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.
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Host: John Scardena (0s):
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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