just the reality of the process moving forward, especially as governments have different allocations for how they look at a, an employee versus a contractor and the complexities of disasters moving forward, as you just highlighted yourself, it's going to get more complex. You know, when the dominoes start falling there’s a long-term process that you have to look at that and emergency managers are best suited to understand, those cascading impacts. To your point about critical infrastructure, for sure, critical infrastructure, we are a capitalist society. I love the fact that we're a capitalist society, for sure. However, we also have to be under an understanding that like there's counterparts and they have their own priorities, capabilities, gaps, you know, as successes and what they're willing to do as a, as a government guy. There's a lot of government people listen to the show. You can't always use like the Stafford Act, you can't always use like, oh, I'm the big dog coming in in here. You have to understand how to work with them and working on relationships, working on building that pre disaster, again, taking that preparedness perspective of interoperability. We are the stakeholders letting them come to the table so much better to say, hey Kyle, how are you doing? I could really use your help versus, hey, who are you? Right? Like, what do you provide? I don't have time, I'm in a response. So I think you're highlighting really good things here in terms of maybe touch points here. I'm thinking of all these areas of preparedness, thinking of interoperability, thinking of using public private partnerships. Again, in that preparedness perspective, what would you be telling to the 20,000 or so emergency managers who are listening to the podcast right now?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (32m 59s):
Well, I think that a question we're getting a lot right now is sort of, how do I get back to programs? Everyone is still very much engaged in response and has been for months in many cases, but there is this sense or feeling that we can start to think about what's next in a post COVID or when COVID, isn't all consuming in terms of resources. So we are starting to see that I would say nationwide. In that, I think there's a real opportunity for sort of rediscovery or incorporating what we've learned over the past year and a half, making sure that we don't lose those lessons learned and actively incorporating them into where we go. In addition, I think that there are some very unique funding streams that present opportunities sort of point in time, where we are today, to shape the built environment in particular. These are revolving around, you know, investments in green infrastructure, climate adaptation, future infrastructure spending. We know we're making progress in these areas, but I think that what we want to continue to encourage is that emergency managers to find a role in that conversation, we think they're very uniquely suited to positively contribute to how those funding streams are deployed into communities to have maximum effect and to reduce risk in the future. So we've been working actively, for instance, in the mitigation arena around brick funding, HMGP, to try to make sure that we're translating sort of that historical preparedness work, understanding risks, capturing it in a THIRA, state preparedness report, tracking progression over time. That all of that information is fed into the decision process as this funding becomes available. So we believe that as we look forward, let's say into 22, that's an area where we really need to kind of be looking for opportunities to engage in those conversations at the state and local level.
The other thing that I do want to mention is that sort of this a bubbling trend is this idea of the use of technology in government services period. I think that what we've seen over the past 18 months or so is just sort of that trend accelerated exponentially. That's also opened up a tremendous number of vulnerabilities as it relates to cybersecurity and disruption. You know, we've seen a number of ransomware specific attacks and so one of the interesting trends as we sort of look into 2022 and beyond is really carving out and better defining the role of emergency management in the context of cyber disruption. As it is right now, a study in 2019 showed the two thirds of all ransomware attacks occurred within the state and local governments. This is a trend that's continuing it's increasing in its its frequency and its impact. A number of states have been impacted recently as has had direct Connecticut effects on their ability to provide essential services. And we've seen massive compromise of data, solar winds being a very recent example that occurred during COVID. So we feel like this topic of cyber disruption planning, incorporating that into your continuity of operations efforts is key. It's easy to sort of link, this sort of emerging cyber disruption activity with the continuity of operations, or business continuity activity that we've been validating or testing over the past 18 months continued to do so in most environments and some of the supply chain disruptions that are ongoing and presenting challenges on a number of fronts. So we think that sort of relationship is key as governments start to think beyond COVID and about what comes next.
Host: John Scardena (36m 50s):
One of my favorite moments was in hurricane Harvey, I got an email from, I think it was NATO. It was from somebody at headquarters forwarded on from NATO, Russia contacted them, contacted us, said, hey, we have a bunch of satellite images over Houston, do you want them? It was just them, their way of telling us that they were aware and you know, really funny situation. But yeah, cyber is definitely an issue it's going to come up and it's gonna come up. I have a feeling later this month as well and hint, but my one caveat is in emergency management, we have very limited use of technologies and what technology can provide using artificial intelligence to tell us, hey, all these shapes equal damage versus drive-bys for example, in speeding up that process. So there's a lot of different areas where technology can help. I think that that trend will continue, especially as those moving into emergency management, have an expectation in a use of technology. So if you're an emergency management, you've been doing it for a while and you're like, uh oh, technology. Now I have to like, shut down the whole thing and now we're going. I don't think that's what you're saying. I think what you're saying is the use of technologies is exponential and we also need to be aware of the pros and cons of technologies. I will say that, oh my gosh, there's so much that technology can help you out with your job, but be smart in how you're using that. I think there also needs to be a situational awareness increase for emergency managers of don't open every email, check out different things, understand that you are being attacked, understand that people have tech critical infrastructure. Now you have to work with private industry who may or may not want to share that they have been attacked. Right? So there's a lot of vulnerabilities that opens up for sure and I think that's a great way to talk about the next steps that emergency management, especially, I mean, forward-facing right. So a really good call out. I'm going to leave it to you, Kyle, for any final thoughts before I close it out on like next steps. Anything else you'd like to tell the community?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (39m 0s):
No, I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and this has been a great conversation and always happy to continue these dialogues offline. Anyone's feel free to reach out to me. You can do so via LinkedIn or on Hagerty consulting's website, all my contact information is there.
Host: John Scardena (39m 16s):
Perfect. Yeah. And we'll actually put that in the show notes as well, just to throw you a bone. But I actually enjoyed the conversation. I think it was really great. I think we covered a lot of different areas of preparedness talking about the community, talking about the community of emergency managers and the community of, of civilian populations, public, private partnerships, critical infrastructure. We covered a lot of different areas here.
If you got something out of this episode, which you should have, because we did cover so many different areas. We wanted to give it that shameless five-star rating. You got to give us a five-star rating and subscribe. You can reach out to Kyle directly, we'll put his information in our show notes. You can also, if you have a general question about preparedness the field, whatever, make sure you tag Hagerty for sure, but you can even tag Kyle, tag our show. Asks the question on social media lead the community of emergency managers answer those questions. You can also reach out to government, a lot of people like to quietly reach out to government through info@dobermanemg.com. We appreciate that. We'll be happy to forward on to Kyle, for sure, but have the gravitas to ask the questions to the community because a lot of us are thinking about this. If you're thinking about it, if you have questions, make sure you keep tuning into this podcast because we're going to be talking about it in the future and we'll see an next week.
#77 NATO & US Military Learn About Emergency Management - Presentation Recap with John Scardena
John Scardena was the Keynote Emergency Management Speaker at the NATO Specific Environments Summit. He discussed the role and use of interoperability within the disaster spectrum. John shares 5 areas of which EM is evolving that help stakeholders understand out capabilities.
“Traditional emergency management is dead!”
Utilizing notes from the NATO SEP presentation, here are five (5) areas the emergency manager of the future will do:
1. Create living plans that organize blue sky and gray sky operations
2. Work closely with stakeholders
3. Utilize technologies to predict and reduce disaster impacts
4. Mitigate, Mitigate, Mitigate- Before, during, and after the disaster
5. Understand FEMA's role vs your role (they may be very different).
Brick plans that sit on shelves are unacceptable. Resiliency is a component, NOT the solution. The goal is to create Disaster Tough Communities.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1 min 41s):
Welcome back to the show, everybody, it's your host, John Scardena. You know, last week as many of you know, based off those social media posts, I had the great honor of being the keynote speaker for emergency management specifically at the NATO specific environment summit. It really talked about the urban environment and dealing with civilian populations and learning about incident command and ICS and interoperability and all this stuff that we usually talk about emergency management. So it was a really great experience talking to NATO and DOD, USDA partners about the role of emergency management, what we can provide them and really what they can provide us and working together. It was a great opportunity because in the US we have the Stafford Act, which really gives us those delegations of authority. That presidential authority from the federal coordinating officer at the federal level, we also have the camera on the post-Katrina reform act, emergency management reform act rather. So we have the national strike team that came out of it, which is housed within FEMA, the national incident management assistance team, which is actually technically broken up into three teams or three components rather.
So we have this stuff in the US but internationally, they might not it and more importantly, if they don't have it, they might not be aware of the other people who want to be partners. For example, if they're doing sheltering operations international, red cross, or if they have their own road closures, who actually manages the roads. We had talked about that with a couple of our NATO partners who hadn't really considered that. So just like understanding our day to day doesn't really match their today today. Also the misconceptions around what emergency management is. I heard things from, oh, they're the paper pushers. There's the guys that get us water, you know, these different things. So they didn't really understand what's happening, but on our side from an emergency management internal, can we do better at showing our capability? Can we do better at innovating our processes? And the answer is, yes, we absolutely can. We've talked about this, you know, for hundreds of episodes at this point, and we've had key players in the game, like Brock Long even say, hey, maybe we shouldn't call FEMA the Federal Emergency Management Agency, because most of what FEMA does is like an auditing process, right? It's what I call, you know, John Scardena is a catchphrase, is that FEMA is the IRS of disaster, right? They're mostly a money organizations and he actually heard it from Joe Delmar as well. He said, hey, FEMA is usually mostly a hurricane organization so like people have these different ideas of what FEMA is. Does FEMA represent the entire field? Absolutely not. Right.
Host: John Scardena (4m 39s):
We have local emergency managers who have tried to apply what FEMA does. It doesn't really make sense because they're actually in the mix there it's their own home. That's being flooded and they're responding at the county level, or you're the emergency manager at a campus and you're dealing a lot more with the man-made stuff. FEMA does get into that, of course, but not too much, right. When you're at the campus level for a university or for a hospital, you're looking a lot more physical security. You're talking about active shooter. You're talking about any kind of active assailant and targeted attacks. You're working with your law enforcement counterparts to understand what those threats could be. You're looking at hazard vulnerability assessments and so really what you're doing is so much bigger than what we've been addressing historically when I say historically, or when I say traditionally, I mean, pre 9/11, I don't want to make this sound like, oh, literally five days ago we decided to change emergency management. No, it's been changing a lot. Right. So basically what I want to do is cover so many different disasters and topics based off of my presentation that they asked me to cover.
I covered Surfside building collapse. Now you all know about Joel Hernandez coming on the show and my experience working USR, we covered the Haiti 2010 and 2021 earthquake. That's the mission still happening, technically covered hurricane Katrina and Ida, how they happened on the same anniversary, covered Navy yard shooting, covered wildfire response has covered all kinds of different stuff in that presentation and using interoperability as the means to talk about AAR, some lessons learned. So really what my conversation came down to is identified at least five different areas and I wrote those five different areas down. I want to talk about those today, just to get your brain starting to thinking, is this a comprehensive list? Absolutely not, but it is a consolidated list of at least five things that the emergency management field needs to be doing to innovate again, looking at a hard look with it and saying, how can we be better? And how can we move forward? So this is the first slide that I had on my presentation was traditional emergency management is dead. That was the declaration. Traditional emergency management is dead and when I say traditional emergency management, I mean both the concept from our external partners of, hey, you're just paper pushers, or it could be like things like, hey I'm retired.
Host: John Scardena (7m 23s):
So I'm going to make this plan that no one's ever going to use right. Or retire from my fire and police job and so I'm going to write this, get this cushioned job and fire and police both know that now, right? They have to bring more to the game than just their own perspective and that's really because of the last 20 years of our field rapidly changing and technology's changing and social medias increase and the understanding of interoperability, not just command control, but collaborate and cooperate. So let me just dive down these five different areas to get, not comprehensive, but five areas that I think emergency management can do better. This is based off of again, the last 20 years, seeing all those changes, several types of responses standing up, emergency management teams across the country doing this part of Doberman, doing this as local, state and federal level responses, humanitarian, plus two degrees.
Okay. So it's not just pulling out of the air. This is like, hey, we've been doing a lot of data collection and how can we, how can we do better? How can we influence the field more? Okay. So, my number one thing that I said emergency managers need to do is create living plans that organize blue sky and gray sky operations. Now what I want to see from our field and what government is doing is w ironically, they used to be called bricks, right? I say, ironically, because now we had the brick program building resiliency and community program, the grant program. But these plans, we've heard Rodney Melsek, basically the father of the modern day emergency planning process call traditional plans like, you know, door stoppers, right?
Host: John Scardena (9m 2s):
These big plans that nobody ever looks at and it's because the moots is going to lead into kind of my second one. But the planning process is just as important as the outcome. I said that about a year ago on this show, a process is just as important as the outcome, because you need to have an outcome. Of course, you need to know what people's capabilities are needed to have a plan, but that process and working with people before you get into a disaster. So the unique circumstances of the disaster or the recovery, or even the mitigation process that might change, understanding how that works through that planning process, you're going to be able to be a lot more successful.
I'd also love to see like emergency operations plans, for example, EOP, for that to be the basis of Gabe, that's our emergency operations plan, then everything we do before, during, and after that needs to needs to correlate. Right? If we have identified an emergency operations plan through data and through, you know, working with stakeholders, which is my number two, then we're able to create tasks. Okay. For example, we have a gap of our civilian population, not understanding emergency management and where do they go in an evacuation? Because, you know, we had a 30% increase of, of residential structures in the last five years, because this is a beautiful area.
Host: John Scardena (10m 28s):
So we need to have better evacuation signs, a better educational case. So that's great. So let's do that kind of stuff, but then you have an emergency operations plan. Okay. We have a population that needs to be warned and evacuated. How do we do that? So that's blue sky in gray sky. My number two is work closely with stakeholders. So as we work closely with stakeholders, you know Patrick, McGuinn called this out. So I'm going to call him out, man, he's a good friend of the show. He was just talking to me yesterday about he's worked so close with his counterpart at another agency or another nonprofit. When they brought on a new guy that was trying to learn the ropes, he was like, hey, if we're going to work together, we have this MOU in place as memorandum of understanding. Let's make sure that, you're doing X, Y, and Z, and I can do ABC. So both sides of the spectrum from finish to start, it's kind of a funny way to look at it, but we're working in tandem together. He talked about the huge success that came from that. So that's something to call out, working closely with stakeholders, understanding their capabilities, asking things from them that you know, that they can do. Again, on the same side or different side of guests, avoiding asking for things that people just can't do or having an expectation that's not realistic.
Host: John Scardena (11m 57s):
So as you work closely with stakeholders, again, this was a presentation to our military counterparts. They can understand that, you know, they have a very specific mission. The military does when they're called out to support a disaster, but other people have other capabilities and what those capabilities are, makes things a lot easier. For example, if we need to do air ops, we don't tell the military, or we shouldn't tell the military. I think this is a Kevin Coleman quote, hey, I need five helicopters, three C1 30 planes, whatever. We don't tell them, we say, hey, we have to evacuate this many people and then they tell us how right. So we tell them what they tell us how and I think that's a great way to work within that spectrum of emergency management, especially as other people have different authorities and capabilities. It also addresses gaps and emergency management and understanding risk. You can't overcome every single risk. You know we're not going to live in bunkers under the ground. We don't want to, we're not the doomsday preppers, right? We're the logical people, the smartest people in the room who look at all the analytics, look at all the information and say, hey, where do we prioritize the resources, human and otherwise, to be successful.
Host: John Scardena (13m 19s):
As you work with your stakeholders, again, you're able to identify together gaps that you're not going to be able to over overcome, right? You'll still have hurricanes in your area. You'll still have tornadoes in your area. You'll still have a level of risk from man-made threats, right? So if you can't stop everything, how do you reduce that level of impact? How do you create a disaster tough community saying, hey, I'm not gonna be able to deal with this. Now, when in a response, I'm going to have to address it, which is different than mitigation. We're going to get to that one, mitigation is actually pumping the brakes, but if you can't pump the brakes, then how do you swerve out of the way, right?
Host: John Scardena (14m 1s):
Gosh, that was a mic drop moment. Again, pump the brakes. How do you swerve out of the way? That's awesome. Okay. Number three, apologize here for looking at my notes, utilize technologies to predict and reduce disaster impacts. We have such an issue in our field and in the general public, to be honest of data literacy and the easiest way to describe that is my episode from a year and a half ago, where I'm talking about data and how COVID data works and comparing that to weather data, like the cone of uncertainty is like perfect name for it now for hurricanes, right? It's uncertain, our data is imperfect. If you're waiting for data to be perfect, or ironically, if you thought your weather data was perfect, you have a huge gap that you just identified that you need to learn about data literacy and technologies can help out with that. For example, we can start applying artificial intelligence to do debris pile estimations. We can get drones up in the air to get preliminary damage assessments. We can start doing some data science to do a probability of impact for a future disasters or cascading events.
Host: John Scardena (15m 27s):
In those disasters, we should be doing a data-based hazard vulnerability assessment that looks at, roughly 36 manmade and natural hazards and the impacts to life, property and continuity of operations. As a reminder, as I think I brought up brought on a couple episodes ago, and then applying that with prudence, understanding that it's not perfect, but you have to use something. I saw somebody saying, well, we can't use data because it's not perfect. Well, you use weather data, right? Cue like dramatic music there, right? Like you're using something now.
Our hope is that you're not just following your gut. You're following your gut as a sample size of one. That's saying my own personal experience and the primary example of why that's such a bad idea is 1980, the 80 or 81. Someone's probably gonna correct me there on the volcanic response in Washington, right guys, on, on the side of the volcano, Hey, we're evacuating everybody. Hey, I've lived here for 40 years right? Never been a volcanic eruption. You guys are out of your minds. Well guess what?
Host: John Scardena (16m 49s):
He's dead. Right? Because he stayed on the mountain, it blew up, lava came out. He was killed. We saw that with Craig Fugate, hey, write your name or write your social security number on your forearm and hurricane because we're not going to come get you. It's too, too high of a risk right now for people who are like, oh, I just want to stay trying to get people to wake up a little bit. So we’ve seen this in the past. Let's not make sure we adopt that same mentality that we try to fight against. Right? Try to use situational awareness, look at all the data that you have available. Understanding it's not perfect, but you've got to make a call because doing something is always better than doing nothing right in our field. So there's lots of different ways to do that. My pitch to you is to embrace technologies, to do that. They will outpace your gut reaction in terms of success only because it's a tool that is used to process right now. I'm not saying that machines are going to replace us. It's not like one of those Terminator concepts. What I'm talking about is using more tools on your shelf to allow you to be successful. So don't push back against technologies or on data.
Host: John Scardena (18m 13s):
Number four, mitigate, mitigate, mitigate. It's a fun way to save three times, ask, mitigate, mitigate, mitigate. Well, it sounds like a horse anyways, random fact of the day. Okay. Before, during and after disaster mitigate, mitigate, mitigate. Yes. I have seen too many times and this is kind of the standard operating procedure still is that people go to get their hazard mitigation plan that FEMA requires to get grant funding, but then they try to apply that after a disaster set. Well, you know, the disaster hit and I'm going to use my HMP to get some funds to help recover. Oh, and by the way, her theme is standard.
It's going to be close to if not the same level that it was before the disaster, that doesn't really make sense? How many counties have done that? Right. If you've been all over the country or you might be shaking your head, yes. Like that's been your experience, but logically mitigation is not that right. You should be able to apply the other three that you've just gathered, creating, living plans, working with stakeholders, using technologies, to determine what your gaps are and use mitigation as a way to prevent disasters in a disaster, reducing the impact of the disaster. Then if you weren't able to do either of those or if you did, and you saw the disaster right in your recovery process, you should be mitigating for the next one.
Host: John Scardena (19m 41s):
So I'm a huge fan of mitigation. I think that it creates disaster tough communities. That's where my thought process goes. So we definitely need to look at that, take a hard look in our field of why are we waiting for a disaster to happen before we mitigate? I'm going to call out FEMA there a little bit for designing a process that is encouraging people to wait. You know, even if you're talking about the brick program, the brick program is competitive, right? That kind of goes against our whole methodology of our field, right? The why of our field, by the way, that's protecting life, property and continuity of operations.
The last one I just called out FEMA a little bit. So this kind of leads into FEMA. FEMA's process has little to do with most of emergency management. They are largely a funding and auditing organization. Again, I addressed that in the beginning of this episode, FEMA, the things that they do well, and there's no discredit to the people who work there and they are a federal agency and their purpose is to allow those who are responding, those who have direct assets, that if they're overwhelmed to be able to provide support, that's why it's a management assistance team. They're there to assist, which I can talk all day about the difference between national, regional IMAT.
Host: John Scardena (21m 11s):
But really for the sake of this conversation is understanding that if you're in the business of protecting life, property, or continuity of operations, you're in the business of emergency management. Emergency being the key word there and you know, trying to corral that. So that often falls on our NGO partners, that falls on businesses like Doberman, that falls on, you know Walmart is supply supply chain management, right? They provide a lot of logistics. Amazon is doing that now with water. So you have all these different parts, all these different moving parts, essentially who are trying to protect one of those, or all three of those concepts. To return people to normalcy, the best emergency managers in the world are the ones that their counterparts ask what are you doing? Because we never have a disaster. Right? Well it's because they've mitigated really well, they've used data to identify their risks, they're working with their stakeholders or creating living plans that keep bringing that risk factor way down. I would say that the best emergency managers at the local, NGO, or private sector have to keep adapting what they hear from FEMA using FEMA traditionally as the quote unquote, the standard, right.
Host: John Scardena (22m 49s):
Saying, hey, wait, that doesn't really make sense for what I do, I'm at a campus. Okay. Am I really creating an incident action plan one IAP really is just an agreement between the federal and state partners of who's doing what that's a little different as a campus, right. So I have to adapt that, oh, what am I doing with my Sheriff's department? What am I doing with DOD? What am I doing with the red cross? And so it's like MOU and you're trying to put this in like the FEMA framework that doesn't always make sense, but what makes sense is ICS right. Of common language, working with those different partners, trying to get the mission done together. We had to pick and choose from FEMA, but that doesn't really apply to everybody, right?
Why are we picking and choosing let's create something that makes sense for what you're doing. So that's was my call-out again, this is a call out to military groups who traditionally don't work with our side of the house, right. Or at least don't really understand our side of the house. So it was really my whole conversation to them was about interoperability, .mil, PFI, if you don’t understand acronym, which is how they set up their doctrine and how they move forward. So what ended up happening out of those conversations is a lot of really cool experiences where I was able to go in there and they said, hey, I've never even considered working with stakeholders before. Hey, you guys are using drones, you're using hazard vulnerability assessments. Tell me more about that.
Host: John Scardena (24m 29s):
So I had numerous opportunities to basically show off all my friends in the field who are doing some really cool stuff and trying to get us to do better protection of life, property, and continuity of operations. So I just want to thank the DOD, specifically the Marines for inviting me out to that conversation. I would love to hear what you think about my five points. Again, that's creating living plans, working closely with stakeholders, using technology, mitigate at all phases of the disaster and understanding FEMA's role versus your role in our field.
Host: John Scardena (25m 16s):
So if you have ideas about that, if you I'm sure there's gonna be lots of people who think this is a comprehensive list, it does not. But despite that, I would love to hear some of your concepts and your ideas of what you think about that, to those who do traditional emergency management to who has pushed back on, and maybe learning or trying to look within, my only advice to you would be that you keep on trying to tell the public to be aware and to do some self-reflection and to be better. You want that for them, let's make sure that we apply it to us, right and go forth and conquer. We're going to be talking a lot more about this, I think for the next several episodes, as we bring on other thought leaders who want to address this topic as well. On a side note, I like asked so many of our NATO partners to come on the show because they had really cool experiences. We're going to be having not just the NATO from the mill, from the US side as well. We had heard a presentation about the Mumbai attack, the terrorist attack. That was a really excellent, we're going to have him on the show. We talked about stolen grad and about how 400,000 people remained in that city during the world war two attack and how to deal with civilian populations.
Host: John Scardena (26m 46s):
We were having the guy from coast guard come in and talking about ports, natural hazards. There, we have really cool presentations headed our way or interviews rather from the presenters at this conference. And so I'm excited for that.
Tell me guys what you thought about this episode. If you liked it, if you disagreed with my five areas that you think that I thought we could improve as a field. If you disagree with me, if you agree with me, still like this episode, you got to subscribe if you're not subscribed, and we'll see you next week
#76 Preparing Cities - Interview with Asher Morris
What does it take to stay ahead of the threat? How do we successfully build relationships? Asher Morris answers these questions and so much more on this week’s episode. Asher Morris is a seasoned emergency services and emergency management professional. A trained paramedic, he also has experience in healthcare emergency management as well as coordinating specialized projects for vulnerable populations.
Asher currently serves as the Emergency Preparedness Manager for the City of Atlanta’s Mayor’s Office of Emergency Preparedness.
On this week’s episode, Asher discusses preparing major cities for all types of hazards and major events. He delves into the nuances of emergency preparedness at the local level. He also highlights the importance of leading through serving others first. Through his insights, we learn how to work more effectively within our respective communities as a whole.
[Asher’s comments and opinions are his own and do not represent an official statement from the City of Atlanta Mayor's Office.]
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1m 41s):
Welcome back to the show, everybody, it's your host, John Scardena. I am so excited for this episode. After Morris comes to us out of Atlanta, Georgia Mayor's office. He has a very long title for a very long panel, eight to speak both to that, but they're focusing on preparedness. I've been before focusing on the tornado response. It's about 17 or so plus. Asher comes with an additional feather in his cap. If you remember last year, we had Ashley Loria golden on here, big fan of hers and what she's done with mitigation. She's worked with Jima, she's worked with Forsyth county. Now she actually works with Doberman. She just said, hey, you got to have this guy on the show. He's really, really smart. So Asher, welcome to the show.
Guest: Asher Morris (2m 26s):
Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Host: John Scardena (2m 29s):
All right. So first things first, can you give us the entire title? It might be a paragraph or two, but
Guest: Asher Morris (2m 34s):
Yeah, emergency preparedness manager. We have Atlanta mayor's office of emergency preparedness. It’s not so long.
Host: John Scardena (2m 42s):
You guys like preparedness? Yeah. Okay. So I look at preparedness a little bit differently than some based off of my past experiences. We use all these buzz words, resiliency, preparedness, five areas of preparedness FEMA. It, which doesn't really make sense for response. You don't prepare to respond, you actually respond. So I call it readiness. So if you're the preparedness manager, are you focusing on all actions pre disaster or are you actually doing disaster response yourself?
Guest: Asher Morris (3m 13s):
Yeah, the majority of what we do is mostly the preparedness piece as you would traditionally think of it. So we do a lot of special event preparedness, crisis management, pretty much anything, but the recovery and mitigation piece. We even do some mitigation aspects as well. Okay.
Host: John Scardena (3m 28s):
Okay. So that's tough for me because mitigation is preparedness, but you know what mitigation isn't really preparing because it's stopping right. If you're doing mitigation, right? So with national preparedness month happening right now, this is like your month, like your a month to shine. So Atlanta is complex for those who don't know Atlanta, basically it's three seasons of construction and like kind of a rainy season, kind of gets cold, so that's how I know Atlanta. In terms of preparing Atlanta and events that could happen there, especially hazards could happen there. What is your office doing right now to prepare your city?
Guest: Asher Morris (4m 12s):
So, you know, obviously we just faced a lot of severe weather with rain coming through the last several weeks. So we frequently meet with a lot of our teams and make sure that everybody really has their good preparedness plans. Ready. Our role is primarily the cross-organizational coordination. So we reach out to the various departments, make sure that they're ready. And then when it comes time to activate any type of plan, we'll be there to assist in that execution really, if you will. But you know, we prepare for all sorts of things. It's labor day weekend coming up. So we're also looking at all the different, special events that are coming into town and working with the different teams and the different departments and making sure that everybody's got their plans ready and that we're ready to really safely host these events. And we are, we're excited about doing that also.
Host: John Scardena (4m 60s):
Yeah. So that's interesting to think about and preparedness in terms of the live shows. I mean, Atlanta is such a huge hub it's hub, you know, it's Delta Delta's hub, it's kind of the landing ground for so many different things, it has such a rich history in itself. You also have a medical background, right. So going to events and looking at it from that lens, how do you pair actually, I need to ask kind of a fun question first, because if there's a cool concert rolling into town, you're like, Ooh, we gotta do some extra preparedness. Can you get tickets to that? Are you able to like get behind the scenes and start preparing for the event?
Guest: Asher Morris (5m 42s):
I’m Sure I could.
Host: John Scardena (5m 44s):
I was gonna say if you can, you know, there's several concepts I would love to be able to help you out with, but yeah. That's why I volunteer my time. Okay. So in terms of hazards, you're really talking about two separate things. So at the same time you're talking about, obviously flooding major issue down south, especially in the Gulf region, but now you're talking about kind of that, that manmade more like accidental manmade of maybe something is planned, but most likely you're going to have a situation where some accident happens and you have to, you have to manage that. So in terms of your time, how do you differentiate between the manmade stuff and the natural stuff, especially as you're identifying your hazards.
Guest: Asher Morris (6m 30s):
That's a, actually a very difficult question. I don't know if there is much of a differentiation of time spent really we're it's very broad spectrum, right? So we're looking at all of the different things that are happening. We're looking at the weather systems, we're monitoring that, we're looking at our event calendars and monitoring that and working really a lot of times it's with the same teams. So we're really working from multiple angles, with the same groups of people to make sure that we're staying on top of it. I mean, our motto with our team is to stay ahead of the threat. So regardless of threat, regardless of natural versus man-made versus whatever else, our goal is really to stay ahead of it. So for example, one of the things we're already starting to plan for is winter weather. So we're already getting our teams together, discussing winter weather T plans and you know, that that's partly one of the big projects that I work on as well. So we're really full swing ahead, full throttle, going through this winter weather, looking at projects, projections for temperatures for precipitation, and getting really all of our planning stuff together.
Host: John Scardena (7m 33s):
How has the weather you have seen, so at least from my perspective, from a GIS perspective, IT, I deployed a lot more often to the golf than I thought I was going to, you know, 10, 15 years ago as the weather tends to shift and it's changed in those impacts. So it's amazing that you're already looking at that out. I mean, I guess that's preparedness in a sense, right, In it's full sense. As you're looking at that, how have you had to change tactics in terms of your strategic vision for preparing for heavy hitting events that are probably happening more often than what they predicted 20, 30 years ago even? Do you look at that, I mean, do you look at those long term trends? Is that something you care about?
Guest: Asher Morris (8m 23s):
I would say personally, I care about it. Like I said, one of my major projects is winter weather. Actually I oversee all of the warming center operations. So shelters that we set up during for the temperatures, for our individuals experiencing homelessness. So I'm looking at trends and seeing, for example, two years ago, we met the activation criteria at 23 times versus last year, or I'm sorry, three years ago, 23 times last year, two years ago, 34 times, and last year it was like 47 times. We're obviously seeing a significant increase. Then of course you can't forget where we were working through COVID as well in my office has been pretty integral in that, in everything COVID. So, yeah.
Host: John Scardena (9m 7s):
Absolutely. It was like all hands on deck, like last year and a half and it's going to keep rolling out, especially as the COVID response is intertwined with so many other areas that it requires true emergency managers to really focus on that, especially because you have a medical background even better. Yeah. It, it made me think, like, you're talking about the increase, go into some of the reasons why you think that increase happens. Do you think it's purely just because of the weather, or do you think it's because knowledge is like, you know, there's like a lot of knowledge growth of like that these warming centers are available. Is that a growing homeless population? What are some of the factors that go into those warming centers?
Guest: Asher Morris (9m 51s):
Yeah. So we're very metric based when it comes to the activation. So we meet specific temperature or other criteria and we activate, so, I mean, I think it's definitely an increase in cold weather that we're seeing the last couple of years. You know, last winter, we got very lucky we didn't, I don't believe we saw a single snowflake, which for Atlanta is not totally unheard of. That's actually one of the things I love most about Atlanta, you can really kind of see all four seasons in one day, some years, but it is, it's one of the selling points that I think, you know, in the middle of the fall, you've got all four seasons. Maybe you'll see a flurry here and there, but I definitely think it has to do with the weather. It's the temperatures, the temperatures are dropping and lasting longer. You know, some days we'll have, or some weeks we'll have a cold snap that lasts one day and sometimes it'll last three days in a row and we have to have contingency to keep our operation open.
Host: John Scardena (10m 45s):
Yeah. That's interesting. So our company Doberman emergency management, we've been heavily dealing with the impacts of weather on the opposite side bed, the heat side, because of California. We actually still have an operation. We moved our headquarters recently to St. Louis where I'm at now, but we have an office in LA and in California specific and it really is a nationwide issue of power outages, but the utility company was found liable for these major wildfires. So they were told that they had to put a plan in place. This is really just for the audience state for a lot of those emergency managers who don't know about this, but they created something called public safety power shutoffs.
Host: John Scardena (11m 26s):
Basically they think the wind or the weather, the heat was the right combination of factors was going to cause a wildfire from their power lines. They were going to kill the power. Well, now we have cooling centers. Now we have to deal with cooling centers without power and so our company, you know, we were poised to be able to work in that environment. We were, I would say very grateful and, and having to feel to obtain clients there and said, hey, we want to do this right. So a big part of our plan is those homeless populations. Really, you know, we also work with tribes and tribes can bring in a lot of money through casinos, or they can be desperately in need for assistance and work off of grants.
We have been focusing on those that need, you know assistance and so pulling all that in together and looking at that coordination piece of how you get to the generators, the fuel that's needed, how do you maintain that? Who are your stakeholders? Who has responsibility during that event? And really when you look at those types of events, it's that coordination piece between all those stakeholders, which amazingly smartly, you called out at the beginning and said, hey, mostly what I do is coordination. So in terms of the national preparedness month perspective, our podcast is kind of taking the spin that we want to prepare our emergency managers for the future. You know, as emergency managers, prepare the public, as you're focusing on the public, what advice could you give to emergency managers who might have to deal with cold snaps or deal with those heating, you know, those heat waves that are going to have to deal with car cold centers for the homeless, what are like maybe top five things that they should focus on as they do?
Guest: Asher Morris (13m 10s):
Yeah. So I think number one, and I would be hard pressed to find an emergency manager who disagrees, people's relationships, our job, everything we do, whether it's specifically preparedness or whether it's consequence management, no matter what it is, we need resources. We need to work with people and we really have to understand that it does take off in a village. It's a whole community approach. So building those relationships are that that's number one, that's that's by far the top tip proactivity, start early and make things happen. Build these relationships early, start planning early, knowing your, your stakeholders, knowing what their capabilities are, I think is extremely important and trying to understand what others can bring to the table. You know, we don't want to have a response where everybody says, hey, I'm in, but nobody knows what to do. So starting early with the coordination piece, hey, you're going to be responsible for X. You're going to be responsible for Y, you're going to be responsible for Z. I'm big on thinking with innovation, right? So last year I might have done something one way and it could have worked perfectly, but what can we do differently this year? What can we do better this year you know, to enhance our engagement with our community, to enhance our engagement with our stakeholders, whether it's the community or the internal stakeholders. You know, to me that, that that's extremely important, right?
We want to continue to grow, continue to evolve, continue to just do better. Be creative, have fun with it. You know, a lot of people look at what we do and say, okay, so we follow plans, we do this, we do that, whatever. We've got a plan, we've got a playbook, we've got a framework. It might be right, but have fun with it. You know, our plans should be living documents. Let's do something different. Let's break the glass ceiling if you will, let's do something. So innovation is another big one when I say productivity. Yeah so be proactive. I mean, those are really the top three. I don't know if I can come up with two more proactivity, start early, build these relationships and really keep thinking creatively, be innovative and, and just try to do better everyday should be better than the neck, the previous one every year, every season, whatever it might be.
Host: John Scardena (15m 26s):
Yes. I fought this tooth and now until I did one, one agency did a really well, hey, I like innovation. I'm going to go in there and we're going to kind of blow this whole thing up and see what we can do. Another agency fought me tooth and nail. I still got what I wanted, which was, I was lucky enough to work with a really good boss, but it was mind boggling. The concept of, well it's worked before. So why change it well in emergency management? What worked before was great for before, you're not preparing for the future, you're not addressing the needs of the future and or the capabilities that are coming out. You know, the big one with me was my big claim to fame is that I introduced drones to FEMA. We're not talking about the high altitude drones because we manage the high altitude drones, we manage the satellites. The Cessna is, which are worthless, sorry, Cessna pilots. But like these tactical little drones that most people think are toys when they're at 200 feet up in the air and you're getting situational ground truth and you're doing damage assessments, when you're doing debris pile estimations in a fraction of the time. When you go to Congress and they say, how did you determine your debris pile? You've got $5 million of debris. Well, this is the actual calculation that we got from the drone that, you know, it takes, it takes an account of the donut shape of the debris pile and helps out a lot in a lot faster.
I can't even tell you how hard it was to be able to convince people. Basically, we had to trick, the system. We were at a disaster, it was actually in Georgia. We were in Georgia and it was for a Warner Robbins for a tornado and we heard of another federal agency having drones and say, hey, can you just show us what you do with those drones? So they came out, they showed us what it was like and then you fast forward to hurricane Harvey and you have 700,000 homes literally impacted. So like what are you going to do? And the FEMA administrator at the time, Brock Long said to everyone at FEMA, be innovative, get the job done, be innovative.
So I went over to legal and I said, the head of the agencies said be innovative. Can I get a drone? And they said, sure, great. I mean, it was not as a longer process of that, but I got the drone, we showcased it, we went out to one fi wildfire with it, and I did myself in one other spotter did. We found 33 more homes than a 30 person PDA team and a third amount of time at almost no cost. So innovation works. So to the audience out there, that's innovation and an action. So to your point, yeah, good call outs.
Guest: Asher Morris (18m 16s):
No, a lot of people stay. We can't and we don't want to recreate the wheel. I'm a huge proponent of that, we shouldn't recreate the wheel. If a plan exists, let's not recreate a plan. But taking that plan at, or taking that wheel, if you will, adding an additional spoke, enhancing it, shining the tire now, whatever it is, make it better. Because like you said, what happened last year isn't the same as what happens this year, you know. Plans again, they're black and white, but we have to be able to pivot. We have to be able to really just see something might be different. So let's think outside the box, let's be innovative and creative. So I'm big on that.
Host: John Scardena (18m 51s):
Yeah. Switching out for snow tires, right? Yeah. So you talked about living documents, I'm a big fan of living documents. It's one of my biggest problems and maybe you can even address this. I'm now a contractor. I kind of hate this, it kind of makes me like die inside a little bit like, oh, contractor, consultant as I'm an emergency manager first. I only work with people who've been in the field, but as soon as you go to an agency, they're like, oh, consultant, you know, like how much money do you want? You're like, okay, well I do need to get paid for the work I do, but I like create living documents. There’s this problem right now with consultants is they're so focused on like the FEMA checklist. I've looked at a document where like half of it was definition.
So I was actually, this is a really, I've shared this one before in the podcast. They had a definition for a volcano for a plan for Philadelphia. I was like, why is this in here? Right. So how do you create living documents? Maybe, can you dress that other concern of how do you work with outside sources? If you're talking about collaboration, we can do everything yourself. Where's the middle ground of making sure you have high expectations, as well as allowing that to have some wiggle room.
Guest: Asher Morris (20m 7s):
Yeah. So, I mean, first of all, technology is great. So having living documents is easy at this point because you can just put it online, put it on a one drive or something to that effect, whatever platform you use and work through that, share it with different people, have different people look through it as far as the collaboration piece and how you do that and do it effectively. You know, I think, again, it's important when I'm working through, let's say a special event, for example, I'm not always going to be the subject matter expert on, you know, what this department will do, what, I'm not a police officer. So I can't tell the police what to do. We're not a firefighter, so I can't tell the fire department what to do. I don't work in public work, so I can't tell them what to do. So for me, collaboration really, and keeping these documents alive is saying, hey, you're the subject matter expert on this. I'll review it and make sure that the principles make sense. We'll review it together as a group and maybe we'll put together, you know, an executive committee, if you will, to look through this and we'll all have an input, but I'm not the expert. I'm just good at writing these plans or I'm good at reviewing these plans and making sure, you know, that's what my training is. So really understanding and helping others understand like, hey, I'm not the boss of you, I'm just the guy here who's going to help you get this on paper and, and help it work with the other documents that we're going to see.
Then really, it's just making sure everybody's kind of on the same page in that sense, hey, office A is going to be doing this, office B you're going to be doing this. How is that going to affect? Or how is your actions going to affect the other actions? And then how's that going to affect the entire system? So it's a lot of talking to people, a lot of working with people, you know, I enjoy the face-to-face conversations. We've learned a lot in the last year and a half about zoom and teams and all the other online platforms, but really it's FaceTime. It's those relationships building that and building that trust so that they understand like, hey, you're not trying to take my plan. We're trying to build a collaborative plan.
I think that's really important that trust and the relationship that you have. And again, I guess it goes back to what I was saying before we have to build relationships. That's really what we need to do. You know, when I talk to people about what it is that emergency managers do, I say, look, building relationships. Here's an example, if I'm walking on the street and somebody says, hey man, can I have a dollar? I'm going to look at them now, I often don't carry cash on me. So I'll probably say, sorry, I don't have cash. But if it's somebody I know, and they're saying, hey, I really need this dollar to, you know, get out of the parking lot or buy something, buy a drink. If I know them, and we've built that relationship, I'm more inclined to say you got it. As opposed to the person who I've never met before, never seen before. That might take a little bit more effort for me to be like, you know what, hold on. Let me walk to the ATM and get you this. So that's kind of the example I use when I explain to people why it's so important to build that relationship. We're so much more tend to be, as people and this is not just me, but everybody we're so much more giving often when it's the people that we know that are close to us. So as emergency managers, as people who work in preparedness, we have to build those relationships because at some point I'm going to need a chainsaw, you know, and I have to know the person I'm going to ask for it. Otherwise we'll be like, actually, the other guy asked for it already. Sorry, man. So yeah, it's all about relationship building.
Host: John Scardena (23m 39s):
I'm looking at the time here, you just had like 15 different areas that I like a hundred percent I agree with. So just like kind of rapid fire. Haven't used that term in a while in the show, but we used to do this, like rapid-fire thing where like, you're going to ask like four or five really quick questions, get their answers really fast. Always turned into like a 45 minute conversation. That had to die. But yeah. So two weeks ago on the show, I talked about unselfishly, just helping other people. If they don't return the favor, then you did something good in the world and you can be proud for the work you did, but more likely than not, hey, like building that relationship on selfishly, helping other people.
That's like a big thing of building relationships. Another big one for me is like, what? You're just calling out. Like the big secret of our field is whoever came up with the term emergency manager was ingenious because we don't really have any authority to tell all these other people what to do, but they hear emergency manager so they, hey DOT can you make me that one road with clear? Oh yeah. The emergency manager told me to get that done. We're like, cool.
Guest: Asher Morris (24m 50s):
We are the managers of relationships.
Host: John Scardena (24m 53s):
Managers of relationships. I like that. I really think we should be called emergency coordinators because like the best emergency manager is a current coordinator, but managing relationships is totally true. And like, when you can manage and you understand a relationship, I felt, you know, one of my best friends, he's been on the show a few times, his name is Patrick McGuinn and he's with salvation army. We used to be on the national strike team together when he asked for something for the company or just for me like, hey, can you volunteer some of your time to help? But you know, he, we did an active shooter class for his, for his headquarters. Happy to do it volunteer the time because a friend asked, you know, at the same time we just had a client calls up and say, hey, we're out of water.
Our company doesn't do water. We can tell them where to go. But I called Patrick up and I said, hey, Salvation Srmy can do water. Right, and he goes, yeah, happy to help. So like, just knowing what they can do, it saves a lot of time when you get into a meeting and somebody goes now what? That's when it's like, oh this is going to be a really tough meeting. But when you get in a response and everybody's walking in the room and you see already people talking to each other and they sit on the table and they start going through a who does what? A response or preparing a fair, whatever, you know, just understanding that and having that relationship is so huge. Right?
Guest: Asher Morris (26m 17s):
So it helps you understand their capacity, their capability, right. If you don't know them to start with, then you have to start the meeting from square one and say, all right. So tell me what you guys can.
Host: John Scardena (26m 25s):
And then it's like half and half the meanings introductions. And you're like, oh man, what a huge waste of time. Could this have been an email? Right. Okay. All right. I have a real question, something that I get asked a lot something, I have to like dive into quite a bit emergency managers here, it's all about collaboration working with your stakeholders. Not all parties get along, some parties are definitely top down some parties that have no relationship whatsoever. As, as you, as a guy who is, seems pretty expert in building those relationships, what advice would you be for emergency managers of how to start building relationships? Like what does square one of doing that?
Guest: Asher Morris (27m 8s):
Introductions. You know, hey, I'm so and so, this is what I can bring to the table. I think, you know, I'm really lucky in every environment that I've worked in, especially over the last couple of years, I've not run into that power struggle. It's really, everybody is interested in working together. That's one of the things that I really enjoy about working here at the city. It's we know that we have a job to do, and we know that we have to get that job done. We know that we have to work together to do it. But realistically it's finding that common ground, you know, you might be opposing entities, you might be competitors. If we were looking at a larger scale event, let's say, or even a disaster, you might be working with your competitor.
At the end of the day, we have to put egos aside. We have to realize that our purpose in collaborating, it's not for us. It's not for me, it's not for my name, it's not for my office, it's really for the people we serve. It's the people who have been affected by this disaster. So I like to try to say, even something like that, if I'm working with a group, who's having a hard time getting, you know, getting along, we have to find our common ground and recognize that we have one mission. Our mission is to help people and if we can't put our differences aside, really to help people, you know, to me, Ill personally speak to myself. If I ever get to a place where I can't put myself aside to help somebody else, I'm going to say, I might need to take a break or I meant to step out.
But we're talking about hopefully a group of professionals who got into this field because we enjoy one helping people, but also, you know, I have different reasons for why I got in here as well. I like seeing something that's chaotic and turning it into something a little bit less chaotic, more organized if you will. If we can't put that aside and say, look, I might not like you, our families might be mortal enemies, but we're here for the same thing and that's to make sure that what we have to do gets done so that this person, or this group of people, or this community, or the city, this county, this state, whatever it might be, can really get back off their feet or onto their feet and off the ground. I think normally I try to use phraseology like that and just say, look, common mission, one mission or one team. We have to do this.
Host: John Scardena (29m 24s):
Mic drop moment. That's the microphone of the show and it did perfectly because I swear you must have looked at our disaster top, all the audience taking this out right now, our Instagram page, because quote, that was literally shared today, emergency management puts people first and management helps people, a job where humanitarians. I think 90% of the field that we got into it cause we like helping people. I also really liked. So this better be a quote on our, this is a call out for our show too, for what you just said, emergency managers like seeing chaos and seeing if we can organize it. That challenge is really fun and I think that's a great call-out for somebody who does preparedness, you better start doing some response because you are really good at the response stuff. What you just said also, if you already know all the key stakeholders, you better start getting a response cause they could use somebody like you so big call-out to Asher for just having high skill there. Yeah. Thanks again for coming on the show. I just want to call out one more time that our grateful that you came on that the talk about the city of Atlanta a little bit and really providing great guidance to emergency managers on directing them towards future actions. This month is all about helping out the public figure out. Oh, we got these four ideas that we want to talk about. No. What really is important is to look at the future events, adjust where necessary. That's what you said, build those relationships. Now, understanding capability, just introduce yourself and seeing what you can do. All those are really great call-outs and so I appreciate you coming on the show and I hope we have you back on the show soon, actually. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah.
Okay. Everybody, this is the call-out so lame. I got to do it every week though. But if you like this show, you got to give us a five star rating and subscribe. And like I said, it's lame, but it helps us out a lot. It helps us track, hey, for were successful or not. We really liked this episode, obviously we just called out Asher for those good comments that he made on the show. So make sure that you send us a message, let us know on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever. Let us know what you thought about this episode. If you agree to, if you disagreed, if you disagreed, you're probably wrong because I thought it was a great episode and I'm his second witness for sure. So let's do this. Get on there, let us know if you want to work with Doberman emergency management or you had an idea about what Asher city had a question that we can forward him. Please send it to us at info@dobermanemg.com and we'll see you next week.
#75- Ashley Lauria-Golden is back with BIG NEWS!
We welcome Ashley Lauria-Golden back to the show to discuss current happenings at Doberman EMG and life as a newly minted “emergency momager.” She shares her perspective on local emergency planning, and provides insight for those in the plan update process. From her time as a paramedic to serving in both local and state level emergency management roles, Ashley has experience working in the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of emergency management.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1m 41s):
Welcome back to the show everybody at your host, John Scardena. I am so excited for this episode. Multiple reasons, we got the other Italian in the room, Ashley Lauria golden. Oh my gosh. I should not mess that up. Why multiple reasons? Three reasons I can think of Georgetown. We went to Georgetown together. Second, she's been on the podcast before she was representing her all of her background in Georgia with mitigation and as a paramedic and as a deputy director for one of the counties out there and planning and all this other stuff that she was doing. Now most importantly, most importantly, I would say we have grabbed her. That sounds super weird. We’re super lucky to have Ashley working with us here at Doberman. That was so weird to introduce that way, but we're super excited because obviously she has a ton of really great background experiences and competencies and she's bringing a ton of Doberman working with us in planning and mitigation, and really we're going to utilize her help with training as well because she has a lot of background with her Ashley, welcome to the show.
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (2m 48s):
Thank you, John. I'm so happy to be back and that's okay. My name is literally a mouthful and as long as you don't call me Laura, Ashley. Yes because that my entire life of why do you have two first names? I don't, it's an Italian last name too.
Host: John Scardena (3m 3s):
Well, that's like no joke. I say your name like 50 times a week as we're talking to like clients or as we're working through different projects. So there's like, there's truly no excuse, but I will say we are still super excited that you're working with us and you're coming back on the show to be able to talk about some of your recent projects, things that are happening out there in Georgia. You and I were just taught a very fun meeting with a county. They actually brought up a concern that at the time I was like, okay, I had to dress it pretty seriously, but maybe you and I can talk about this because you and I both, I understand different sides of the spectrum of both working for government and clients or consultants coming in and talking. Now that we're in the private sector, how do we differentiate ourselves from like that DC perspective of just a money, money hungry, like cookie cutter to like, hey, we're emergency managers who want to help, but we are also for-profit and how do we balance those relationships. Maybe we can talk about that. But my very first question to you, I'm going to call you out here a little bit, are we LinkedIn official yet?
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (4m 12s):
We are LinkedIn official. We've been LinkedIn official for at least a couple of days now. So I finally said we are LinkedIn.
Host: John Scardena (4m 23s):
That's awesome. Okay. So now that you're heading over plans and we're trying to balance this relationship, I guess that's a really good place to start. A lot of emergency managers on our local here, they're trying to get things done in house, obviously, if they can, but you can't get everything done. How do you find a good consultant or a good private emergency management group? And now that you're in the private sector, what do you think some things that we should be aware of as we're approaching people?
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (4m 52s):
Well, if you want to find a good consulting group, you should Google Doberman EMG, that's a starting point. But besides that, that is an excellent question because it is really hard when I was working as a local deputy emergency manager, you know, there's tons of groups that approached you and it's a lot to wait through, but you really want to start at the local level, doing your own homework, know what you're looking for. Know what is your budget, if you're doing it over the course of a span of a few years, know your projected budget, know how much you can bring in to bring in outside, help to go through it with you. Then make your own checklist of your priorities because once you go through and know what your top two, your need is down to your lower, your need to reach out to you, or the internet is a wonderful repository, LinkedIn, other things to see what groups offer, but you know, they're scalable.
If you need something that covers your whole county, like a local emergency operations plan, you know, to something very small, like a specific annex, you need to make that clear because then you can find the consulting group that has best background in dealing with that specific type of work.
Host: John Scardena (6m 1s):
Yeah, I think that's the right call for sure. One of the comments that we worked with, for example, in that meeting, just for everybody else's situational awareness, it basically said the short polite version would be, you can't possibly understand our problems because you're not from here. The guy in house, even though he's literally a team of one should be able to do everything, and so I think there's like this call out of a recognition and you know, we were on a Facebook chain where everybody's giving their different ideas of how to avoid consultants. Again, there's a stigma of like, you know, if you hire a private group, they're just going to give you cookie cutter. Well, that's one way Doberman is trying to stand out. It's like, hey, we'll call you out. If you think about, we're just trying to do that and we definitely did in that meeting, but I think there's also this, I think both things can be true at the same time. The local emergency manager will be most invested in helping out the community because he's there every day or she's there every day, but it is an inaccurate assessment or a route of say the other truth would be the consultancy that's coming in there. The group, especially ours, that has GIS capabilities that has a team behind it, who come from a background of response and, and planning who actually knows how to do this because we were the government side. We can actually do it, right. So most invested, still do it right and the way that it happens is we pair the analytics, we pair all the team. We pair with all of our experience and training with the local. If you have a consultant group, who's to say, hey, give us two months. We'll come back to you and you'll have your plan. It's probably going to be terrible. But our big thing is that we're working with people and we're trying to get that done. So it's kind of a comes off as kind of a pitch on this show. It's really not meant to be a pitch, but that's the thing that you should look for. But budget is a big deal. Budget's a big deal for a company like me.
You know, we hired Ashley, who's fantastic, but we sell the pay. We have to pay you something reasonable, right? Well, wait I have something for this. But like seriously, like what are some things again, this is about education. If you can't hire a group to do that, how do you prioritize and how do you keep moving through moving the needle forward?
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (8m 42s):
So I think a big thing to remember from emergency managers is that you can't always do it all on your own. You can't do it all alone and sometimes you just need a fresh pair of eyes. So that's absolutely where a good consultant group can come in, like you said, one, that's going to turn over a plan to you that they're going to work with you step-by-step and get your personal input on not just, you know, spit out a cookie cutter plan. But if you can't take that outside help and bring it in for budget reasons, work with your other departments, work with your other agencies, you're going to have to be including some of their capabilities in there anyway, depending on what you're writing about and really have them walk through it with you. You know, you're already all having to work together to build this, get their input, not just for their section, but on all of it.
You know, leverage those around you in a different way than you may have before with just writing down their little section, have them be playing writers with you. You can absolutely bring them in. If you're working on an EOP, you know, local emergency operations plan, have your roads and bridges have your public safety, have your planning department step up, you know, step in with you and bring in those groups that are already, you know, getting paid by our overall budget to start doing work with you. That's going to make your most comprehensive plan anyway, because then everyone is going to be really clear on their goals. Don't just take their information and their soundbites really make them go through the process with you.
Host: John Scardena (10m 3s):
Yeah. Speaking of process, we're segwaying a little bit, in fact, wait before I do that, because like, I'm like the ultimate, like all over the place guy right now. I hear a lot of chatter or hear a lot of people suggest don't go with X group, go with your local university, get a student to be an intern to write your plan. What do you think the pros and cons are there? I definitely have pros and cons in my head, but I'm just curious what you think about that?
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (10m 59s):
So where I've worked previously at the local level, we actually had a working relationship with one of our large local universities to be able to have an intern come in with an intern with us, not just to plan, right. But to be able to see how things go day to day in an emergency management agency, which was awesome. But part of their deal with being able to do that because it was an unpaid internship was to produce deliverables. So they then were tasked with helping us write the plans. So we actually had this intern help us update our mass care, mass sheltering plan. It was great because it took a lot of that initial template search. You know, we had an overall template, but doing some of the template updates, those just kind of organizational pieces.
It took that away and took it off our plates where we could focus on other things. But the hard part comes in with just making sure that your intern is on your same time table because they have a timetable based off of their semester, their semester breaks. You know, if they're in a school situation, they may have a completely different schedule than what you're expecting them to have and our student excellent job. I want to clarify that he did a wonderful job, worked incredibly hard, did a ton of self research, but you just kind of have to remember they are a student, so they may not have a lot of real-world experience to vet some of these things that they're using as example templates, especially if you're starting from the ground up where you may then have to go back in and read it and make it clear. Okay, this may have worked for this community, but this is not how our community does it.
So it's a great tool, but you're still going to have to put in a lot of provider input when you're working with a student, because they're just still newer to the field. So depending on what your need is, it can be a great way to, to get that plan developed, but you're also still gonna really have to help and handhold on parts of it because they're not going to have necessarily, depending on their background, the operational experience to see what looks great in a plan versus what will actually be able to be built out in real time.
Host: John Scardena (12m 55s):
I'll definitely say that my first plan had a lot of red in it from my boss, just going through and just, you know, teaching me essentially. I'm grateful for that, that he did that. There are three stages of competency that I see in general. I think this could apply to any career field, but it really applies to us as well because this field is naturally full of highly passionate people. When you get into the field and you're learning, you're super passionate and you're that, that fire's is really strong, but it's like, it's on, it's off. It's like super passionate. Okay. Let's see, we're bashing it. But like that doesn't really do like the cook really well. Right? And sometimes that incompetency or that lack of experience that really shows through, despite the passion, then you get the second group, which is totally avoidable, but a lot of people get stuck in here is you've seen a little bit of success, you've have a little bit of experience and now you're super arrogant because you've learned two or three things. You're unteachable, you know, you can't, you can't really move forward in that process. If you can move beyond that and like I said, most people go through that process. I'm going to say that I didn't, but I probably definitely did.
You get to this point where you get excited again, you get that passion. Now you have a ton of experience and like now you have confidence. You don't feel the need to like blast all the time that, that passion, but at the same time you can walk in and get the job done. And luckily for us, we've been able to find a lot of good people here at Doberman who like have that ton of experience. So that's what I look at when I think of interns or want to think of college students is if you want a blast, if he's somebody who's super passionate, great, but you're still going to have to like manage that cook, add in all the other ingredients. So it doesn't get burned, maybe you want the sear on the steak, whatever. I'm getting a lot of cooking analogies, mostly barbecue in Georgia.
Yeah. But yeah, that's a really good call out there. I mean, our company has also thought about internships, you know, we're in St. Louis over here and we have offices now in St. Louis, LA and Georgia. So it's like, okay, like how can we leverage the local community? But I think there'll be a lot of hand holding if we do that. So that would be our call out probably to other people is if you have the time to be able to train somebody great. If you don't, then it's probably just going to be a burden. Okay, so now that we're officially moving onto the next topic, let's talk about your job here at Doberman.
Host: John Scardena (15m 45s):
Some of the recent projects here you're focusing on and, you know, moving that needle forward. So yeah. Give us an update. Give the crowd the update, I guess.
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (15m 56s):
So it's the exciting time getting fully started and jumping right in. So a lot of what we've been working. Oh, wait for it. Nope. But we are heavily focusing on hazard mitigation, which is huge for me because I'm a hazard mitigation nerd. I was very fortunate to spend some time working in hazard mitigation for the state here in Georgia. So I fully believe the good news of hazmat cause I like to call it. So to be able to now start building the opportunity to work with local communities on updating their hazard mitigation plans, as well as if they have any interest in hazard mitigation projects.
So things like getting generators for critical facilities, tornado, warning, sirens, tornado, safe rooms, different flood mitigation projects. You know, the whole slew of what's covered under that FEMA umbrella be able to help communities really delve into that and better build up their mitigation. You know, better build up their resiliency and their future protections against disasters, along with doing some other plans, working on some local emergency operations plans for communities. Then on the side, still helping with some of the podcast stuff and some social media outreach, which is a lot of fun as well. So it's all been a lot of really fun and a lot of really good things that I enjoy.
Host: John Scardena (17m 16s):
You made me feel like I was talking to somebody about like the role of a mom as like, hey, what does a mom do? And then like you start naming off like a hundred different roles and responsibilities and I'm like, hey Ashley, what do you do? You're like, oh, I do 40 different things because we're a small company. And you know, you've been helping to do 400 different things.
Host: John Scardena (17m 42s):
You're a mom. So like, yeah, you know, so I had this, so Ashley knows Margaret Larson, who's on the show, we all went to school together. I was telling her that we need to do an episode about how a mom is the perfect emergency manager because like, wearing all the different hats. We seriously need to do that for next may. I think we should have all the moms had associated with Doberman or has been on the show, come on and be like, hey, I saved my kid's life 40 times a day every day. You know, don't put that in your mouth, whatever, you know, dads do that too, but that'd be kind of a cool call-out of like cross sector, you know how one thing applies to the other thing, but in terms of wearing lots of hats, yeah, it was cool because we're like, hey, can you take over planning for Doberman essentially and let's focus on hazard mitigation, our company disaster tough.
That's kind of what disaster tough solid be all about, right? Like stopping a problem from becoming a true crisis. You know, almost immediately, small company, somebody reached out for a different type of emergency plan. Now here we are, we're having to work on multiple different things. So that's pretty exciting for you to work on moving forward though. You know, Doberman is really looking to kind of change. I want to say change the perception, but solidify the perception of emergency managers, I think that's like our big thing here. Like how do we actually help people instead of writing the plans and saying, good luck, hopefully you don't have a problem. We're really integrated with those people. I think we talked about this last time on the show, but you're the first person outside of my wife that I called and talked about this idea, I'm responding to a tornado. So it's just like kind of cool to fast forward what, four years, five years, and see this happen. So exciting that you're on with us exciting that you're moving forward. If you were going to name the top three things that you want to happen with Doberman or yourself or emergency management in general for 2022, I'm kind of throwing that such a curve ball. What would you like to see? What were some of the things that you'd like to see our field do besides hiring Doberman on everything?
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (20m 5s):
That is a fantastic question and before I get to that question, I just have to circle back and give a shout out to Maggie from our Georgetown class, because her episode was so impactful to me as a new mom at the time that it came out, she is awesome. So I would love for us to be able to do a disaster tough moms are emergency managers, myself now, emergency mother. I would love to do that and have her back because she's awesome and she gave through that episode, a lot of encouragement to me when I was in a transition period. So awesome man, for 2022, I would one love us to finally be getting on the end of the pandemic.
I think all of us definitely have quite a bit of pandemic exhaustion. So we would love to be able to for the field as a whole be able to concentrate again on more than just COVID-19, you know, obviously we got to get through it safely and effectively, but I think for everybody and, just for how, for lack of a better term burned out, so many of us are, it would be just hugely helpful from the mental toll side to be finally getting on a more stable upswing. But I would really love for us just to yes.
Host: John Scardena (21m 18s):
Yes. I think everybody feels the same way.
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (21m 21s):
Everybody's going. Yes, definitely yes. But I would love for us to continue to grow, but really to delve into that mission of helping the local community, I would love through all of this, that we're working on individually as a company and then just for the field itself for emergency managers. I know it's been brought up on the show before, but just to keeping elevated in the public consciousness and to really be better understood where we can continue to be able to get the ear, you know, for folks at every level of the rest of our stakeholders to be given that legitimacy, to do what needs to be done. I feel like for so many emergency managers, you know, they have these fantastic ideas and so much growth and in all the different disaster cycles and preparedness cycles and every aspect of emergency management. But it's working with those other stakeholders and working within the confines of their communities that kind of hold them back.
You know, just to be able to still push through and be able to do more of those things, to really be able to have the field say, we've finally gotten away from saying, this is how we've always done it and it's going to be okay because that's been true in my life across working in public safety, emergency services, working in emergency management that unfortunately it always seems to take something like COVID, like a 9/11, like hurricane Katrina, something that just cuts outside of the norm for us to really step back and be able to say like, maybe we need to do it differently, but to be able to get on the front side of that. You know, a lot of that does come through hazard mitigation and not just in the FEMA sense with the projects, but the whole concept of mitigation of doing something beforehand, not just after the fact, that would be my biggest thing for the field is just to be able to get out in front and not keep playing catch up.
Host: John Scardena (23m 3s):
Yeah. You just hit the biggest pain point that we have to deal with, right? Like we're actually the two biggest pain points is that legitimacy and really that's on us. Then like getting ahead, technologies are definitely underutilized, the whole cookie cutter. The problem, my big gripe with FEMA is a former FEMA guy, I literally have an award, you know, like just chilling in the back here is that everyone tries to put it in the box of FEMA, but FEMA is, FEMA's role, I am going to be really, really blunt here. They're basically the IRS of disasters. They're there for money and they're there to coordinate making sure all the resources are there for other people to do their actual job. If you try to do it the way they want to do it, then you become the IRS of disaster. But that says that doesn't work at the local level because you are actually working directly with the red cross to standup, that shelter, you're trying to get those preliminary damage assessments done, you're trying to do the evacuation and coordination with the Sheriff's department. So like all locals, or all disasters are local ,locals should really be telling FEMA and, or, you know, the biggest spectrum, hey, we're dealing with the impact here. This is how you need to be able to work with us so that we are able to save and sustain life.
Unfortunately, I think it's kind of flip-flopped right now because the title federal emergency management agency makes everybody think, oh, it they're the ones who are, who are the best. Quite frankly, they're not, they're not always suited to be able to understand the needs of the local level. So yeah, just really interesting thought process there. Gosh, you made me talk about that forever. In terms of us changing our perspective, first perception, you know, we definitely have to add legitimacy to that. What do you think emergency managers who are like, yes, every politician or every PhD or every boss I have is not in this thing and gave me this job, isn't understanding what I'm trying to do. What would be some of your advice to them?
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (25m 16s):
That's a great question, because that really has been an issue across all the different places that I've worked. It's just, sometimes it honestly comes down to that community being impacted by something before you're able to move the needle at all. That's terrible because that should not be the time that those light bulb moments should be happening. They should be happening well before you get to that point. But I think a lot, the most of yourself reached out and be really intentional with your most not vocal opponents, because that puts too much of an antagonistic spin on it. But if you're an emergency manager or you're in a position where you do rely heavily on another agency and other department, you know, whoever does your finance, your budget really make it, your prerogative to get into the weeds with the ones who are having trouble understanding, you know, ask them to come sit on in, on different meetings with you, with other stakeholders, you know, bring them to your table.
Don't just keep going to their table, bring them to your table, bring them in when you're doing different training exercises, whether it's just a small scale with some of your other agencies. You know, have them see firsthand in these kind of free opportunities to see more of what you do so that they can see bigger picture, how investing in, what you're saying is really going to make a difference because it's that perception shift can be so, so difficult, but if you can start chipping away with little things where they're getting a better idea of what you're doing, you know, you're not just the great Mr. Oz behind the curtain, but you're being very transparent in what you're doing and how it makes an impact that really, really helps. Or, you know, if you're working with a board of commissioners and you have friends who happen to live in a commissioner's district, and they're willing to reach out on your behalf and do some of that kind of behind the scenes lobbying on different projects you want to work on, that can make a big difference too. Sometimes it takes that outside source also reaching out for them to see, hey, it's more than just what my emergency managers saying. I get it now. Other people are questioning it too. Now I kind of see the bigger scope of where it applies. So it's hard. There's no perfect answer to that and I wish there was because it affects all of us in emergency.
Host: John Scardena (27m 22s):
Yeah. It's brutal to deal with. I would say that I'm looking at job postings before I could tell if a community was looking to hire an emergency manager for the purpose of trying to identify somebody to blame, but that's really the minority. Most people hire emergency managers because they think that's what they're supposed to do. They have no idea what they do. So, like, my call-out one of my many call outs is, hey, why did you hire me? You know, like, what do you want? And like, oh, I never wanted a disaster. Okay, well then start taking some of my suggestions or I hired you because I'm supposed to have emergency management. Honestly, I don't know what you're supposed to be doing and just have a very honest conversation of saying, let me give you like, what is best practice?
When you use words like best practice and you don't use word like preparedness use words like readiness. You're changing this mindset from a doomsday prepper of things that never happened to, hey, I'm a logical person. This is a community, this is a standard thing. I think we have to fight that quite a bit. I also think Doberman, letting the cat out of the bag here a little bit, if people check out the readiness lab and then in 2022, we're going to be addressing this directly. Not just from consultant's perspective, obviously, but from the subject matter expert perspective of how do we build legitimacy into our field. So whether you're working with us, for us, or against us, at least you can be known as somebody in a respected field who cares, who has that passion, but some intelligence behind there too.
So a good call-outs for that. Looking at the time, you know, it's been just over a year since we had gentlemen podcasts, a lot of changes, including your now, your a new mom. Like you're a mom. Last time you came on. No, no, you were pregnant when you came on. So yeah, you're definitely a mom now, you know, you're living the dream, you're working for us, lots of changes. You talked about upcoming, whatever, if it's a while, before we have you on the show again or not, what would be your advice to emergency managers in the field?
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (29m 34s):
Keep up the good work. I don't think that they've heard that enough over the course of the last, you know, almost two years at this point that it's a, it's a wonderful field. It is a rewarding field, but it can be a really difficult field. So you are doing good work, not just like, oh, check class, you did this. So we needed this completed, but you're doing important work. You're doing good for your community. So just stay the course, hang in there, you know, and keep doing what you're doing because it is making a difference.
Host: John Scardena (30m 2s):
Mic drop quote moment. That's what's going to be on the quote. So now we know a fantastic Ashley, thanks again for coming on the show, helping me out this week. Also, thank you so much for helping out behind the scenes of the podcast with all of our guests. I'm sure all of our guests are very grateful for all your help there. Thank you for being an emergency manager, by the way. Awesome phrase. That has to be like on a t-shirt somewhere.
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (30m 27s):
That's my copywriter.
Host: John Scardena (30m 29s):
She's going to get royalty for us for life on this. Also I'm so glad you're part of Doberman. I've said it quietly to you several times. I'm going to say publicly, we're very lucky to have you. Our company just got a lot stronger with you being a part of our team. You know, today's been not really supposed to be a sales pitch, but also kind of a sales pitch. If you want to work at Doberman or work with Doberman now, you know that we have an excellent emergency planner with us who has also response and paramedic and training background and all these other things, all these capabilities that you bring with you. We're really, really lucky. I'm so glad we went to Georgetown together. How did you for years to work with Doberman and yeah, just want to say thank you again for that.
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (31m 18s):
Thank you, John. It's always a pleasure to be on this side of the screen and to get to chat on disaster tough. So thank you for everything and for having the faith in me too. So it's been good.
Host: John Scardena (31m 27s):
It's easy. You're smart. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Everybody, I'm going to do my song and dance moment. If you liked this episode, if you learned something, you should give us that five star rating and subscribe. Please give us that five star rating. I just want to see how many people like this episode. So if you could do that, that'd be awesome. If you have a question, a comment, a concern, whatever you want for our team, for Doberman or for this episode, if you have a question for Ashley, the best way to do that is to reach out to us on social media. Make sure you check out disaster tough, make sure you check out Doberman and now check out the Readiness Lab. We have some other podcasts on there. We're really excited to bring those on onto our umbrella if you will. So we'll check that out and we'll see you next week.
#74 Reflections of the 9/11 Ground Zero Response with Medical USAR Expert, Joe Hernandez
Joe Hernandez was a medical urban search and rescue expert/responder to the Twin Towers. He shares his experience with us on this anniversary episode.
We welcome USAR expert Joe Hernandez back to the Disaster Tough Podcast for a special episode in honor of the 20th anniversary of 9/11. In the wake of the attacks, Joe and his USAR team were deployed to Ground Zero. Episode airs on all major podcast platforms.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1m 41s):
Welcome back to the show, everybody, it's your host, John Scardena. I am overly optimistic in this episode, despite the topic, you know, we've learned a lot of lessons since 9/11. We've talked about it before with Joey, we promised that Joe is going to come back on the show. As you may recall, if you've listened to the other episode, Joe Hernandez is a medical urban search and rescue expert. He was at ground zero in the twin towers. He actually has his own podcast called solid responder. It just launched what he's going to be doing on that show is be sharing stories and lessons, tips from first responders, including in his first episode, he talks with another expert who responded to the Pentagon. So we can talk a little bit more about that, but today we really want to focus on the stories, the heroes, what we need to do as a country, what we need to do to get it back on track. We have gotten on track, off track. You can see behind me, I switched out our logo today from disaster tough to the American flag because right after 9/11, it was all about America, about coming together about United. I really think that we need to do that again now. So with that introduction, Joe, thank you so much for coming back on the show.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (2m 53s):
Hey John, it's always a pleasure to be on your show and more, it's always a pleasure to see you, my friend, how are you?
Host: John Scardena (2m 60s):
I’m doing good. You know, I really appreciate that. You know, I should be asking how you're doing because I was pretty young when it happened. I remember it happening, I was still in school, but the fact that you responded, the fact that, you know, you had to deal with that. I think we were talking before, what was it? Six, 600 per million particles. We're talking, you know, the breathing, there's been a lot of impacts to first responders. It is incredible that you're operating at the level that you're operating, you know, an extreme level. It's really sad that a lot of our first responders, brothers and sisters have been impacted. So 20 years later, I guess my first real question is how are you doing? How's the community doing? Is are we doing anything different? Have we improved? What are your general thoughts about 9/11?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (3m 53s):
Boy, those thoughts circle around my head 360 degrees. I'm doing fine. I'm going towards my 42nd year of marriage strong. Having that other, that partner in your life really helps with that response community that you belong to able to share those stories, those fears, those ideas, and then at the same time, trying to be a good listener because they go through an incredible amount of emotion while you're gone from fear to terror, to uncertainties to, hey, I need the power of attorney because the refrigerator broke, the ice maker is not working. The TV's not, you know, and everything that goes on. To that end, thank you for asking and we're doing really good, thankful to that. It's interesting to hear that you were young, even though you're married with two children yourself and I did get to see my three children prior to leaving for the world trade center on that Tuesday morning, stop in at the high school and visiting with my two sons and my daughter and saying goodbye to them, the school resource officer saluting and paying his respects as we left, heading to homesteaded end to Miami, to get ready, to head to homestead air force base for a flight to New York. That was our destination. The irony is that the other teams, we know that five of the teams were headed to the Pentagon who was an attacked itself. So it was an incredible Tuesday morning for everybody.
Host: John Scardena (5m 36s):
Yeah. I mean, like days is kind of burned into my memory, you for obviously different reasons, but you know, like I said, I was still in school. I think that is the first experience that I had outside of family that I observed death and had a comprehend. And why would somebody want to do that? And like some of those emotions. So I think that might've had you know, when somebody passes away of old age, you expected, that's something that you're taught from a child, but to see such a horrible thing. Then it makes you wonder because you're 20 years later and the way we left Afghanistan and the Taliban taken back over, it's like, there's so many emotions.
You're so grateful for the first responders. You're so grateful for all those people that went into the military to protect the United States. We have tried to learn so much and man, and you're just like, it's really disheartening the timing of everything and the way it's happened and, and for what. I don't want to make it about politics, but we did. I still also remember everybody coming together being very United right after 9/11. I mean, I have so many tangents right now. You were talking about your wife 42 years. There's a really famous picture that I have of you, and we're going to put it on social media, have you talking to your wife on the rubble pile? And so, you know, it just shows that you, even in that extreme moment, you still had that situational awareness and you're able to put your priorities in order, how do we all the rest of us get our priorities back in order? Because it doesn't feel like we are at the moment.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (7m 32s):
Well, you know, thanks for realizing that, and there's always strength in numbers. So I was reaching out to my wife for prayer as we went underground, searching for victims and knowing that the pile had shifted and that we were recovering body parts of not only the victims, but also of our brothers within the FD and EMS, NYPD, and port authority emergency responders that were there. So always reaching for the extra person for that partner, for the numbers. We have learned as we get together in numbers, that there is strength, there's strength in being able to share stories and share situations as you, as well learned in growing from just two of you to now be in 40 and a family and the strength that that now brings. I know that you mentioned th ugly head of politics. It just seems to always involve itself in emergency management and emergency response to some pain desire. Our nation's recruiting offices were being filled with young men and women who had a focus mission of taking care of who was responsible for the atrocities that were just a habit to our country. At the same time, our agencies within the cities and counties were filled with recruits, wanting to become firefighters, EMT, paramedics, police officers, correction, workers, anything they can do to serve. I had always taught my children at an early age that whatever they did in life, that it would be very rewarding to them and to others to pick a career that was always giving, give back as opposed to be a taker, be a giver in life. So it's been a pleasure watching my children choose careers in giving back to the country, giving back to humanity and reaping the rewards that are always there with that.
Host: John Scardena (9m 35s):
We've talked about this song previous shows about you being cold star family, and the amount of sacrifice that you and your family have given to this country. But there's not enough. I wouldn't say, I don't know if praise is the appropriate word, but honor that, you know, that we can give you for that. I hope that anybody who listens to this show or comes across in your life, gives you the greatest amount of respect, says a prayer for you and your family and for all the other responders, really, for being willing to go in and go back and go back and deal with that. In fact, when we found out that you're a gold star several months ago, I still remember a sanding prayer with my wife and just hoping you guys find peace and that eternal perspective. In terms of the respective of 9/11, if you're willing, would you actually be willing to walk through the deployment order to onsite and some of the highlights, that not the highlighting, you know what I mean, the moments that would help other people who weren't there, who hope, we hope never have to experience that if they get a call, what will their tempo be like? What will that experience be like for them that you can provide expire advice.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (11m 12s):
I want to start with those that tap into not have their name on the board that day. If might not have been their shift, that might've been their vacation week and the emotions and empty feelings and everything else you can think about that they were ready, educated, trained up to the event. It just wasn't their day, hats off to them because they are in such a needed environment. The teams could really function and put them to work in a really strategic way to help support the teams. Then to the spouses and families, children included of those responders that leave the door. Some of them without a moment's notice some of them without being able to tell their loved ones, I love you, hug them and I'll be back. Other than through a phone call that just didn't exist. Ironically, there was a massive training session going on at TEEX for structural rescue specialist and a lot of the FEMA IST members, incident support team members were away from the area, including folks from Florida, New York, all across the country were at TEEX. It’s Murphy's law when something happens, no one's home, you know, you don't have the wrench to fix the leaky pipe.
So it made it even worse when all air assets were shut down. So here are individuals needing to get into vehicles and be feet from the middle Midwestern part of the United States, all the way up to the Northeastern corridor, whether they were going to help at the Pentagon attack and or the world trade center. So it became a cluster of functions and trying to get everybody there. It wasn't that the country wasn't ready. It was just training going on, just as usual I happened to be off that day. It was my off day from the fire department. We worked at 24 on, 48 off, and my gear bag for the urban search and rescue FEMA response is always inside the house ready to go. My wife and I were going to the post office, my pager had gone off at the same time. My neighbor across the street was walking out towards us and greeted us good morning and asked us if we had heard what happened at the world trade center tower one. I already have my pager going off at the same time. He was telling his story, kind of put the two together and my wife looked at me and said, what do you want to do? I said, well, let's just go ahead and go to the post office and don't know what this day is going to be like. I believe before we even got out of the community, the pager went off a second time, a reference to the second south tower now being struck. I turned to her and said, it's going to be a long or deal. So we finished at the post office came back home, grabbed my bags and of my spouse went on to the high school and gave my love to my children and headed to the city of Miami for a two wheel two hour wheel up, and then a two hour deployment over to homestead air force base for deployment. The irony was president Bush was in Tampa, and nobody really knew what was going on in our country. But we did know that we were under attack at that time. So we were asked to stay in that area until president Bush cleared the Florida boundaries.
Then us along with the other 25 FEMA teams too, I'm sorry, 24 FEMA teams would then dispatch by ground to the world trade center. Then the other four to the Pentagon came beat feet, ground ordeal, and actually the equipment all had to be removed from pallets ready for aviation flight in air force aircraft, the palletized put back into semi-tractor trailers. Buses had to be recalled with drivers for transportation to the World Trade Center. And so you could see as an emergency manager, the logistics help that a planner would need in that kind of an event of saying, hey, this is way beyond my scope of practice. I need somebody with funds with the money availability and that's where emergency management sits down at the table and said, I need my finance guy here because we have an issue getting our team out the door. So you can see how those hats all intermingled with something, Murphy's law plays effect and we change hats.
Host: John Scardena (15m 56s):
Yeah. I mean, what you're talking about really is, maybe it's a romantic view because I wasn't there, it wasn't experiencing it. I can't even imagine not, I can't even imagine that somebody didn't even want to help at that moment. It really did feel like, like a moment in time, snapshot in time, like everything just paused and everybody was singularly focused on this one thing and, you know, support the United States of America support our responders, support this mission. As an emergency manager, that's the kind of new United force. You need that kind of coordination. You need to get things done quickly. I have seen that in large scale responses, but based off of, again, not being there myself, every report that I've seen, everything you're talking about, singularly focused on accomplishing the mission of helping people and then going after the bad guys. I just hope that that concept can resonate with people because that's where we really need to get to we're all on the same team and nobody cared what political party you were with that day or those weeks, those months. You know, that was a powerful moment. So you get on site you're now deployed, you're operating your first image of the twin towers is probably on the news, I'm assuming.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (17m 32s):
Yes, we got up, very slight view of television at the homestead air force base prior to boarding the buses. After that, we had been eliminated from being able to see any type of media at all, which was a totally different from other teams and from other events that we have been to in the every day, the response from the Java center, back to the ground zero site, we didn't have the availability of going outside of the boundaries of the fenced in areas to read any papers. We didn't have any televisions with us. Basically we were just relying on each other's words and really not know what was going on in the rest of the country, especially with our brothers and sisters over at the Pentagon, dealing with what they were dealing with over there and wondering how the two disasters resembled themselves.
Host: John Scardena (18m 26s):
Could you imagine that happening in 2021 with the amount of like social media, just onslaught. My question is like, what were your initial thoughts when you actually arrived on scene? Like, what were your tasks? Like, I understand, what pain, how do you even understand hurricanes, right? I understand large-scale incidents, but you're talking what it was a hundred stories, 200 stories and you're so dry. I can't even, we've talked about surf side, like surf side, you know, just happened and we actually had you on the show. Talk about that. But the scope of it is just incredible to even consider.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (19m 11s):
It's not a flat walk across a football field. It is taking 100 stories of material. Actually, as we just talked about 200 stories worth of material, laying it all on the ground, which makes an incredible rubble pile of steel, where you have to maneuver over under and between through windows, across steel, and then have the other assistance from responders. IE the union steelworkers and the crane operators who were there to help cut and remove the steel as we D layered that pile and tried to make our way down into the sub-basement levels underneath the world trade centers, which is where we were hoping to find those victims in those survivors. I almost welcomed it to, as a young boy growing up black and white TV days, which John, you were still a thought, if that.
Host: John Scardena (20m 9s):
I will say we did have my grandmother's TV. I experienced it, but nothing like that.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (20m 17s):
There was a show that Orson Welles called war of the worlds, and it was a futuristic sci-fi destruction and it was really the only thing I could associate it to was it was incredible, but to see, and that was my speaking, looking at it from the outside in, but when you finally made it to the center of that pile and looked from the inside out, you were blown away by the imagery of what was there and how in the world were we going to start the process of trying to find anyone, if there was any one defined and order bring closure to the families that needed to have closure abroad.
Host: John Scardena (21m 8s):
Yeah. So you had already responded to several. I mean, you've already responded, you know, at least to one terrorist attack before that with Oklahoma city bonding, you've already responded to other incidents, similar, smaller in scope, some somehow smaller in scope. I mean, your training must have truly kicked in in that moment. But it's mind boggling to even consider like the a hundred to a hundred stories times to getting there. You know, you've been there, it's a pretty big area just to begin with, and you're trying to get to the sub floors, but you're trying to get through a hundred floors of material, bringing closure.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (21m 57s):
65,000 gallons of diesel fuel in both of those buildings to operate their generators, over 72 elevators in each building. So the amount of material is just astronomical. Even though as a medical personnel, the lack of victims of not finding the victims that we thought we would find, the potential and the injuries that we saw amongst the first responders, and then assisting with removal of body parts and to bring closure for folks was a doubting experience.
Host: John Scardena (22m 32s):
In surf side, there was a fire that lasts several days, because of the diesel fuel did that happen in a trade center too?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (22m 41s):
Yes, it happened for several days. It was one of the injuries we saw from one of the Indiana task force one members, who had a flash burns from a hot pocket that just rekindled itself. Throughout the first, I would say the good first week, we had FD and Y engines attached to hydrants, loading the pile with water and trying to extinguishing some of the sub-basement fires and we're still in those areas.
Host: John Scardena (23m 12s):
How long did it take you to get to the sub-basement?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (23m 16s):
It didn't take us long, unfortunately, and fortunately I'm small and so they kind of sent the small guys in and the tunnel rats and at first we thought it was going to be really cool. We had radios and ropes and all kinds of stuff and little by little, we knew that radios were not working and the ropes were only so long. Line of sight was the only thing we could depend on. So knowing that the army Corps engineers told us that the buildings had shifted constantly throughout the day throughout the week, two inches, nine inches, you know, four feet and that we needed to be careful in the areas that we were going into. You could smell the salt water intrusion down in those sub basements. So we really tried to stay as close as possible.
Just the irony and the fear, you know, going by the areas where people had eaten in restaurants down there, they'd come out of the subways. They're in the sub basement areas, they're eating at a donut shop and you get a half eaten doughnut with a set of car keys they're on the table and one shoe and so your mind starts going John and say, wow, this person must've just ran and didn't care whether he had one or both shoes on it, was that important for them to get out of that building at that moment in time. Then your mind wonders, did they survive? Did they even make it out? And so there goes the stories and a lot of the members began writing their last names inside of their pant legs and on their arms.
Some of the members that we had found from FD and Y, ironically rescue two members, it was a habit for firefighters as we get our uniforms and our bunker gear washed that we write our names on the insides of the bottom of the leg flaps in the inside of the arm flaps, just so that when they go out to be de-conned or cleaned, they come back and we know whose bunker gear there they are and it was a way of identifying deceased and Y members by rolling up those areas and being able to call back to administration, let them know who we had encountered in at the same time.
I think the fear over came the responders that were down there and just folks just began writing their own names on their own leaves and arms and out came a little pads of papers. A lot of us kept personal journals that we would just write a thought, just in case there was a disassociation or another catastrophe, a second attack, all those thoughts that were going through our heads. At least it would be closure for our families, just like we were finding closure, trying to find closure for those families we were searching for. I mean, you get the hazmat station in squad 288, one station from FD and Y, one station, and you've got 35 hazmat personnel, another 22 fire department fire station personnel. So out of that bunch, they, they lost 19. It was the largest loss of life of any one station within FD and Y and out of 19 individuals that passed, we now have to deal with 51 orphans, fatherless children. One day, one station.
Host: John Scardena (26m 44s):
Magnitude of impact, you know, we talk about you talk about, it’s going to be a really messed up statement and I recognize that. I wrote a very offensive report in my undergrad and I explained that economically, emotionally, the way that we were responding to war at the time was we were losing because what they did, what these terrorists did, monsters did, with such a small force with, you know, $400,000. I think that's what we figured out, what they did and the impact, not just the impact of the immediate loss of life, the impact of the fear of the impact of decades later, you are one of the bravest, if not the bravest person I've ever met. Yet 20 years later, you know, the fact that you're brave enough to even talk about this and you've talked about this with me now a couple of times. The fact that you're still teaching it, the fact that you're still involved with it, the fact that you're focused on helping others be able to handle it because you had to go through it firsthand experience, the impact is just incredible. It goes back to that thought of what are we doing to make sure that Joe Hernandez, hero, a firefighter, unnamed firefighter, in my book heroes who lost their lives, people who are eating at a restaurant, you know, casualty, what are we doing to honor those memories and to honor the, the good people who have had to sacrifice too much? That's the thought that I've been thinking about a lot lately. It's such the same thought I had surf side when we found out the firefighter had pulled out his own daughter and too much sacrifice unfair. This world is unfair and we can do a lot to change that.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (29m 7s):
We sure can and thank you for, bringing those things up. They're important in the response world. Those things are just as important because they are manifestations during and after those responses that take place. Sometimes we don't even count those individuals to the Oklahoma city bombing the reality of divorce going up 800% of the department is unheard of. Why aren't we speaking to those individuals during this event to prepare them for the manifestation changes that are going to go on in the spouse and in the family makeup from this type of an event, and let's prevent those divorces, as you said, economically, it's unsustainable to see that we're at 30% increase in suicide rates.
We're losing more first responders to suicide than on the job deaths, and they're doing it at the station. So where have we come and why have we not prepared those individuals for these certain situations? I briefly spoke with Mike Ley during an interview for our show on Solid Responder regarding the attack on the Pentagon and Ann Carr was the wife of a responder. She had been very instrumental in creating what we knew as the beginning of a family support mechanism. It's strong in Maryland task force one and unfortunately the system had decided to not replicate that particular chapter in education for the new curriculum. I found it in a couple other older instructors, found it intrusive. We found it as a non valuable and it was sad to hear the new millennial thoughts on eliminating some that we felt was so important as we've seen the changes in the generations that affect them as well.
Host: John Scardena (31m 24s):
So my assessment doesn't make sense because there has been such a strong push just in general for mental, I call it mental first aid, like our stigma on mental health is still there, so I call it mental first aid because it makes sense for a little bit better for people, but there's been such a push for that and such a recognition for that. How about the recognition that even as a responder, there are levels, there is not a single person in the United States, yourself included the expert, like the guy, literally who had to have ever had to deal with 200 plus story collapses from a terrorist attack.
You were the guy that responded to the only other, well domestic terrorist event that took out a huge building, a federal building. There has to be some recognition that, hey, this is not normal and because it's not normal. What I mean by normal, I'm seeing this as a guy who's responded to every kind of natural disaster in several manmade disasters in the book, kind of wrote the book. In some ways, I signed up for this stuff that I'm aware of. You know, when firefighters are afraid, when they feel fear and they're writing their name, that means something's different. That that's not your typical house fire. I don't know that everybody's hopefully evacuated already. I don't, know.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (32m 56s):
They're supposed to be 10 foot tall and bulletproof, and that they're not fearing the response of an entry into a building or a car or whatever it is, their fear in life itself and how it's affecting their mental health and their thought patterns and their family and their life and how they're dealing with their other significant other, their children, et cetera. I wish for a certain degree, I grew up and worked in the old firehouse and we didn't have individual bedrooms. We had a common room, we didn't have individualness, we all ate at the table together. Everybody chipped in seven, eight, nine dollars. We all bought dinner and whether we were able to finish cooking it, whether some had to go out on the call, whether we kept it warm until they came back, whether we left them dishes to have to do, to share the responsibilities, it was a family makeup. There was a reason for it. It was to be able to lean on each other when times were tough, but also when it didn't evolve fire department, when it didn't evolve, rescuing anybody, just the everyday chores of man, you know, I'm struggling in this part of my life, or I'm struggling with that part of my life. You got any suggestions and that's really where the strength comes from.
I think we're missing that. I think we're all getting on our social media platforms and we're depending on somebody across that electronic screen to rely on it, to talk to instead of the guy or the girl next to me, who we can share so much together, or even miles away that you and I can get on a zoom call and share some real heart to heart issues. Some thoughts, the mind boggling memories of when I returned home and I went to my children's X elementary school, now they're in high school, went to their elementary schools because we had great relationships with their teachers. I wanted to speak to those children because of what I saw taped up to the walls at the world trade center, as we walked by, and they were pictures of children across the country, drawing, burning buildings, people jumping out of buildings and how does a child process those images from day to day, from week to week, and as parents are we allowing children to be desensitized by watching these type of events and play in these types of games and not having a reality check of what's real and what's not.
Host: John Scardena (35m 32s):
Yeah. The reality check of what's real and what's not. I think even if you see what's real, it's hard to comprehend that it is real. By the way, your comment, I don't want to make light of it, but your training, which is phenomenal, by the way, I've said it like every time we've brought it up is your eye. There was seemingly some responders there at your training that were 10 feet tall and bulletproof, they are not very good for crawling through holes. So you say it's not good, good. The fact that you're small, I would say that God made you small so that you could save some lives and man, I'm 6’2, 220. I felt a little too big in that hole. I don't know. I have definitely appreciated the fact that brave men, brave men and women, as we saw to use hard training, not every size, not every shape is good for every activity. If you want somebody, if you're in a pancake building, I'm hoping that 5’2 buck 20, somebody gets to me because that's who's going to get to me. So it doesn't matter the size and your giant in my book anyways. So I really want to thank you for sharing your experiences.
I think we could talk about this for a while. We've talked about it other shows, you're going to be talking about it probably quite a bit on your show, solid responder. Again, I think everybody should be listening to, to experts talking about their experiences because that's, when you get people who are like, hey, I'm going to develop the curriculum and talk about this, developing programs when I'm achieved for what I'm, whatever. I heard an expert who is at 9/11, say, hey, you got to talk about mental health. Hey, you got to address these problems. You've got to create unity in the stations and maybe these micro-cultures can get a little bit closer. I certainly felt pretty close to people as they were crawling over me and in the practice facility.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (37m 46s):
And that's what I believe that disaster medical solutions and Doberman Emergency Management can bring to the table is that complete exercise of response management, recovery and mitigation, which includes mental health counseling and our general facilities, bringing everything back to the way we were before the disaster happened. So that community integrated disaster response exercise that emergency Doberman emergency management and disaster medical solutions is looking to bring across the country, I think will be an answer to a lot of solutions for agencies, city, tribal, and county.
Host: John Scardena (38m 26s):
Yeah, and I think you and I have this similar methodologies of it's about helping people do better and you and I have taken personal financial hits to be able to do that. But, you know, I feel good doing it. I was so impressed by the training methodology that you have with both the instruction and the repetitive nature of getting in their practice, hotwash and people wanting to stay there longer. People wanting to stay there later, not complaining about missing meals or doing meals later. That is the tenant type of training that we need to have. That builds comradery. By the way you had teams all over the country show up there, and now you're starting to build a network of people, who will be able to talk site. So kudos to you and really what you're doing and the fact that, like I said before man, I can’t even call you man. Well, man is kind of the greatest term you can call somebody if you think of the truest sense of the word, but that being said, you're like a demi-god in my book and of the fact that you've been able to do so many great things. The fact that you can keep coming on the show and be able to talk to people free, by the way, for all of our listeners this is education. I'm happy to pair up with you and to be able to help you out wherever I can, for everybody who's responded to their families, to the survivors, to anybody who saw it on TV for the first time death like myself, I think you and I would both agree that unity is, can help out a lot. Mental health disaster, mental health, disaster, mental, you know, first aid is a big deal. It's not just important for your career, it's about making the tough call. Sometimes the toughest call is say, hey, I went through something extremely unusual here, and I want to make sure that, you know, things work out.
You have 42 years of marriage. Your wife seems awesome. You always talk about her, which means you're awesome. If you're doing it right, if you're happy this many years later, then maybe other people should follow your example. So that's my final call out there. Joe, if you're going to give some advice to a first responder or an emergency manager, anybody who would be dealing with a response, humanitarian even, what would you be your final call to them today?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (40m 59s):
Learn how to take a little trauma out, Not only for yourself, but for those around you, don't expose yourself and don't expose those around you.
Host: John Scardena (41m 18s):
I think we'll end it there, Joe, thank you so much for coming on. You know, you're going to keep coming on the show. I hope your show takes off. We're big fans of it, it's going to be on the Readiness Lab for, for everybody who's wanting to learn a little bit more. It's free education, essentially. In fact, on the Readiness Lab, our little plug for Joe, again, not paid or anything, but we actually put his USR conference on November 30th coming up on there so you can learn more about that. We actually did a backlink to disaster medical solutions so they can check that out. Joe is truly an expert, obviously from this conversation alone, you should check out any other show that he's on.
If you want to reach out to Joe, if you want to thank him for all the work he's done, the best way to do that is to reach out to him directly. We can put that in our show notes, but please tag him, tag Joe Hernandez on LinkedIn on disaster disaster medical solutions, wherever, and just say thank you. That would be our biggest, our biggest, wish is that people actually start thanking them. Then I'm going to guess, Joe's going to agree with me here, maybe it's a really good time to think either through action or through deed, same thing, I guess, to the first responders in your community, that you just send them a note, send them, you know, they need equipment. They need all of this, they need help and have their back. When legislation comes up where they don't want to provide help, how is your local politicians to be able to make sure the first responders get that help they need? I think that's kind of the outcome that we would look from a general public perspective. Totally agree. Totally good. So we're not going to do our wine and dance at the end of this episode, we're just going to leave it with people thinking about 9/11. If you’re a praying type or meditation type, or you're an action person type, just thinking about something that she can help become more United with your first responders and thank the people who have to sacrifice too much and we'll leave it there. You have a good weekend.
#73 EM National Preparedness - Interview with FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor
September kicks of National Preparedness Month so we brought on one of the most popular FEMA Administrators, Pete Gaynor, to talk about, “The Year of Repeat,” and how emergency managers can prepare for the future, as they are helping others become Disaster Tough. Additionally Pete shares his thoughts on the Afghan Exit. We fully support and agree with his thoughts.
This is the Year of Repeat- with Hurricane Ida slamming into Louisianna on the aniversiy of Hurricane Katrina, Wildfires forcing thousands of evacuations in CA, a catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, and now the rise of the terrorist group, the Taliban, in Afghanistan. This, "Year of Repeat," causes us to wonder how emergency managers should be preparing for future actions. Former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator, and Former Acting Head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Pete Gaynor, comes on to share his insights with the emergency management community.
We also asked Pete about the Afghan Military Exit to shine some insight and perspective to emergency managers.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1m 41s):
Welcome back to the show, everybody, it's your host, John Scardena. I am so excited for this episode, we're kicking off national preparedness month with the man, the myth, the legend, Pete Gaynor. If you recall, he's been on the show before he led FEMA who is also acting head of DHS during the transition between presidencies. So he has a whole wealth of knowledge. He's being hit by Ida right now, up there in the Northeast. Hopefully he's going to be okay, Pete, welcome to the show.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (2m 7s):
Hey John good to be back, thank you.
Host: John Scardena (2m 10s):
Hey it's always a good time talking to you. You know, you have a wealth of knowledge and experience and national preparedness month, our spin is taking it from preparing emergency managers. You know, we always talk about external facing, preparing the public. I think that's kind of the traditional sense, but we as emergency managers talking to emergency managers, I think we have the great opportunity to talk about that this month. BBut I want to back up real quick because I'm calling 2021 now, the year of repeat, because we've had so many incidents and we talked about hurricane Ida itself, hitting on the anniversary of hurricane Katrina, we're seeing the rise of ISIS and the Taliban, which is a whole other scenario that we have to deal with. Now we can choose to get into that or not get into that, or you feel we had, you know, catastrophic wildfires that are happening right now that are still record breakers. It's like, COVID is still happening. It's the year of repeat. It's really frustrating as an emergency manager. What is your take on just the year of repeat idea? If you had similar thoughts.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (3m 20s):
Well, I was hoping for a year of common peacefulness in 2021, as we say good bye to COVID-19 and we will get there. You know, it's one of these things that we have to continually be aware of and defend against and encourage people to get vaccines, right. It's, you know look, and it just has to look at the stats. The majority of people that are in hospitals with Delta are people that aren't vaccinated. So get the vaccine, protect yourself and your family and then it's everything else that's happened, right. I think you hit the nail on the head about, what do emergency managers have to worry about or have to prepare for?
It's all the natural, it's all the natural disasters. So, hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, right. We've got to still do all that. You have to do all the human caused disasters like hazmat incidents, oil spills, and contaminated drinking water, and then technological disasters like bridge collapses, dam failures, and train crashes, right? All those things are kind of in the wheelhouse for emergency managers. Then you look at 2020 and 2021, it’s pandemics and supply shortages, right? Medical supplies, shortages, civil unrest.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (4m 45s):
You know, when you're talking about FEMA, unemployment insurance, we thought FEMA would be an unemployment insurance business, immigration border crisis, and you mentioned it most recently, Afghan resettlement, right? So it's never any gift is, you know, how do we get ourselves out of this while you call your emergency manager and they're going to help you coordinate and integrate and guide you to the end right? So no longer is it just the human caused, it is then man-made and, and technological, it's all the other things. I think that is really what the future holds for emergency managers. It's going to be much more than the traditional post civil defense kind of world that we all kind of grew up in. It's going to, it is now changing to something different.
Host: John Scardena (5m 33s):
Yeah, I agree. I think that the field is rapidly changing for basically two different reasons. One, the frequency of disasters and how it impacts systems. Two, well I think there's a third reason there too, but you know, outside of frequency, you have a general public who's much more aware of the role of emergency management and seeing how public health really wasn't the mechanism of that, of doing a response specifically. Then I guess the third one is education. You know, this idea that you retire and then you get this cushion job is, you know, you focus on evacuations if you're fire. If you're a police, you focus on physical security. I think that that world is kind of dead and so between education and the general public's perspective and what they think that we do versus what we do, I think, you know, I'm one of those people who actually thinks we should cater to what they think we should do because you want to build their confidence in what we say. There's this idea that we shouldn't be in response, I think is just absurd to me, but, you know, that's just my perspective, but yeah, you're right. It's changing dramatically for sure.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (6m 49s):
You know, you'll never get out of response and it's not necessarily emergency management that responds in a tactical way. In some cases you may, depending on where, how you set up in your jurisdiction. You know, FEMA has tactical assets, like USR and generate teams that will respond out there and many more things. But it’s responses short and the hard thing is recovery. So let's just go back down to the Gulf coast, Ida, and Louisiana now that responses is still happening, right.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (7m 31s):
So clearing roads, we're getting power back on, or trying to keep people in their homes. All those things are happening, but it soon is, and it is right now, it is recovery, right. That is the long pole in the tent. I may have said this in our last chat, is that as a profession, we have to become much better at recovery because that's where it counts right. That's I think ultimately, you know, you get scored on response. But as a nation, we’re great responders, you know, police, fire, public works, public health, the response in the moment, we're really good at it, in the moment throughout the nation. When it comes to recovery, we really have to up our game on it.
I think if you want to have an emergency management program, that is first-class right, you have to do all those things, but you really have to do recovery well. So again, I think the dynamic is changing a little bit, it’s still the response, but I think we're ultimately going to get graded on how well recovery went and how did we prepare for recovery, right? You just don't walk in recovery without a plan, right. You have to have all those things. So we had to make a better investment as a community, and as a profession when it comes to recovery.
Host: John Scardena (8m 55s):
As a professional planner, especially an emergency planner, there has been a lot of instances lately that have seemingly happened without a plan. That has been really tough to watch and to observe and to say I know we can do this better, like we have the capability, we have the intelligence, we have the situational awareness. We have all these things in place to be able to make better decisions. So, you know, a great call-out for emergency managers this month, especially as we get better at planning for the plan, planning for the recovery, for sure.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (9m 35s):
Yeah. A couple of years ago, I got to hear Rudy Giuliani, who was the mayor of New York city during 9/11, just talk about the opening hours of 9/11. I may not have all my facts straight, but generally they had just done an exercise in the past couple of weeks, a big exercise in hospitals and tested all their plans when planes went into buildings. So we headed into the 20th anniversaries, took when planes, one of the buildings, and he looked at his staff and he said do we have a plan for this? The answer was, no, we don't have a plan for planes going on in a building. We have a plan for lots of things. Well, we don't have a plan for a plane going into a building. Then he said it took a little bit, you know, a few minutes where he said well like I'm screwed.
I don't have a plan for a plane in the building. Therefore, how am I going to respond? Then he realized, right. You know, he says, he took a deep breath and looked at his staff and says, well we have all the other bits and pieces that we can use, right. Not necessarily planning to a billion, but bits and pieces that we can use to get ourselves out of that. That's essentially right. As you know I love planning, and I'm a believer in the thing that you plan for today is not the thing that's gonna happen tomorrow, right. So you're going to have to be ready for the thing that you haven't planned for it exactly. I think that's the beauty of emergency management. We are problem solvers. If we don't have the full, robust plan, we're going to cherry pick from the things that we have done in the past, to good plans, procedures, and tactics and all those kinds of things to get ourselves out of it. That is the beauty of an emergency, that they can do those kinds of things when it counts.
Host: John Scardena (11m 14s):
So this happened with you last time, it's a problem for me because we always try to find like a quote from the show. As soon as you say, emergency managers are problem solvers, it's like dry drop the mic, walk out of the room. I's true, like, you try to explain to people what emergency management is, and you say, protecting life, property, and continuity of operations, but no one really knows what it is, but like problem solving. That's the job you have, this chaotic situation happened and hopefully you know who your stakeholders are, you know who you know, what the resources are, you know who to call in the time of that crisis. All of a sudden, you start putting the pieces together. He walked through a response, he started to walk through a recovery. My big thing, right, is mitigation, mitigate before the disaster disaster, it's just still going to happen. That's just the nature of the world we live in. How do you apply great mitigation techniques to the recovery process? You know, as a former FEMA guy, you can see my side of the background.
You're a former FEMA guy, I really didn't think that we did recovery that well because we had to build back to what it was most in most cases, but in my mind, that's just as vulnerable as it was before the event happened. So how do we apply better building codes? Here's a great example, coffee park, so I went up to the Dixie fire like two weeks ago, I responded to the Napa fires in 2017 and I saw basically the new cabin. That's what I call cause it was just field of Ash. When I went into coffee park, they, they had chosen not to put commercial sprinklers on the roof that has code in Arizona for wildfires. I'm like, your entire neighborhood just burned down, you already have vegetation just down the road again and they chose not to do it. I'm like, man, that's stupid, you know, as a single pipe to the top of your roof could have saved an entire neighborhood. If it happens again, what is your take on that? Is that an extreme view? Is that a not extreme view? What is your take?
Guest: Pete Gaynor (13m 18s):
Well you know, out there, there is some organizations that their plan is, my plan is to wait till FEMA arrives and they're going to help me out on my problem. But that's like part of the plan. I don't, I boo boo that all day long, right? I think you have a moral obligation as an emergency manager, whether you're a local tribe, territory, state, county, federal, right? You have a moral obligation to do all those things, to keep your community safe, right. But to have a plan that says, oh, we'll just go for the feds to get here because they can do it all is a bad plan because we've learned that again.
Take the pandemic, the federal government cannot do it all. It's virtually impossible, you have a true natural disaster, you know, emergency in every state, a hurricane in every state major disaster overnight that the federal government doesn't have the resources to it. So the only way that we're successful was that the whole entire community works together. So local, state, federal all work together. If you own it, you own it. So I've had the opportunity to work for two mayors, a governor, and a president. I told my mayors, hey, we own what we own, right? We're not gonna wait for the state to come rescue us, or we're not gonna defer to the state. we're not going to defer the feds. There may be a time and place where we run out of resources and that's how it's worked, right. You go to get resources. So, you know, we have to take responsibility for the things that we own. So next big disaster, it's going to be this common don't worry, right? It's going to be something that we haven't planned for, or we planned for but we all kind of say that will never happen. Right. That's too crazy. So we had to do a better job and we have to hold ourselves accountable right. In doing so, and just don't paint over, you know, it's like hey, we're gonna put a fresh coat of paint on this and we're going to say, oh we're all fresh.
Really have to get down and dirty about how we plan and prepare and what we think, the apps, the results of that may be when we're faced with a challenge. I think the opportunity is now, especially based out at COVID and everything else is emergency managers across the country, really have to have a heart-to-heart talk with their elected leaders about what's going to happen next and who owns what? Right. Just don't wait for the federal government show up, because that is a plan that will fail.
Host: John Scardena (15m 56s):
Okay, so I usually stay away from this topic because it's like the nail in the coffin type of topic politics. But I mean, you have a ton of experience. You just mentioned it to mayor's, governor, president, you talked about accountability. I feel like right now with a lot of different disasters, there's not a lot of accountability. It's like, well this will blow over, you know? Well the obvious one that probably nobody wants to talk about and we can skip it if you want, but there was a terrorist attack at the airport we're trying to evacuate people. What was the response to that?
It was like, oh we're going to find the planner and blow up one building and move on. I'm like, but there's still people in danger, you know? So my frustration is at an all time high and I'm not a veteran, you know, I come from a family of veterans, thankfully you're a veteran, thank you for your service. But it's just so frustrating to think about that. Now when I talk to clients, where I talk to friends in the field, or I talked to other friends who are actually responding to Ida right now, so big shout out to them. I'm like, when I talked to them pretty much, everyone's the same thing. Well, I guess it's time to brush off the counter-terrorism plans. You know, what do we do in a terrorist attack? It's like, man, it's so frustrating. Can you provide some wisdom or insight to the audience who might be filling this?
Guest: Pete Gaynor (17m 21s):
I'll try to keep my composure. So, you know, I'm a retired Marine, spent 20 years with the Marine Corps. So what happened last week really pisses me off, right it's totally unnecessary. We could have done it another way and we're not done in Afghanistan, right just because we're not there. If people think we've done that wrong and I think part of the problem, and I think this is like the American laziness, right? When it comes to politics, it's not real, there are some in government, right, congress, governors, but you know, we're talking about congress, senators, and Congress men and women, that are not there for the long term, for the long haul, they're there for the short-term gain right?
What can I get out of this? This sounds really bad, right? About how politics works in America, but it's true. What's my short-term gain out of this and not really think about how can I improve it in the longterm. Part of my displeasure with being in DC and having, and I'm not fabricated, i's number of hundreds of conversations with elected leaders, mostly congressmen and senators about what FEMA has done, what FEMA is doing, what FEMA did. No one ever called me to say, hey, good job FEMA right now. No one, maybe one, maybe that was like, they had a bad day, but everyone's calling you by how bad you did. If they had long term view of FEMA, we do much greater things, much better things than we get credit for. We do screw some things up, it's just the nature of the business. But in all those conversations, it's a short term, it's a nine second blurb about what FEMA did, how bad they are, and we're going to hold you accountable and then it’s all over.
Then no one wants to talk about, hey, you made a mistake, but let me help. How can I help you make FEMA better? Not just in the short term, in the, and the 24, 48 hour news cycle, but in years to come. How can we make a better FEMA? This just not applies to FEMA, it probably applies to every federal organization out there, but how can we make you better to get better results, better efficiencies, all those kinds of things that as taxpayers we expect. So yeah, the politicians are in for the short term gain. It’s maddening sometimes. And again, we think about what happened in Afghanistan. It is completely unnecessary, could have done a totally different way. We lost lots there for absolutely no reason, right? No reason.
Host: John Scardena (20m 28s):
Yeah. Since senseless death, you know, it's a lot. So I also lived in DC, I worked for different ABC agencies, I don't get into too much on the show. But one of the reasons why I actually liked going out to FEMA, even though FEMA does do the man-made stuff, and the nationals team does prepare for large-scale catastrophic terrorist activities and I've been to many of those trainings or whatever, but a majority of the responses, I think Joe, Della Mura said it best, FEMA’s basically a hurricane agency, right. So like it was kind of, it makes more sense to my brain that if somebody chose to stay in a hurricane and unfortunately they died, like I could reconcile that a little bit better than a terrorist attack, a lot better, right, especially when something's preventable. I was just talking to a friend about this yesterday, it's like, we're not talking about 25 different countries that also have major humanitarian issues, we're talking about the US actions and US laziness. I actually liked that a lot, way to say that of just things that we could have done, that we can do, that we chose not to do. I said this to a couple politicians who maybe, probably I shouldn't have, but it's like one of those things, oh, you thought you could do better, sit in the seat because every single time a politician sits in the seat, it screwed up. Who knew like somebody who does this for a living who's focusing on this all day, every day, probably will do it better. Yeah.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (22m 0s):
Yeah. I've had many of those moments being yelled at by elected leaders and I never said it to them, but it's okay. I'll be happy to trade seats with you and you go, you come do it. So I have people, you know, rock throwers and naysayers, it never really bothered it, never, I don't think it really bothered me before, but after my tour at FEMA, I have disdained for those that just throw words around for whatever purpose without a purpose, right. Without a purpose, just to get a rise or to get a quote or to get a reaction, right. I have distain for those people that do that because what I really want you to do, right. If I screwed up, tell me I screwed up, I'm a big boy and that helped me get to where I need to be, right. Just don't throw stones and walk away and say, yeah, we'll see where it all goes.
Host: John Scardena (23m 8s):
Here's my last comment on all of that. It's like when people say do more than thoughts and prayers, and I have to remind people that, hey, did you know faith equals, you know, hope plus action. And so if you are praying with faith, that means you are intending to do something. So anytime I hear a politician say like, I'm praying for it. I'm like, well then where's your action. So that's really what it comes down to, religious or not religious, do something, you know. I like Rodney Milicic, my old boss would say, he also now works at Doberman and we're lucky to have him. He would say doing something is always better than doing nothing You know, because especially in emergency response and so in that vein, pulling it back over to us, I'm glad you feel the same way because you have all that experience. You're definitely a leader, a lot of people are go listen to that and agree with that. I think for our end, for our action, again, not trying to become a political show, but holding elected leaders accountable, choosing to do something, obviously legally, you know, polls and voting and all that. So calling them up for rating them saying, hey, this isn't going to help you out. Long-term I think that's kind of what's needed. I'm not really an activist kind of guy, but man, they just don't listen. So like, talk to me about that forever. So national preparedness, yeah.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (24m 36s):
It's a good trip, I think a good transition from do something, right. So national preparedness month is about doing something and start today runs through the end of end of September. There's four themes throughout the month. You know, we've all seen these make a plan, build a kit, low cost, no cost preparedness and teach about preparedness. But so let me just give you like my, one of the things I try to do at FEMA and I think I got a little sidetrack with COVID and other things I had. So I have a theme, there's a resilience branch who owns preparedness and ready.gov and all those kinds of things, but all the things that we do year round and you know, so it's good that we bring awareness, preparedness in September, but preparedness needs to be a year round thing, just not one month out of the year.
I know we have programs through the year at FEMA and I'm sure it's like this across the country, you know, local, state of emergency management that have a theme or have a focus throughout the year. But one of the things I challenged the staff with is, hey, we haven't, and this isn’t just FEMA, and I think nationally, right. You know, emergency managers as a whole, we really haven't found that solution that promotes preparedness, that changes the culture, like a marketing strategy and something that sticks with people. We haven't figured that out and I relayed to the staff is like, hey, how come we can't get a preparedness campaign, like the seatbelts, right.
If you remember way back, and you're probably too young, like Ralph Nader wrote a book unsafe at any speed, right. Click it, or ticket kind of changed the culture. When’s the last time you were in a car with somebody that refused to wear a seatbelt, I can't even remember like driving with somebody that I don't wear a seatbelt it's against my religion or it's against, you know, whatever, it doesn't exist. Quitting smoking, you know, has a great series of great ones, but you know, tips from smokers, the one you see on TV, smoking has taken a dive, right. Wildfires, we all grew up with smokey the bear only you can prevent fire’s, right. Then, you know, Nike, Nike just do it, right. It's these things, we need, we need a campaign, a marketing strategy that people like connect with right. But when it comes to preparedness, we haven't figured it out yet. So again, I challenged the crew to do that, you know, made some strides. But I think as a nation, a platform for emergency managers, we really need to have the, you know, click it or ticket kind of campaign, only you can prevent wildfire campaign that makes people prepare year round. We haven't done it yet. We have to figure it out because we won't change the culture if we don't do it.
Host: John Scardena (27m 44s):
Okay. I can provide two perspectives on that real fast. FEMA will never be popular in my beloved OHIO state, because it's freaking blue and yellow. You want to do any kind of branding with FEMA. I told this too, when I was at Georgetown on my masters, you know, somebody came up for an external affairs and said hey, nobody wants to even put up the FEMA, like preparedness anything in their stores because it's blue and yellow. It's just not going to happen. So like, just even thinking about your own branding, I understand it's a federal agency or whatever, but hey, screw Michigan, like Michigan sucks. So that's what I'm saying, lke, you can't have that. You can't have like, Satan's colors, like in my storefront, but going on that religious thing. But you know, the other thing is, I'm pretty sure we did find the slogan by the way, become disaster tough. It should be, it's a star. Right. You know what they'll like, that's what I've been. That's what I've been thinking about. Like, that's interesting. You talk about marketing.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (28m 49s):
I thought it's all about marketing. It's nothing more than that. Just think about all the successful campaign, like commercial campaigns, all the Wendy's, where's the meat, right? I mean, all these things that like we take for granted, now we need a kind of Wendy's, which is the meat thing that gets people to say, oh, I have to do that. I have to put my seatbelt on. I have to prepare. Did you see those people in Louisiana? Well, you know, were they prepared for that? Do I want to be Dwight? Do I want to be without power for 60 days? So yeah, we need to hire some really great wall street marketing, get people, spend a bunch of money and come up with a campaign that everyone understands and can get behind.
Host: John Scardena (29m 37s):
I agree. FEMA you're welcome to hire me at any time to help you out with that. You're bringing up so many different topics. COVID 19 response has been a marketing nightmare. Talk about marketing. I agree with you. Most of it, turning something into common sense. Oh, this one's going to ask you about, do you have about saying can put blank. Do you have a marketing for your LinkedIn posts? Do you, do you team up with somebody at LiRo to do that?
Guest: Pete Gaynor (30m 12s):
Yeah I have a marketing person that helps me, but I generally do all the work, you know, themes and stuff and they check my spelling and grammar and make it pretty and do the graphs. I kind of pick what I want to talk about based on what's going on.
Host: John Scardena (30m 30s):
I thought you actually had a brilliant marketing concept is like using sarcasm. You're basically like, hey don't have a plan, it's hurricane season. You said that at the beginning. I swear, like I saw it, a lot of my friends saw people were texting me about Pete Gaynor. He's like, you know tell people not to have a plan. That's hilarious. It caught people's attention. Hey, listen, preparedness is a waste of time. Right. So I love sarcasm and I think I took some pleasure in writing that, but yeah you know, totally unprepared right now. I think somebody had that as a catchphrase, somewhere in the country. But it's like, I don't want to be prepared, you know, why would I want to do that? I wonder how many people would have like an emergency kit if SNL did a skit about being totally unprepared and just like walking to every situation like, oh no, I definitely don't want insurance get a car accident. Or, you know who cares about preparing my house for a hurricane, you know?
Guest: Pete Gaynor (31m 37s):
Yeah it's a tough problem and I think if we had a good answer, we would have had it I guess already. But one of the things I told the staff, one of the more famous advertising companies in the country is J Walter Thompson, their two longest clients are Ford motor company and the US Marine Corps, right. That J Walter has kept and they others, but like I think for the Ford motor company has been a client of them for like a hundred and some odd years. But as an example, that investment in J Walter Thompson has kept the Ford brand consistent through time, the same with them, consistent through time. It’s deviated a little bit, but never lost their core. Like again, could you get a home grown inside of US government idea about preparedness? You could, but we don't spend enough money on preparedness. So let's invest in a big brand name, a company, and let's have them help us with this, right. Because now's the time look, what better example than all the things that have happened in 2021, right? The year that just keeps going, 21. It's like, why not just take advantage of all that? Right. We have peoples attention.
Host: John Scardena (33m 15s):
Yeah, that's right. There's a lot of money there to, like there's money there. There's a tension there and everything's coming together. I think branding is a big thing. Speaking of branding and things that are happening on your end, we just mentioned Libra, a little bit. Yup, let's round this out, this topic out, to talk about the Natural National Disaster Emergency Management conference coming up in November. One of the podcasts that is associated with Doberman emergency management on the readiness lab is EM weekly. They're doing a live show at that conference and you are headlining there. You're going to be one of the major speakers there. So we also know that LiRo doing a booth there just want to let you know, our audience know, that as of today, Libra is not a sponsor. We're just happy to promote this for Pete. We think it's a pretty exciting. So can you tell us a little about what Leroy has been doing, what you guys are gonna be doing, and then we're going to be talking about at endemic.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (34m 8s):
So this is the first time that I've been to the expo in New York. I think it's, I'm not sure it's history, but I think it started out as something different and it's morphed into a commercial manager, disaster management. So I'm going to be on stage with Craig Fugate. So two, four, administrators, we're going to talk about, I think all things preparedness. We're probably gonna talk about a little bit about COVID response. Maybe the state of play when it comes to where we are as a country and preparedness and where we want to be. I think there's going to be a Q and a that that's there. So I'm looking forward to get out of my house, go to New York city, meet real people, see real people again, and then obviously see Craig and try to share some of our experiences with the profession.
So I think it's going to be exciting, you're right. We're going to have a booth LiRo, they are a New York company been around for 30 some odd years, mostly a company that specializes in architecture, design, project management, construction management, we don't build things, but we manage things right on the construction thing. We're part of a bigger company called GISI global infrastructure solutions Inc with 13 other brother, sister companies, mostly construction, but LiRo has been in the disaster response game for a while, mostly regional.
So Sandy, we've done some stuff in Louisiana. I think we did some stuff in USBI in Puerto Rico. Part of the reasons I joined is to help them expand their brand across the country. So if you're in New York city and I think it's November 17th, 18th, check those dates, I'm doing it from memory, come see us. I’d be glad to talk to you about anything to include what LiRo can do for you. So I appreciate the, the shout out John, on my new company.
Host: John Scardena (36m 12s):
You know what, I think it's exciting that to see where he landed and see what you can bring to LiRo now. Now that we're associated EM weekly and to see all those dots connected, I think it's great. We've already had you on the show twice. We're probably gonna have you on the show again, just because you're a cool guy, but like, I honestly think what if people have the opportunity to see you in person to be able to talk to you and to hear your perspective, especially you and Craig. Craig's been on the show as well, I think that will be good for everyone. In fact, I know it would be good for everyone. So that's why I'm happy to promote it because this show's all about promoting best practice. Now you're bringing on two heavy hitters who have had a ton of practice.
We talked about the election, you know, emergency managers work with elected officials all the time. So you're able to talk confidently to that. You're able to talk about competently, to all phases of emergency management and response recovery mitigation. So just be able to hear that in person is great. Then to be able to switch over to the project management side with LiRo too, I think it's as good things and I'm happy to promote it with you guys and move forward.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (37m 23s):
Yeah and it has to be exciting. I've never done anything with Craig, so I'm looking forward to that. I think that he and I have the same outlook on, hey, we'll tell you what we did well, and we'll tell you what we did bad. So no lessons learned, just not positive lessons learned things that we screwed up. I think we're both pretty upfront about things that we could do better, whether we were the administrators or what FEMA could do better, or, you know in more global what emergency management needs to do better to meet the needs of the new world we see around us. Right. I think that really for me is the key. How do we change the culture of emergency management, because we are a young generally immature profession, right. We need to, we're going to grow. We continue to grow, we've grown a lot in 2021, right? So the time is right to point those things out and encourage others to take risks and make those changes for the better. So I'm excited by that.
Host: John Scardena (38m 29s):
That's awesome. Your last thoughts, emergency managers who are trying to learn a better preparedness for getting ready for the next big one, as you noted your final thoughts.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (38m 39s):
This is one of my sticks when I went to FEMA as the administrator is if you're from a jurisdiction that hasn't had a disaster that that can get generally comfortable, right? Because you haven't been challenged yet, I encourage emergency managers from across the country, so whether you're a director of emergency management or you're in the world of emergency management, you're a mitigator, you're a planner. Develop a relationship with, you know, some of the more disaster prone locales, right, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, California, right, North Carolina. Develop a relationship and see if you can get like a 90 day tour, like exchange tour, hey, I'm going to go to North Carolina for 90 days and I'm going to see how they do it.
Maybe you'll actually be part of a disaster response. Well, maybe you've been part of recovery, but you know, I think some, one of our challenges in emergency management is you don't get any experience until it happens. Right. That is not the way to operate. You should, you should try to gain, expose staff to real events where you can. Sometimes that's a risk because you're going to send people away for a period of time. But when you get them back, you will be much stronger for it. You'll be smarter, they'll be smarter. They'll be more confident. They'll bring, you know, new lessons learned and practices back to you.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (40m 11s):
So, you know, go call one of your friends, or maybe an acquaintance that you've met at a conference and ask them hey, can I not to interfere with what you're doing, but can I come down and just spend a week with you? Maybe I can help, right. Maybe I can help take some load off because I'm a professional emergency manager, but I just want to see how it works. I think if we did more of that across the nation, right. I think we'd be a stronger profession. It can be, you know, if I'm in a disaster, do I want somebody around my neck bothering me, not necessarily, but there's a way to do it, right. There's a way to do it and I think it's better for everyone. If we figured they figured that out, so if you're thinking about what can I do next to make my community stronger, go visit a disaster.
Host: John Scardena (41m 1s):
Okay. I a hundred percent support that I just learned that big lesson this year with going to USR training, everybody heard about that last week on the show about the outcomes that go into that USR training and be able to help out somebody else that I never interact with with USR. Now we're in close collaboration, be able to help out tactical and strategic, a huge call out. Also big call out for individual appointments. Sometimes FEMA's, Ford's sometimes humans against it. Screw everybody's against it. You just said you're for it, I'm for it. Get people out the door, get your team out the door possible, but get yourself out the door.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (41m 37s):
Yeah, I think John, I think he was for you. The national qualification thing has a ways to go. But the goodness in that is you get qualified, right? You get nationally qualified. Then if you can, you can deploy. So when I was a state director, you know, when people want to go to disaster, if they weren't qualified, I'm not sending you. Right. Because I'm not going to be a burden to that, although the director, but if you qualify, you have all the checks in the box. Then you're, you're an asset. So national qualification system, I think, is important. It has a ways to go, but it is getting to this thing where we can all help each other when it counts, because there's not enough of us.
Host: John Scardena (42m 18s):
Yeah, man. You're coming back on the show, we're going to be talking about that because I have lots of thoughts on that. You're a good man. Pete, thank you so much for coming back on the show. You're obviously a value added. Yeah. We'll talk to you soon.
Everybody, if you liked this episode, you should have give us that five star review and subscribe. We're going to put in our show notes for when the endem conference is, so make sure you go out to that. I think Pete, said it right, I think it’s the 17th and 18th of November. So if you're in New York city, you want to go out to New York city, learn from the man himself. Good to do it. All right, we'll see you next week.
#72 How to Network in Emergency Management with John Scardena
This show walks through recent examples of emergency management network and the results. The scope of emergency management is protecting life, property, and continuity of operations.
This week provides an update on emergency management actions in Doberman, from the perspective of networking and disaster response coordination. If you want examples of who to network in emergency management, this is the show for you! We also want to thank all of those emergency managers who collaborate with us to help others in crisis. Emergency managers who coordinate and collaborate get the job done!
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1m 46s):
Welcome back to the show, everybody it’s your host, John Scardena, man. Oh my gosh, so much has been happening in the last, I don't know, three, four months. Afghanistan and now we have to think about more in depth, at least terrorist activity. Of course, that's a whole other story, but in the world of emergency management and really the natural disasters and manmade accidental disasters, there's just been so much happening.
So each year we kind of like to do like an update of what we've been doing here, Doberman Emergency Management, and helping out the field. Of course, we do these interviews every single week with experts around the field to be able to get their perspective on emergency management. The question keeps on coming up, whether we're on screen or off the screen of what is emergency management, the way I like to phrase some emergency management, is emergency management is the protection of life, property, and continuity of operations. That's the scope. So if you're doing anything within that scope, you're doing an emergency managers work, right, or emergency services work.
Host: John Scardena (2m 57s):
There's a tactical level, which has the first responders. Our counterparts and fire, USR, urban search and rescue fire, police. I said fire, right? So like we have all these tacticians that are doing things. We also have the humanitarians at the local level working, and that's a salvation army. We've had Patrick Mangan on here. We're going to be talking about LDS charities, big shout out to them for their help recently with the USR teams in Haiti. We can talk about that in a second. There's also the strategic stuff, FEMA, you know, other organizations that look at that strategic level and say, hey, where do we get these moving pieces. State operations centers, we've had Lee Dorey on here from Cal OES this year we've had a lot of major hitters. We have a lot of major hitters coming up and the next couple of weeks. So we're really excited to have them.
We have a new studio. It's not like this super dark studio anymore. So there's this, there's just a lot going on and we've had great things happening, but how do we operate in that? So today I just want to share a couple stories that have happened since May. Some of it we've highlighted on the show and some of it we haven't, but if you're an emergency management and you're like wondering if you're effective or if you're doing the right thing, or if your pieces of emergency management likely it is, if you're within that scope, right? Protecting life, property, and continuity of operations, sometimes that's mitigation, right?
Host: John Scardena (4m 22s):
Sometimes that's figuring out what their problem is, working with Army Corps of engineers to fix that levy or fix that damn, do those assessments. Sometimes it's getting tense to be able to sustain life, right? That's protecting life by sustaining it. Sometimes it's, you know, going through a rebel pile in Surfside, which we're definitely going to talk about today and highlight. Just with this conversation, or at least, you know, this conversation between me and you, there's so much that has been impactful recently to me and also this company, Doberman Emergency Management. I think it touches a lot of other groups.
Some we've had on the show, some we've haven't had on the show, like I highlighted LDS charities a while they really came through. But yeah, there's a whole community out there and it really is about networking. So let me start with this idea of what emergency management is about protection of life, property, and continuity operations. Can't say that enough, but it's also about collaboration, cooperation, getting the job done, emergency managers, get the job done, right. If you're really good at anything within that scope that we just talked about four or five times already in five minutes, and you're able to get the job done, you're doing a good job, right?
Host: John Scardena (5m 46s):
So let's talk about May, actually let's back up. Last October, I reached out to a company that I'm really pressed with their 360 camera. In fact, I want them to be a sponsor. So I keep on asking them, they keep on liking our stuff. We know you're listening, but we liked their camera a lot and really what it is, it's like this hardened camera that can go into rubble piles and look around 360 and give really good feedback for first responders. You know, obviously they passed, because they're not, but you should be a sponsor. You should be a sponsor. But you know, I said, hey, we would love to be able to connect with USR counterparts in the field because you guys work with USR so much. Can you turn us to somebody right now? We're networking. We're using that emergency management tool of collaboration with other people, you know, keeping that line of communication out. So they connected me with Joe Hernandez who has been on the show, I think three or four times now. I've been blown away by his capability, his competency, everything he's able to do in the field and what he has done. If you've listened to the shows. I mean, he was at Oklahoma city bombing. He was at the twin towers.
Host: John Scardena (7m 8s):
In fact, he was lead medical. They're the expert for urban search and rescue. He went to Haiti in 2010, found a girl eight days after in a rebel pile and pulled her out. You should see the imagery. I mean, nobody really has that trained eye to be able to see, you know, in a one foot pancaked space, you know, this and laying there covered in dust. Like I saw the images and myself with everybody else, you know, we're trying to pass by, you know, was hey that's where she was. That's all we saw on the camera is I was at well-trained and it shows that he's a true expert and he's had all that time to look at that. Right. So Joe came onto the show and you know, outside of the show, we talk and we talked about emergency management, how it relates to the tacticians, the tactical level.
I talked about how I didn't know this at the time, but during Hurricane Harvey, I helped deploy those USR teams and give them data, the data that they need in the field. He was actually there, so it's really fascinating to think about, that network that you don't even, you have sometimes. But as we develop this relationship, he goes, hey, I'm teaching the medical urban search and rescue class, I would love for you to come be able to want to talk about your podcast because I've been on the show and really to observe and to instruct on emergency management, that's strategic level for the technicians. So they know who's appointing them and how that process goes.
Host: John Scardena (8m 37s):
So, yeah, sure. That week was phenomenal, one of the best trainings I've ever seen. I noted that on the show, a big shout out to Joe's M sock and all the work that they're doing over there. I came home from that thinking like, oh, that was a great learning experience. I saw the tacticians, I got to meet with a lot of these counterparts in the field, including we just moved to St. Louis. I happened to be one of the St Louis teams was there. So I was able to connect with them and get to know them again now working but not networking. People think of it as like going to conferences and like awkwardly talking to people, right? No, what it is is befriending people, seeing the capabilities you have, the capabilities that they have and see if you can gain more right from each other, from experience or whatever.
So fast forward we ended up having two other people. Well, another one of the instructors that came on the show, district chief and from Orlando. I dare you to find that show because it's a great show, great feedback to him. Then he connected us with the fire chief that responded, the incident commander for the pulse nightclub shooting, which says another episode you should look at. So we're starting to make all these connections, right. Of like experts in the field, just by basically talking to people and we don't pay them. We don't get really anything out of it besides the advice.
Host: John Scardena (10m 8s):
The advice is so huge that it's like, hey, it's worth it. Like let’s make sure that we help out where we can. Well, you fast forward another couple of weeks, which again, now the dots are starting to maybe connect for ya. Surfside building collapse happens and Joe flies down there, he's a consultant for CNN. So he's on CNN every day. He mentioned disaster Tough’s, a big shout out to Joe for that. But he was also on the ground meeting with the responders. Guess what, like five or six of the instructors, including the fire chief who was on the show, he was at there as the incident commander for a Florida task force for search and rescue. So they were doing the night shift and they were essentially doing that mission. So now he's an SME, not only for CNN, but he's actually on the ground coordinating resources. So I get involved and so again, this is not really a Doberman thing, but because of Doberman and because this podcast I'm able to help him. So I started volunteering my time and resources to be able to see where we could to be able to support or provide care where we could, especially for the responders. So now you're watching this thing happen where a strategic level of emergency managers who typically, traditionally, you're like, oh, did they really interact with first responders will absolutely.
Host: John Scardena (11m 40s):
Right. Absolutely. That's what we're doing. So you fast forward, another couple of weeks, I get called out by a client who we love helping Kashia Band of Pomo Indians out of the stewards point trench area. They're really great people, but like a lot of other groups in California, they're having this drought issue. So they called me up and say, hey, we have this major drought issue. We don't know what to do. I'm like, you know what? This seems really important. So I'm going to head out there. We're also going to talk about public safety, power shutoffs because they're our client for that. So this is completely separate. So we did the out-brief on the PSPS plan. We talked to them with the drought issues, we invited Patrick McGuinn with the salvation army to provide help.
We invited Cal OES to come to provide support to. So now we're all talking about resources and what to do and how can we help? You know, again, this is just because we want to help each other out. This is our community emergency managers help out people. It turned out to be a great trip. While I was out there, I got to meet with Lee Dorey with Cal OES, he heard that we were coming out there and said with the Dixie fire, can you provide guidance? Or can you come out here and check out? So I went out there and looked at their operation and provided some feedback. Again, this is not even the work. This is just about helping out other people.
Host: John Scardena (13m 6s):
I just was just overwhelmed by that experience. Well, when we got called out there, Joe Hernandez texted me and said, can LDS help? Well, I'm a member of the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints. I'm like, well, there's 16 million members of this church and so let me see what I could do, but I kind of fed it up the food chain. In fact, I went through this isn't, this is amazing. I remember the I'm LDS, right? But Patrick McGuinn Salvation Army has a connection with LDS charities. So I texted him or I call him and said, hey, can you give me the contact information?
So fed it all the way up to the head of the program. Her name is Sharon Eubank and we're now talking about a four hour period. She connected me with the people who are involved with the Haiti response is what Joe was texting me about. Joe had, again, volunteered both his time and resources to collect pallets of supplies for medical supplies, for their first responders over there who were helping out with th Haitian response all while a tropical storm was heading that way. So just, just incredible. But in that four hour period, we got connected with her LDS church said they were going to help, LDS charities.
Host: John Scardena (14m 29s):
Now we're connecting so many different things and Joe's volunteering his time, the LDS church volunteer time, Patrick, McGuinn volunteering some of his time. Just this big crowd of people helping each other out. So my heart is just full of gratitude for good people who want to help. Of course there's work to be done. Of course, we do contract work. We don't call ourselves contractors essentially because we're basically emergency managers who just happened to do it privately. We get to choose the projects. We work on some, we get paid and some we get to volunteer and that, I think that's really what it's all about. In the midst of all of this, we see what's happening in Afghanistan. I think it's, I think pretty much everyone's on the same page that what's happening is disgusting. Both from the Taliban perspective and the egregious risk response or lack of response, lack of leadership that has caused a horrible issue. We just had a terrorist attack at Kabul airport. I think 16 service members died and 95 Afghans died and why? For what?
Host: John Scardena (15m 54s):
So it's enraging. You look at the news, you look at this, you look at the lack of leadership, you look at the incompetency, and you look at all these things and your frustration builds so much, but there are good people out there who are doing good things behind the scenes. I just mentioned several good people who volunteer their time and resources to be able to help out in the things that I cared about. Hopefully I was able to help them out as well. You know, the work continues. That's what getting the job done is all about. That's what networking is. So there's a big update there, right?
Host: John Scardena (16m 36s):
Emergency management essentially is all about networking and coordinating and collaborating and helping each other, putting people first, right? Putting people first, especially people in this field because they're good people. I'm assuming they're good people. I've been incredibly grateful that, you know, as an emergency manager, who's doing it privately now who didn't want to travel 50 weeks a year anymore. Who said, hey, I want to do this privately, that I've had friends and new friends in the field who don't treat me like, you know some consultant, like that does just makes me feel gross inside to think about that, right.
Because that's not what I'm about clearly and I'm in grateful for that. So it's kind of a gratitude episode, but let's move on to the next topic. Other big things have been happening with Doberman. So in the midst of all of that, our company, our headquarters moved to St. Louis, hence the new studio. I love this industrial look that we added here kept the original side, which is awesome. Love that time. But I get to showcase some other stuff, things that really care about obviously, geez, where I’m at not doing the mirror screen, you know, the family. Obviously you guys I've talked a lot about my family, how much I care about them, but showcasing some of the most recent challenge coins that have been given.
Host: John Scardena (18m 1s):
I really grateful for that, including one from Joe, Joe’s the man, seriously, you know, Patrick McGuinn, you owe me a challenge point of giving like two now. I've brought up social vulnerability, like so many times on this show. You guys have to read that book. Gosh I could talk about stories, about all those coins, and you know, that award, that female award, but yeah, it's just like a cool setup and our company's expanding, we're doing great things. We brought on Todd Devoe with EM weekly. We brought up brought in Franzie economy. EM student, both of those podcasts.
Host: John Scardena (18m 43s):
We brought on Ashley Lauria golden, who was on here a year ago. If you remember, she was the deputy director of Forsyth county, Georgia. She is phenomenal, she has this great background in both mitigation and as a paramedic, so, especially as a trainer. She was able to bring all these different skill sets to our organization, she just joined. We're starting to build out this team even greater than what it was because we had this core group that essentially most of it was planning and teaching state agencies, how to use drones and that kind of stuff. Now we're adding hazard mitigation.
We've launched the Readiness Lab, with Todd Devoe and his podcast, Joe Hernandez is launching his podcast, which is really exciting for us, i's called solid responder. His first episode is going to air on September 11th, 20 years after 9/11, and talk about his experience there. He's going to interview some of the other guys that he served with during that response. They're going to be talking about the 20 years since then. I'm sure they're going to be talking about some of the emotional and physical impacts of that because he has been a really big advocate of helping out responders getting the help they need.
Host: John Scardena (20m 7s):
So if you know, somebody who could use a first responder perspective on getting that kind of help, that'd be a great episode to turn into. Again, that's solid responder. We're launching the EM morning brief. So we're doing all these different things with the Readiness Lab, but it's also, we're going to start doing trainings. So pairing up with search and rescue and start doing cross collaboration, cross sector, emergency services, emergency management, disaster services, what do we want to call it? Where we get to learn what our counterparts are doing? So the firefighter doesn't say like, oh, the emergency manager just gets the water. Right, which is like egregious and offensive.
But we also don't, we're also on there the management side, like, oh, most of the time you just do medical, right? So we don't really know what each other's doing and how they're doing it. We have a lot of respect hopefully for each other, but that cross sector training will be really important. Then doing a lot of more hands-on training for emergency managers. I don't know how many FEMA and or other trainings I went to and they were crunching to out of there early, just to check the box. You know, you walk out of this training, like, okay, I could have done this like 30 minutes timeline, but we're changing that model pretty fast.
Host: John Scardena (21m 28s):
So what we're going to be providing is a couple day training and exclusive training, where people come out and they get certified from us and from experts on how to do different functions in emergency management. So it's going to be like this really great thing we're talking to new partners with, that are trying to talk, or we're not trying. We're talking to a new groups who've approached us to get our perspective of that. Especially with all the disasters we've been to and, and helped out and both former lives and current support. So there's just like so much going on. This really all stems from, again, networking, helping out other people, not being selfish in that support, but truly giving of our time and help for the purpose of protecting life, property and continuity of operations.
When you do that, great things happen. So Todd Devoe is also an instructor, a professor at a university, and his students provided their final presentations. So he invited me to go, so I can listen into see where they're at in their journey and answer some questions. One of the students asked, well how do I get a job in emergency management? Like I've taken all these courses. I have some of the background, blah, blah, blah. I hear that question quite a bit. You got to think of, you got to stop thinking networking as showing up at a conference and awkwardly talking to people, you know at dinner table that works for some. What a great networking is, unselfishly, helping other people, cool period.
Host: John Scardena (23m 12s):
You'll be blown away if they never get back to you, then who cares? Because you did something great on selfishly, you're able to help bother people when you can lay your head down at night and you can know you did a good job, you got the job done. But what I've seen more often than not is because our community is so small is when an issue does arise or when something comes up down the road or you can approach them and say, hey, now that we're friends, I would love to be able to get some advice on this or perspective, or can you connect me with whoever. And that's how the dots start getting connected. It's about unselfishly, helping other people, and they will return the favor.
Host: John Scardena (23m 56s):
There's good people in the world. There's a lot more good in the world than bad. The bad makes the news because thankfully it is rare. I think about that for a second one. The horrible side of it is like, oh, they're just trying to make money off of like horrible things happening for sure. But there's also like the, well, if it was so common, then it wouldn't be newsworthy hopefully. Like national news, doesn't usually focus on heavy traffic, right? Local news does, but nationally, internationally, they're not gonna be like well, there was another traffic jam on the 95. We were like, well that’s not newsworthy because it's common.
Host: John Scardena (24m 37s):
I would hope that people will just remember that sometimes the newsworthy stuff is because it's rare sometimes it's because there's some horrible people pushing it, but there is good in the world. So I guess that would be my message today just catching up. This is like the EM update, I guess, our yearly update for what's happening. Again, heartful gratitude for all the people who've been helping us out and the opportunity to be able to help other people expand that scope of understanding and getting to work with amazing people. I hope that if you're in search and rescue and listening to this podcast, there's another training by Joe's organization that's coming up for medical, USR, to be get certified November 30th.
So we'll make sure he's back on the show, but you could probably just listen to his podcast and hear him talk about it again. That's called Solid Responder, we're huge fans of it. Check out the Readiness Lab. It has a lot of other podcasts that we both own and operate, but we also are just blown away and think are really great shows in themselves. So there's also fun stuff too, like movie AAR’s, our movie after action review. It's like our fun show where we kind of make fun of all the disasters that happened in some movies and talk about what real responders would do in that situation.
Host: John Scardena (26m 4s):
I think it's going to be pretty great. So check back with us next week. We have a really great guests coming to the show. You'll see that announcement on Facebook, Twitter, not Twitter. We don't ever use Twitter. We should, hey, send us a note. Let us know if you're on Twitter and you want us to be on Twitter. How about that? If we get enough people to, to send us a thing saying, hey, I'm on Twitter. I hope you're on Twitter. Also, it lets me know that you've listened into 26 minutes of the show. Now, if you're on Twitter, let us know. Maybe we can start posting there, but we're really heavy on LinkedIn government, emergency management posts, all the Disaster Tough podcast episodes there.
Host: John Scardena (26m 47s):
We also have obviously that Instagram channel disaster tough podcast and the Facebook Disaster Tough podcast, as well as both for government EMG. So you can get caught up there, but two each week. We'd love to hear your feedback, like to know what you think about my updates. If you think my scope of emergency management is correct. If it's not incorrect, let me know. I'm not going to be like in the comments below because it's a podcast. But if you can send us an email at info@Dobermanemg.com or go to one of those social media platforms that I just talked about, provide that feedback. That'd be awesome. We'll see you next week.