Joe Dellamura returns to the Disaster Tough Podcast to talk about FEMA's mission to vaccinate the U.S. Joe has been designated as the National Vaccination Coordinator and speaks to the innovation required to accomplish this mission.
Vaccination sites, supply-chains, and innovation - Joe Dellamura returns to the Disaster Tough Podcast to discuss the complexities, successes, and lessons learned happening in real-time as FEMA seeks to support States in a mass COVID-19 vaccination mission.
Joe is a logistics chief at FEMA Headquarters, previously assigned as White House Liaison during the testing mission. Joe provides strategic level insight into this Pandemic Response.
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. I'm your host to John Scardena, owner of Doberman Emergency Management and former federal emergency response official who's responded to some of the most extreme disasters. Disaster Tough is our mantra, it combines experience, training, and analytics in order to be successful at any stage within the disaster lifecycle, it means being a professional in emergency and disaster services, Doberman Emergency Management lives by this. If your organization needs to fill a gap, please contact us we can help. Contact info is in the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (2m 37s):
Welcome back to the show everybody! It’s your host, John Scardena and I am so excited to have Joe Dellamura back on our show. If you recall, I think it was in January, he was just stepping off of one major project and jumping into another major project with COVID-19 response with FEMA. He's a logistics Chief there. In fact, he was the logistics Chief that was assigned to the white house task force during the COVID testing phase. It's pretty incredible his experiences there. Now he's working on about a million different other projects, not just with COVID, but with everything else there at FEMA, Joe, welcome back to the show.
Guest: Joe Dellamura (3m 15s):
Hey thanks, John. Happy to be back.
Host: John Scardena (3m 18s):
Let's talk about it as some from January. The testing mission finished, you got all that ramped up, you did like a lot of innovative things there. We talked about that last time. What have you been working on since January?
Guest: Joe Dellamura (3m 33s):
Seems like just about everything. We've been primarily focused on the national vaccine campaign at FEMA, as you may recall, one of the campaigns promises and inauguration speech items was a 100 million shots in arms in first 100 days, we far exceeded that obviously at this point. But we've been working basically on the deployment of personnel and vaccine to meet that goal, my role now is that serve as the national vaccination coordinator for FEMA, which involves the deployment of medical forces to all states and territories, in order to administer the vaccine to the selected populations you need.
Host: John Scardena (4m 17s):
To start putting up your titles as awards on your wall or something like trophies, because these titles that they're giving you, I mean, the role that you're doing, it's just so incredible to think about and to be placed in that role. I'm sure you feel that weight of responsibility. Let's talk about that actually specifically for a little bit because you have done really well in your career to be able to put yourself in a position of trust and to get the job done, essentially, wherever you go. Whether it was on the national IMAT, you had this reputation for just like this man handling the event, and then you get into FEMA headquarters, and you're put in these incredible roles. For those emergency managers or those assistants who are like, man, I wish I was more impactful, wish I could do more in my career, what advice would you give them?
Guest: Joe Dellamura (5m 11s):
Well, luck is certainly one word for it. I don't know that I would use that. I'm also not on a seven second delay, so I won't use the word that I would choose and one of these certificates back there does have the last title on it. I haven't gotten one for this one yet, but a good observation in reference to how it got done, honestly, it's opportunity and preparedness. My educational background is in public health, which up until this point, I really minimally use it in my career at FEMA. We deployed back in 14 to Ebola, but that was largely administrative wasn't, overly operational.
It just so happened that we lined up this last round and it just seems like it's been one after another, right. We talked last time, I just got off the testing and only about two weeks later, I got onto this, and it just lined up to me to be a situation where I was able to actually get involved at another high level. Just said, hey, this guy, we gave him the hardest thing last time, they're okay with it, we'll give him out again. So, advice take as many classes as you can, be prepared and know your strengths and your weaknesses, because just how I got the opportunity to do this twice, because we were successful last time. If we crashed and burned last time, I'm not sure they wouldn't tag me to do it a second time. So, know your strengths, know your limitations, take every opportunity that you can, especially young in your career, which I used to say young in my career, it's been over eight years now. So, I guess I'm not as young in my career as I would've liked been, but you know, just take those opportunities as they come to you and don't be afraid to turn something down. If you don't know what you're doing, because you know, one screw up will outdo a lot of Atta boys. So that's something to keep in mind for those emerging in the field.
Host: John Scardena (7m 5s):
Yeah. That's really good most people don't say that. I think there's a lot of value in that. In fact, I think that can actually open some doors for you, but just by saying, Hey, that's not my background to be able to be brave enough to say that puts you in a position of trust, right. But like, to be honest, Joe I don't think you've really ever had to do that to be real like that.
So, when I joined the national team, there was already this crazy reputation for like, just Joe has to do a million different things and he's always able to get all of them done. That was before you and I even really started talking. So, you've always had this reputation for just hard work. Like you will get the job done if you give it to Joe, like you you'll do it. You've had probably very limited opportunities to say like, Hey, I don't do that because you're able to do so much. That call out to just keep learning, keep training, I think that's probably why you're able to do that, right? Because you keep seeking that stuff out on that same vein, like your position now, I like how you said, hey, I wasn't really using my degree, but there was an opportunity to rise, opportunity and preparation, and you're able to attack. You know, kudos to you for doing such a great job with that there at FEMA.
What is like the next steps there then with the pandemic? What are you, if you've been doing all things pandemic, you still have 300 disasters. You guys took a ploy to last year that you guys were dealing with. So, what is 2021 and what does 2022 projections look like for FEMA?
Guest: Joe Dellamura (8m 59s):
Well, I can tell you kind of for me, and for FEMA, are kind of one in the same. I always seem to be whatever we're working on. I always seem to get tagged in some regard, which I'm thankful for. I'm always happy to work, I'd rather be too busy than too bored. I think one of the things, you know, we're still working on the vaccine campaign. We're not done yet, I still have over 6,000 folks from the federal family deployed given shots. Right now, we just awarded the national COVID-19 vaccination contract, which is the largest ceiling contract in FEMA's history that just got awarded, just got through Congress and that's out enrolling now.
Guest: Joe Dellamura (9m 41s):
That's going to take a lot of the federal resources out of the fight and replace them with contractors, which is what we need, because we need to retool and get folks back in the sack and ready to go for hurricane season. When we're using assets, for example, that firefighting is already fire season. So, FEMA, you know, obviously getting ready for the next one is what we do best. But as one of your previous guests Brock Long and a big fan of Brock Long and a call out to him, he said, if FEMA was a car engine, it had been red lining since 2017, we're still red lining. We're still past that point where we would be that I've seen in the past prior to right around 2017.
We're going to go at these a hundred miles an hour until we complete it. We're going to go up the next thing, a hundred miles an hour. Then we're seeing new mission spaces for FEMA. I mean, obviously right now, the colonial pipeline attacks are going on prior to the pandemic, we had a big cyber security planning exercise. We had to cancel because of the pandemic. You know, I can see those efforts ticking back up. Now it just seems to be that we're kind of the government's duct tape for whenever something breaks. So, who knows what's on the horizon, obviously we're a hurricane organization. That's really been what we've done. We've evolved in the pandemic space, we've evolved into the adversary-based threat space with acts of terrorism, acts of cyber security. But we're still in that business where we're going to do whatever we're asked to do by the Chief Executive and it seems like that mission space grows constantly. We're going to keep doing this until probably July and then we'll see what happens. Hopefully it's a quiet hurricane season.
Host: John Scardena (11m 24s):
Yeah. Good luck with that, I mean last year was the most named hurricanes in US history. I mean, you mean you bring up a good point. Brock brought up a good point with the red lining and you obviously touched on that. I liked what Pete said to me on the last week's episode where he said, most of what FEMA does obviously is like dollars in recovery or dollars in mitigation. But this was like one of the first examples with the pandemic as agency wide, they're working in prevention of loss of life in an active disaster. You know, we'd get in there and we would try to support the state and that was a response, but that's such a small scale compared to the entire agency working on this.
What is one of the after actions now that you're pulling out of that almost response phase, hopefully response to recovery here fairly soon. I mean, again, kudos to FEMA, kudos to everybody, to meeting that mission of a hundred million people vaccinated for that campaign promise and beyond what are the after actions now? What are you looking at?
Guest: Joe Dellamura (12m 36s):
Yeah. You know, the after action, I never thought after action planning would ever be so involved and I ever be actually interested to seeing it on the disasters. John, you get the after-action planning person, it seems like they're coming out on a disaster vacation. I write some stuff down and the recommendations are all stuff you already knew. I can tell you how our after-action shop was big on the last mission, obviously between all the operation air bridge, and then our testing operation, you know we've definitely seen some lessons learned from there and then we're learning a lot here, particularly. It's less than a FEMA after action because what we're doing and FEMA is no different than what we normally do.
It's just on a greater scale, right? So, FEMA's business has always just been logistics. Another call out to Brock Long. He said, the only reason you get fired is if you fail in logistics, right? We're not going to fail in logistics. And we haven't, what we're doing is removing basically people money and things around. And we're learning that some of our other federal partners are not as used to this level of battle rhythm or this level of deployability. A lot of these actions are going to be more after actions for our federal partners, because we, you know, as a female employee, and I'm sure you had to do the same thing when you signed up, you had to sign a form. It said every employee is an emergency manager.
I understand I may be deployed at any time. Well, the people that are in deployment for the federal family, a lot of them didn't have to sign that. A lot of them had to pull their personnel off of active jobs to get them to do this. I think it speaks back to national readiness where your skillset might be needed where you don't think so. Here's the example I'll give at the peak of this, I've had over 6,500 personnel deployed at the same time for the clinical side of the vaccine campaign and that's inclusive of the whole federal family to include DOD. But one of the shortfalls that we realized quickly was in pharmacy. There are just not enough pharmacists that work for the federal government.
Guest: Joe Dellamura (14m 41s):
It got to the point where DOD was having to close some of their clinics to support the general population. It got to that point. We started figuring out, okay, what are these pharmacists actually doing? We came up with the zoologist approach where what they're doing obviously is a required work of a licensed pharmacist, but all of the technician jobs underneath them, reconstituting, mixing, thawing of vaccine. That's something that anyone with a general science background can do. What we did was we did a quick search on USA jobs for categories and the 13 and 1400 class that are scientists. We started deploying people that aren't pharmacy technicians, but I have soil scientists from EPA, I had industrial hygienists from department of labor. We have folks that were generally over at the Smithsonian that did like some kind of like agriculture science. We had biological science technicians that generally work for USDA in farm domestic biological substances.
We said, Hey, can you mix these vaccines? It could, but the real part in that lesson learned that these are folks that have worked at the same lab all the time, the same clinic all the time. They didn't have travel cards. They didn't have any kind of, because I've never had a trial for, they didn't have any kind of family preparedness when we deployed the same. We noticed our families moved back in 30 days or whatever the case may be. So how do we greater prepare the federal workforce? Even if they're not a double 89 emergency manager, how do we prepare them to have that same mobility if the call to action comes? And I think that's one of the biggest after actions we'll take away from that.
Host: John Scardena (16m 21s):
I'm not kidding when I say this, I think you should write a book about that. Seriously. If you were talking about the single after-action point, you could probably write a 200-page document that, you know just explaining that. I mean, that is fascinating to think about you're right, because of Craig Fugate, speaking of another FEA administrator we got now three, we'll see if we can bring up a fourth or fifth on the call, but Brownie right, there we go. There's a part of that.
Guest: Joe Dellamura (16m 56s):
He’s already got a show. I believe he hosts a radio show, Colorado, as far as I know.
Host: John Scardena (16m 59s):
I got to get him on the show then he seems like a nice guy. But anyways, so there was Craig on the show talking about how they switched over everybody to, you're an emergency manager, you could be deployed. He said he wanted to just make that a fast and quick rule within FEMA and there was a lot of pushback by people who like you said, we're eating in FEMA and they're like, wait, I didn't sign up for that. You know? There was a cultural change that took a couple of years to get every single person at FEMA to sign that document, let alone in the federal government, under the federal government, everyone should have to sign that essentially because of Stafford Act right. That's a great call-out during a national emergency under the Stafford act, every single federal employee should have to have that level of preparedness set up so that they could understand that essentially, they’ll be working for FEMA in a disaster you know? So that's really fascinating that you bring that up to be honest. I've heard all these after actions out there, that is the first one I've heard that I'm like, that needs to be implemented immediately, right? Because it makes sense. Great example, a good friend of mine now I talk to him every once in a while, Sean Rooney was a department of Homeland security and not deployable, never deployed and we needed more GIS assets. So, DHS said they were going to send out four people. They found out he didn't do GIS. He was a writer and he got on the field. He was like, hey, I'm going to be here for 30 days. I can go to the library and learn GIS if you want and I was like, what? I was like, no, that's not how we're going to use you. We figured out his capability and got him in and mixing the tempo. 30 days later he helped us get it, the drone, because he did all the write-up for the drone. That was like a big shout out to him. But a guy who had military experience who is part of the federal government was part of DHS didn't understand like that operational tempo and what was required there. You know, to his credit he learned. But I can only imagine how many people either pushed back or didn't understand, or lack that competency that you brought up, just fascinating to think about. Do you think that hurt your response at all by them just having to deal with those personnel things?
Guest: Joe Dellamura (19m 31s):
Yeah. I can give you an example. We did a call out under what's called surge capacity force, which is DHS surge capacity force that was created. I believe it was created during Sandy. It was to fill positions for FEMA employees to augment our regular duties and program areas. What we try to use search capacity for is to fill clinical, because we understand other DHS components like border patrol, which we deployed some of them and ICE and those folks have medical folks because they run prisons or they run occupational health programs or something. So, we started doing call outs to them to get them roster, but because they aren't filling a theme job there because FEMA doesn't have clinical personnel, you know, they weren't necessarily rostered. We were running into all kinds of problems that we would get, I did a memo DHS wide and people were just replying back to me. I was getting random guys that work at UFC that used to be combat medics, hey, I can come for three days, but then I have a Bar Mitzvah to go to and I can't go. So, I can come for these three days and these two days later. Or, Hey, I can only come after work from seven to nine. Or Hey, I can only go in the beltway area. So, it was just a lot of this. They were all just replying direct me. Like I was waiting on that. They were the only guy I was waiting on to get rid of COVID-19. Out of that whole thing, we only got about four people.
Despite the fact that we probably were dealing with a pool of over a thousand, because all these folks had all these questions. What should I wear? You know, all of these like weird admin questions because none of them has ever been prepared. A lot of them don't have travel agents. They don't have it. There's never been a need. If you're a nurse at an occupational health clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, you've probably never had to go anywhere on official business before. So, a lot of them didn't have it. I'm more geo locked to those areas that if we needed them in that area would work. But you know, not every town got one of these community banks.
Host: John Scardena (21m 36s):
I think that should be standard for all federal employees to have a travel card.
Guest: Joe Dellamura (21m 40s):
I think so. I know I'm also a member of the Coast Guard Reserves. Every single reserve gets a travel card, regardless if their job is to guard the same gate at the same base for their whole career, or if they're on part of a deployable detachment. Every single person, it's part of your requirements every year to have a travel card. So, I think that's a good model. I think for a lot of federal agencies, particularly those occupation sets that we just don't have a lot of throughout the government. We probably don't need every secretary to have one, but there's just not as many nurses as one might think in the federal government folks that would be helpful. You know, it doesn't take much as a contingency. You don't have to fund it. You can put a penny on it to keep it open, but it might be something that takes a long time to do, but it's not a difficult thing, really an administrative burden and all the mechanisms are already there.
Host: John Scardena (22m 29s):
So that's one solution, right? Okay. Every federal employee gets a travel card, done. Next solution that you have to deal with is that preparedness level. Do you think that in their orientation for their job, that there should be like a one hour, Hey, you are in federal employee. That means Stafford Act and Stafford Act means if the worst of the worst happens, we get to deploy. Do you think it'd be easier to make that pitch to do that because of COVID now?
Guest: Joe Dellamura (22m 57s):
Yes and no. I think that to do the pitch and orientation point, wouldn't be much of a challenge when it comes time to operationalize that. I think when it comes time to actually push these folks out the door, and that's where we ran into our stopping point, because we can do your theme of travel card, we can put you on centralized billing and we can pay for your travel and stuff. We can rent your hotel for you. The problem is with getting that individual police supervisor or supervisory chain to approve it. We did this during a huge transition period in the federal government, you know, with the new administration, all of the new cabinet members were coming in and a lot of them that we’re asking them to do something we never asked any of their predecessors to do. So, they're hesitant to allow their folks to deploy.
I mean, we were pulling biological science technicians out of laboratories that make defense materials and asking them to go out and do vaccines, and you know, as a new department of ag secretary might look at that and say, that's hurting my mission to be prepared with biological agents. You know, that's hurting my mission at the EPA to provide safe drinking water. I'm not going to provide those personnel because I I'm worried I'm new in this position. I don't know the state of everything. So, having the individual employee ready is important, but also getting the agencies concurrence to allow those employees, a lot of agencies don't have excess staff sitting around and waiting for FEMA, right. Those folks would get a reduction in force if that happens. Convincing, you know, cabinet level folks to shut down certain programs for 30 or 60 days to help us, that's really where the hard part comes in.
Host: John Scardena (24m 39s):
Yeah. That's a competency issue, that's an ego issue. Yeah. That's a lack of, when I say competency, what I really mean is we always talk about transfer of power, peaceful transfer of power. Right? Part of that process probably should be a training mechanism for the old and the new cabinet level or whatever. Anytime there's a switch, I would hope that, you know, I'm sure he did, Brock gave plenty advice to Pete. Pete probably gave plenty of advice to Dan Criswell. I'm sure that that just happened because our field matches a little bit better, but when you get higher up and it gets political man, that's one area that we have to all work a little bit better on to make sure that the mission goes above the person, right. A great call out there. What would be another solution? I'm just curious, I'm just diving down the rabbit hole at this point. What would you change?
Guest: Joe Dellamura (25m 44s):
I there's a whole lot of things that need to be changed and a lot of it goes down to the state level. As I've heard, you know, some of the former administrators that were on here also talk about, states need to take a little more responsibility for this mission. So, the same way where there's all these moral hazards that are created by some of the under-insurance that they have in the traditional disaster realm. We see a lot of states that don't want to take responsibility, or they want to push it to the federal government. And we're getting ours, for example, we just did a request a couple of days ago to set up a mobile vaccination site in a very rural state and on that request came about 24 personnel critical personnel. Which, okay I mean, I'm hard pressed to take a state, doesn't have 24 EMT sitting around, but okay, we'll fill that. But on that also came things like traffic and saw horses and tables and minivans, and I'm thinking, does that entire state, is there a national shortage on traffic counts because the entire state doesn’t have the ability to provide a hundred traffic cones for this site. Is there a big shortage on minivans? Can they not go to enterprise the same way the federal government would go to enterprise and rent a minivan? So, I think a lot of these states are all too happy to just pass the buck and not look internally at what they have available. We, for example, title 32 National Guard Assets, FEMA has authorized the expenditure for a certain amount of National Guard Assets in every state depending on how many forces you had, how many are employed overseas, how many were available.
Here's been what we call a force cap developed for every state and say, it's 3000 personnel. I get those Forecast numbers every day. How many of the authorized 3000 are deployed? Some states are 40 or 50 people are deployed under that force cab. They don't want to use their guardsman and then they're asking me for 150 staff. My first thing is why aren't you using your car? A lot of times when we send those questions back to them, we don't get that request back again. A lot of them, they know they can do it. A lot of them don't want it.
Host: John Scardena (27m 49s):
Well, they’re not incentivized to do it. That was a Brock Long thing. There was no incentive to get these states to say, hey, if we do everything we can to mitigate, if we put it up the dollars in the right spot, we put the person on the right spot, our cost share should go up with a federal government disaster. That's what Brock's pitches essentially. The federal government will fit a higher bill, but if they do a lot less, the federal government shouldn't have to pay for so much. I kind of tend to agree with that. I think there's lots of ways to do that, but it's like that 1978 flood insurance policy act or whatever that the flood insurance act that's what caused all the states to be like, wait, I don't need to put this in my budget because you'll bail me out.
If we say we don't have the budget, it's like, oh, sorry. I put that all towards another project. Sorry, I don't have any money you need to come in. Something to think about, really fascinating stuff.
Guest: Joe Dellamura (28m 52s):
You're absolutely spot on with that. A lot of the states, even though it's a hundred percent cost share, they're not incentivized to do it because they know we'll bail them out. I think at some point when we're going back to him saying, we don't have this resource, you know, it's incredible to see that it's almost, we are not a plan A. That's really the thing, people look at us too much as a plane A, like 911, just to give an example, because the fuel thing is very popular right now with the colonial pipeline. If you need fuel in Maine, for example, the state of Maine can go and get fuel a lot easier than the federal government. We have a fuel contract, National fuel contract, it’s about $60 a gallon for unleaded. That's because that fuel had to be sourced, handled, shipped, somebody has to monitor it, there’s a program management office, all of that. By the time it gets from the refinery to your gas tank, it costs $60 for that tank of fuel for that one gallon of fuel. Whereas if the state just went and did it locally, you'd cut out so many of those project management costs and they're all still reimbursable. So that's the other thing, especially right now, this is a 100% cost share for the vaccine campaign, right? So, for me to go to a local hospital in current commission, a nurse that's already working in that state to pick up extra shifts for FEMA, that cost of that nurse is going to be $150 an hour with all of the project management costs that are incurred.
Whereas at the state just went and said, hey, nurse, so-and-so what do you make an hour 30? Okay, we'll give you 35 to come pull an extra shift for us. If they did that locally, they could cut down on so many of these costs. But a lot of the time we are the easy button and that is a moral hazard as Brock Long would say, because the more and more you continue to feed the animals, the more and more they rely on you to be fed. So that's a real challenge that we run into.
Host: John Scardena (30m 48s):
The burden, the French fry analogy, right? If you give a bird a French fry, they'll never eat anything else. Yeah. It's a really good call out. Okay. So, you've given several solutions at the federal level. You've given a couple of solutions at the state level to say, Hey, you know, don't use us as your easy button. You can do it a lot cheaper and it's reimbursable. It's just, it's fiscally responsible. It's that get rid of that moral hazard. Let's talk about the local level. I always like to pull on the local level, even the Tribes, you know, we've been working with Tribes here at Doberman, and we're really grateful to do that and sometimes they get left out of the conversation. So, whether you're a Tribal Nation or you're a local emergency manager, and you're still dealing with COVID and you're looking at all these different things, what would you tell them if you were like, if you were representing FEMA and you just said, Hey, as a FEMA guy, this is what you should be learning from us right now. What would, what would be some of your solutions to them?
Guest: Joe Dellamura (31m 47s):
Locals and Tribes are both very similar in the fact that they are the lowest level of government for whatever their locale is. We are dealing with several Tribes direct, and we're also dealing with a couple on that are coming through their state, we're dealing with them as a sub grantee. A couple items, one, all disasters are local, right? We've heard that a hundred times. So as a Chief Elected Official of a Tribe or at Marin city, you should want your flag to be on that recovery obligation. If I was the Mayor of Washington, DC, I would not want a bunch of people wearing FEMA shirts or Air Force uniforms or whatever, running around vaccinating my citizens.
I would want somebody wearing a DC patch, vaccinating my citizens. The same should go for Tribes, right? It does start locally and, you know, a robust Medical Reserve Corps, for example, most large UASI or Urban Area Security Initiative cities have a Medical Reserve Corps having a robust relationship with hospitals. I'll do a shout out to my home state of Connecticut. Connecticut is by the way leading the country and vaccinations per capita. It, Connecticut is almost an 80% vaccinated, which 80% of their citizens are vaccinated.
We anticipated that coming into June, that will be 80% in Connecticut. We'll be the first state to cross the threshold. The reason for that is they have a very strong medical community. There is a lot of research with their universities up there, certainly. But the other thing is their State Public Health has a robust network of private sector departments. They have four or five hospital networks that they are utilizing to staff mobile vaccination clinics. So, depending on where the mobile vaccination clinic is going to be that week, they send their personnel from the local hospital and it does two things. One, it provides the local doctor, nurse EMT, kind of that sense of ownership and satisfaction that they're helping fellow countrymen, people that are in their cities, they may be vaccinating their friends and family.
Guest: Joe Dellamura (33m 57s):
So it provides that sense and also it does a great thing for us because we're not taking staff from another state, another locality and taking them out of their job as a nurse at a hospital in Indiana, and now putting them in a hospital in Connecticut to do the same job. We're not robbing Peter to pay Paul. All they're doing is saying, Hey, you normally work Monday through Friday. Can you pull an extra shift on Saturday? We're going to do a vaccine and if you do that enough times, you'll step out the whole week. Connecticut has done that. They have three, what we call mobile vaccination units that roll around the state. They're basically a double-wide trailer that gets towed around set up. It's got a Sub-Zero freezer on it to store a vaccine and they are distributing vaccines.
They're staffing it with the personnel that work in those localities, the best way to do it, that's a model we should replicate it across the board. Obviously, some states don't have the capability to go to rural areas of Alaska, New Mexico, Oregon. You're not going to have that level of, of medical capability, but you also have less people. So, there are things that could be done in that landscape that I just thus far, I think a lot of states have been pushing the easy button and not taking that ownership.
Host: John Scardena (35m 14s):
I'm surprised that Rhode Island isn't going to be the first tape to cross the threshold. I learned that to the side, Yosemite National Park is the same size as Rhode Island, and then I just lost it. You know, it was just oh my gosh, man. Like, that's pretty incredible to think about that solution. Again, mobile vaccination sites. You're talking about all these solutions and love that. Remind me of the role or the title that they gave you for this, the Vaccination Coordinator?
Guest: Joe Dellamura (35m 46s):
Yeah. National Vaccination Coordinator, a dollar district cup of coffee.
Host: John Scardena (35m 52s):
Hold up. Wait. Oh my gosh. Well, you clearly deserve it. I just loved hearing; you talk about all the innovative solutions. This happened last time too. I talked to you. I was blown away by all the innovation that had to happen to get up testing Coca-Cola, Sriracha and you know, others like now making the vaccination, the vials, and the mixing and everything else. Now you're talking about all the different federal agencies and people working to do the mixing and keeping it up and do vaccination sites and mobile vaccination sites. To be able to have the data, to be able to say, hey, they're doing it phenomenally in Connecticut.
All disasters are local and to all the innovation that has had to go in there, you should be the Chief Innovative Officer for FEMA. That's what it sounds like on my end, but it's just incredible to hear this and to get that like running total, I have to get you to come on like every six months or so to give us the update, because I feel like every time you're going to come on, you're like, yeah, we talked to Elon Musk and we're just going to like rebuild the earth now. No big deal, because that's kind of what you're doing, but you're like the ELA, oh, there you go you're the Elon Musk of FEMA. That's basically your role, no big deal, but that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool stuff that you're doing over there. As I asked last time, because we're going to wrap it up here in a second because I respect your time and I want to get to saving lives or innovation again through FEMA, I guess, but I really appreciate you coming on here. The same question I asked you last time when they ask you again and see if it's either changed or if it's solidified at all for you, if you could change one thing in the career of emergency management right now to impact the future in a positive way, what would you want to see emergency management change?
Guest: Joe Dellamura (37m 52s):
So that's a really good question, and I just want to, before we break, I just want to point out one thing last time I was on this, you asked me when you think we would be vaccinated. I believe we both landed on July and I believe we're both going to be correct where probably about 70% of this country by July. So, a close with you on that one. That's yeah, that's cool to think about.
Host: John Scardena (38m 19s):
Really cool to think about how we talked about that. I've been vaccinated. I'm proud that I've been vaccinated and like the faster, more anybody is holding off at this point, I'm like, you realize you're the reason why everything's still shut down. Right? Like I don't even care. That's why I got the vaccine. Do I think it's life-threatening for me? No. Do I kind of care about the next guy down the road? Yes. That's why I did it, but I also just want to return to normal. Just give me this stupid shot, we're fine, move on. You know, anyways, so that's awesome that you're going to be on target for that goal though. Congratulations.
Guest: Joe Dellamura (38m 55s):
Third time. Fourth time. All right. To your question though. I think this whole thing of emergency management as an emerging profession in an emerging industry starts with a public information campaign and it goes down to people in businesses thinking preparedness and agencies that aren't FEMA thinking about contingencies and preparedness and local and state thinking about the next step. But because really in emergency management, a lot of it just like anything else in the public sector comes down to budgeting. In emergency management, we are asking our budget committees to give us money for things that we all hope don't happen. So, we're asking people for money, for tools and programs, we hope we'll never have to use. We want preparedness money in case we get bombed. We hope we don't get bombed a budgetary person. You're going to have a hard time putting money into the counter bombing fund if you don't ever use it because that's how people, budgetary folks think. So, getting that culture of preparedness, where people are thinking about the, what if COVID-19 has done anything, it's helped businesses think about the, what if right.
Okay. I do have to go down to 25% capacity in my restaurant. What does that look like for my staff? How do I do this? What does it look like for my shipments that I get in a food? Obviously, it's going to be less. What does it look like for my prices? My hours of operation, the cost of rent on my building. So, building that culture of preparedness, that culture of what is, is what everybody needs to be involved in from a macular level, because this could go to 20 couldn't come. I don't know this could happen again so we could be in a situation where we need to be prepared. And it would really be unfortunate if we threw the baby out with the bath water after this whole thing is over with and we didn't take those key lessons learned.
So new emergency managers, I'm seeing constantly new programs, collegiate level programs emerging for emergency managers. I was part of a planning cell that worked on, the coast guard is finally developing a degree program for emergency managers to Coast Guard. All of these things, because people are realizing this is an industry that isn't going away and the more complex the battlefield is, the more of a contingency is possible. So, there's more threats with new technology, with all kinds of new development, emerges new, and we need to be prepared as emergency managers because the best emergency management plan is one you don't ever have to use because your mitigation plan was that successful in that well thought out. So that's what we need to be thinking about from an enterprise level.
Host: John Scardena (41m 48s):
Okay. That's a drop the mic quote moment for sure. We just found our quote for the show, by the way, if I would have closed my eyes and listen to you, I would have been, I don't know, maybe that's a stupid way to say it. If I would have read, there we go, if I would have read your text without use, without knowing it was you, I would think that that was peak gainer, peak gainer. Last week on the show said almost everything you just said, verbatim education stocking, it's all about preparedness, mitigation, everything you just said. I'm going to put it my first vote.
I don’t know if I get a vote, but first vote for Joe Della for next FEMA Admin in eight years or whatever. So seriously, like what you're saying is people who are very influential also say the exact same thing and there's a reason. It comes back to that point that I said earlier, you talked about luck and opportunity and I don't really think you had a lot of luck. I think you have prepared very, very well. I think you're an extremely hard worker. I think you get the job done. I think people know that they have that level of trust and confidence because you're able to just to get out there and do it. I am really proud that we're friends and I'm grateful that you have been just been crushing it for our country for the last, you know, 18 months on this and continue to do so.
I just thank you again for coming onto the show and for saying some really good things. I think emergency managers have to hear that. I think its time that we start addressing colleges and universities and saying, you need to up your programs, you need to do better in your programs, and you really get people prepared for going into a field that you're right. If you're talking to a budgetary person, they're going to be like, wait, why do I need this? People are starting to wake up. They're starting to realize that this stuff it goes and it goes away in their life. It gets exponentially more difficult without preparedness, whether they're a federal employee or whether they're a, they're a municipality. They're trying to mitigate a threat mitigation and preparedness changes the game for everybody. Great call-outs so with that being said, I got to find my que over here, Joe. Thanks again for coming on the show and seriously the great advice. We got to get to come back in like six months or so, four months and actually maybe right after July and see if you're cross that threshold and where the nation's at. So, thanks again for coming on the show.
Guest: Joe Dellamura (44m 24s):
You got a job to look forward to July. The mission success will be in direct correlation to how much hair I have left. So, a snapshot, I was going to say.
Host: John Scardena (44m 34s):
You actually have more hair than the last time you were on the show. So, I don't know, maybe that shows that the country's doing better. Maybe you'll have like, have you ever seen Fletch the movie Flax? He falls asleep and he's in the dream and it's Chevy chase and he's dribbling a basketball, and the announcer goes he's 06-5’, 06-9’ with the Afro. He has this giant Afro, maybe that'll be you in like August, just be like on some beach, somewhere with a giant thing of hair. So that would be awesome. But yeah, I hope that we make a major turning point. I hope that people get vaccinated. I hope that we just keep driving down the road. In the meantime, I'm going to do one more call out. I usually don't do this for my sponsors, but you know, the electronic putting it on your arm or usable COVID tests, that monitoring thing to be able to get people back in schools or whatever that is so huge.
You know, I got to get that call out, shout out to them because I've done the nose swabs. I'm sick of the nose swabs to put it on your arm. Why, you know, let's just get over this COVID thing. I think that's a big game changer there. Okay, I've never done that for a sponsor before. So, you're welcome FS Global Integrity Tech. Let's send the show so if you liked Joe's show, give us that five-star rating and subscribe, as we always say, you can send us an email. If you have a question or you need some more advice about Joe, what Joe was talking about, do work with Doberman Emergency Management, you can send us an email at info@dobermanemg.com.
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