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):
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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.
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