Professional emergency managers reviewing disaster in movies- The good. The bad. And especially the funny ugly.
“Want us to review a specific movie or scene? Comment below! Movie: Twister Scene: Driving through tornadoes (water spouts and cows) This is our first episode of "MOVIE AAR" a show detected to the review of disasters that happen in movies from the perspective of professional emergency emergency managers. We talk about what's realistic and fake, what is happening in the disaster response, and share PSAs that will help you if you find yourself in a similar disaster. Sorry for the potato quality of audio during one of the clips! Best we could do during our, "pirate" episode. Movie Credit: Movie: Twister Warner Brothers Studio Hosts: John Scardena Patrick McGinn.”
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0m):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1m 33s):
Welcome back everybody. It's your host, John Scardena. I am so excited to hijack this episode like a pirate because I have Patrick McGinn on here. He's been on the show now you've been on, this is your fourth appearance. Yeah. Is that right? Patrick is one of my best friends in the world. In fact, I'm one of his best friends in the world. I know that because I'm the best man at his wedding coming up and we're really excited for that happening. In the meantime, you know, Patrick and I we've seen a lot of movies together.
We've hung out and we kind of have this fun thing where we get to laugh at these disasters that happen in movies that are super unrealistic and think about what would actually happen. For example, if the marshmallow man actually appeared in New York, is it a biohazard incident? You know, are rats eating it up? You know, if it was alive, so you have like all these ridiculous things that are happening. But then you also have like other movies that are definitely more disaster centric, like twister, or I even hate to call this out, but San Andreas, other movies like that. We look at the full spectrum and we're like, hey, we should make a show that talks exactly to this topic. So Patrick, if you want to move to the side real quick, your background. Yeah. So we created a YouTube show called Movie AAR, our movie after action review, where we look at disasters that happen in movies, we kind of make fun of them, we kind of walk through it. What's realistic, what's unrealistic? Then we talk about what's emergency managers are doing in that scenario and finished with a PSA. It's a really good way to introduce us to the public. I have Patrick on here, Patrick, what do you want to say about Movie AAR? And then we're going to jump right into the clip cause we're hijacking the show.
Guest: Patrick McGinn (3m 24s):
Yeah. Awesome. So Movie AAR is exactly what John said after action review of movies taken from an emergency management perspective, but also John and I just pointing fun at the movie and kind of the holes and what's realistic, what's not. And we actually have a lot of fun on the show doing this. So if you want to check it out, if you want to laugh, if you want to learn something about emergency management, check it out.
Host: John Scardena (3m 53s):
All right, let's tell it to the clip.
Guest: Patrick McGinn (4m 2s):
What's real and what's fake in this? They're driving towards the tornado. I don't think anybody would do that. The water spouts. They did split into two and there was actually a third one there while there were cows flying by. It never crossed their mind to turn around. In that situation, you want to turn around and drive away from the twister, from the tornado. That should be obvious. They didn't do that in this case because they love tornado so much. They want to be close to them and they aren't really affected by them. So that part was kind of faked. Johnny want to chime in there.
Host: John Scardena (4m 39s):
The cow. So if you're looking out outside of the (we're going to get like really nerdy here) tornado, if you're that far, the cow is that far away from the water spout. I mean, those were F1 tornadoes, maybe as zero tornadoes at best that Cal is not making these giant rings around. If you think of momentum, that cow is going over the moon, if you will. So that was a little that was like unrealistic for me, unless there was like, you know, the exact same cow at the exact same spots in their multiple cows. So also the cow coming over the water. Okay. So there was, that was unrealistic for me. Then obviously you got cows in the sky, as we noted before, and somehow the Chuck was totally fine. So like that way to that truck must be pretty heavy or it's a superhero movie about bill. That's kind of what I thought was fake in the thing. But this scenario is real.
Guest: Patrick McGinn (5m 44s):
Yeah. Yeah. That scenario could happen. Maybe not the cows flying. I mean, what were the cows doing on the water anyway? Maybe where they getting drinks of water. Maybe that's not important.
Host: John Scardena (5m 52s):
No, maybe that's not important, but we're here now. Right? Okay. So scenarios real. Let's talk about, you know, from the perspective of the emergency managers, there's tornadoes happening right now. What are we doing in the field as emergency managers? I would say generally, in a tornado event or tornadic event, we're trying to shut down power, trying to shut down water, kind of save that critical infrastructure and re reduce fires. That way that happens lightning fast. That was both lightning pun and an electricity pun anyways. So that happens. Notice notifications are going out, whether it's, whether it's small town or not, there's an individual in charge of making sure that like making the call, right. Hey, we're going to, we're going to make the sirens go off. NOAA’s going to be involved in that process. Yeah. Then immediately after tornado, like just like you said, all the stakeholders get involved in search and rescue and organizing. There'll be a local CERT team Midwest is really famous for actually using their CERT teams to community emergency response teams. These are volunteers that get trained by firefighters. Typically some towns, police, and they will be helping find their friends and sheltering operations will be set up all kinds of things that would happen and I would say general tornado response.
Guest: Patrick McGinn (7m 36s):
Oh yeah. If we're talking general tornado, not just some water spouts water spouts could come down….
Host: John Scardena (7m 41s):
Water spouts are fine.
Guest: Patrick McGinn (7m 43s):
and never ever make their way to land and just go right back up into the sky. So for talking actual tornado, yeah, we're talking shelters because people's houses have been totally blown away are talking. They need food, they need clothing, they need cots, they need pillows and blankets, they need hygiene kits. So there'd be a whole maybe donation definitely be a donation center. They've gone to shelters and emergency managers would be working at the county level or city level to get, maybe working with state partners or FEMA to get people registered for assistance, to get to just do damage assessments before you even turn it on electricity or water, you've got to assess the facility. So in this moment they're doing damage assessments to ensure that everyone's safe. Kind of safety is at the, the top priority.
Host: John Scardena (8m 36s):
You know what happens if the conditions are right? Humidity's there, the temperatures there, the winds there. You know, as we mentioned earlier, it's charged. I don't know why I said it like Trump, “it’s charged.”
Guest: Patrick McGinn (8m 49s):
You mentioned that earlier.
Host: John Scardena (8m 51s):
I'm part of the we here I am a person too Patrick. So let's talk about the PSA. What would you, what would you say?
Guest: Patrick McGinn (9m 6s):
I'd say if you're in your car on a highway and you see an underpass not to get out of your car and go under the underpass or overpass. The recommendation is to get out of your car and to get into a ditch on the side of the road, get to the lowest level possible. It sounds kind of counter-intuitive and it sounds really scary, but it's safer than being in a car. That's picked up by the tornado and being dropped from hundreds of feet up.
Host: John Scardena (9m 35s):
We might add that clip in there, just like that exact scenario happening because they didn't pay attention to the warning to clip. Cue Clip.
Video clip (9m 44s):
Doris listen to me. Get off this frequency Bill. I'm telling you, I know you can hear me, get out of there. Turn around now. Yells…
Host: John Scardena (10m 11s):
Okay. So the like that clip is crazy by the way. Yeah. That's what I'd call out. One last thing is know the difference between a watch and a warning. So that notifications coming your way, understand like, hey, I should be aware of it. They've spotted a funnel or kind of watch what's going on. But a warning you have to take shelter immediately.
Guest: Patrick McGinn (10m 34s):
Just know your city, they all have different sirens. There's not just one type of siren. There's usually multiple different kinds of sirens for whether the right conditions exist or whether there's one that's already on the ground, or whether there just could be a severe storm. So just good things to know your area. You want to know your city, you want to be part of your community. That's great. Know how to warn people know how to read the signs when they come.
Host: John Scardena (11m 2s):
Read the signs. So we just wrapped up the PSA. You always try to be, we always try to be smart. We'll let you know what's happening behind the scenes. Patrick and I have been in emergency management for about 20 years combined. We love what we do. We have a lot of fun looking at these movies. We hope you had fun too. Make sure you check out other shows on the readiness lab of what were associated with like disaster tough podcasts of which I host. It's a little bit more serious, but it has pretty good content there too. We'll see you for the next video.
Guest: Patrick McGinn (11m 31s):
See you next week.
Host: John Scardena (11m 40s):
Okay. Everybody. We really hope you liked that clip from our first episode of Movie AAR. We're calling it the pilot episode, we are working out the kinks. It's Kevin Hubbard, having a lot of fun laughing during the clip. But also this is also really big news for us because back in July, we announced that Todd Devo, of EM weekly EM student, Franzie was on here, who Dan Scott is also helping us out with now, movie AAR, some of these other things that are happening in the pipeline, we actually brought them in and we said, hey, we launched the readiness lab as part of government emergency management. So the Readiness Lab literally just is launching as we speak big announcement, email about that's coming out at a big sweepstakes is happening in November 15th. So just a couple of days from now so make sure you check that out. The Readiness Lab has all these different podcasts and shows and styles. We really want you to check that out. We're excited to announce movie are there. There's a pirate theme, not hijack. What's the word I'm thinking of pirates takeover, common deer out. I know we commandeered this episode, but we really hope that you got something out of it and you want to share it with other people. So check out movie, our, keep listening to Disaster Tough podcast and check out other shows on the Readiness Lab and we'll see you next week.