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.
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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.