Happy Fourth of July! This week's episode with Todd DeVoe, we talk about the major disasters and potential threats happening in the World right now, including an update on the Surfside Condo Collapse.
We have a BIG announcement this week! Make sure to listen in to find out what it is!
Todd DeVoe from EM Weekly returns to the show to talk about the major disasters that are happening right now, the potential hazards we face, and the need for greater mitigation.
Happy 4th of July!
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Episode 64
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 (1m 52s):
Welcome back to the show, everybody! It's your Host: John Scardena, man this is a great episode for several reasons. First of all, happy 4th of July, Happy Independence Day. We set it up in real time, it's pretty exciting. We have lots of good things happening. The world seems like it's on fire between what's happening in Surfside, what's happening literally like in Canada. So, we're going to be talking about different kinds of stuff. But most importantly, I want to talk about, he's officially back on the show with EM weekly, he has the EM weekly brand and then weekly podcast. All just kind of stuff, Tod welcome to the show.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (2m 30s):
Thank you and everybody got to see me mess around with my microphone, trying to get the right position.
Host: John Scardena (2m 39s):
Like I said, we're real time. This is emergency management, this is real time emergency management. Absolutely. So, should we wait until later in the podcast to make this big announcement? Or should we tease it or should we just tell them now? What do you want to do?
Guest: Todd DeVoe (2m 53s):
We’ll, wait.
Host: John Scardena (2m 56s):
Okay. Yeah. So, we got a big announcement, everybody. We're pretty excited about it, but yeah, we'll hold it off. Maybe like every three minutes we'll just remind everybody there's a big announcement and we just won't mention it and wake up like four or five episodes. Okay. So, Surfside, let's talk about Surfside really quick. What I know, what you know, and we'll kind of go from there just for a reminder of our listeners who was on our show, Chief Walt Lewis, Joe Hernandez, he, our legend and several of the student participants from the Urban Search and Rescue conference that I was at in May are actually responding to Surfside right now. So, our hearts go out to them.
They've been sending me all kinds of contacts. Joe is actually going to come on the show next week once a response is finished and he's going to be talking about after actions. So, we'll kind of hold off on that there, but they still have a hundred and what 40ish people missing, they've pulled out at nine deceased but there is a sliver of hope. They still got a couple of days if you know, they happened to be getting food out of the refrigerator. As Joe was talking about it came down on him, then they got the food, they got the pipes with the water. So hopefully they're in a void wheel for their success. So, there's that. But Todd actually mentioned something that I kind of saw. I looked at it, he probably knows more about it. Talk about the 3d modeling that they're coming out with what you know about Todd.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (4m 26s):
Yeah, I mean, what I know about it is basically out to the media, so I don't have any like super insights on it, but it's really interesting. Using one of the things that we're seeing in the future, and I say the future today is the 3d modeling and then using artificial intelligence and augmented reality, both in the fire response, and in, obviously you've seen this here at Surfside. So, if you want to check out some really cool video and pictures, they're available online right now and in a very super publication. But the part of it I want to talk about though, is using technology today with in response.
So, I mean, I don't know if this is what they're using necessarily in this particular instance, but we have the ability with smart cities, with smartphones, with you know, these things. But to say, we always carry with me over there by their desks, our phones to triangle people, right. We have apps, right, for instance, that are on your phone, talk to each other, you know, there's apps that you can put on your phone, on purpose for your children, how to track where your kids or your family members are. Right. These things like this exist.
We in first response and management can actually use those to find people that are missing as long as they have their phone on them. And so, I think that's really kind of a unique way of using this. I don't know if they're using that technology, because what I found interesting was effectively tented a bunch of different locations on that 3d map. They didn't specifically say where they got that data from, but my guess would be probably from a cell phone data or other electronic devices that are putting up a signal.
Host: John Scardena (6m 17s):
Yeah. That's like almost in Batman where he uses a cell phone signals to like create like a 3d image, so if you're really curious on that topic and the difference between augmented reality versus artificial intelligence, I actually love the fact that you're like, Hey, let's talk about tech because tech and emergency management, emergency services like changes everything and everybody knows that because you know my experience with the drones. If you take the listening devices and you're starting to do sonar, and then you add for grad and you're doing like heat maps and you're doing point cloud, basically for those who don't know, when you look at an Xbox, you can do like a hand gesture. It's looking at all the different shapes that are associated with your hand. You're like, okay that's what a hand looks like. There's a hand gesture and that's the kind of stuff that they're talking about as point cloud. One thing that's really cool is the state of Texas got a grant to use Google's point cloud. Google has if you look at the Google or a tab, like the 3d images, right? So, they have billions of shapes already identified. This is the shape of a shingle, this is the shape of a door handle is, the shape of whatever. They're now using that in search and rescue drones for fields to look for specific shapes that look like body parts. So, they're able to find deceased persons or maybe hopefully alive. So, applying it to the rural environment, to the urban environment, hopefully there they're able to find people and they did identify pockets where they could there, they can guess where there's voids, right?
Guest: Todd DeVoe (7m 60s):
Yes, absolutely and like any other collapse was always going to be a voidin pockets, furniture or heavy-duty equipment, like a freezer, refrigerator, air conditioning, it's things like that connects you with Stan, the collapsed great pockets. Now, you know, I want to stress this as well because all of us in California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska and the quick countries, if you will, there's always that rumor, don't go under your desk because there's going to be a pocket and you can live in the pocket. Well, the idea here is it's going to your desk as well. Most of the time, these are going to be able to withstand most of the stuff that's fallen off the roof, right.
So, we still want that duck cover and hold on portion of earthquake. Right. But yeah that's the thing is that if you can't get underneath an item, right, then we say, go against the wall or along something, or along the bedside, something to create pockets. Hopefully, that's what we're looking for. These void spaces, we teach that for CERT, right. You know, in a certain program on the collapse and things like that. So yeah, absolutely that does work. But like I said, you really need to stress out, don't go, oh, there's going to be a void here because of another refrigerator. Yeah, I wouldn't risk my life on that, but for sure, it's something that you can do.
Host: John Scardena (9m 24s):
More often than not, if you're eating at 01:30 in the morning, like when that came down, it's actually probably more life-threatening than the fear of a fear of a building coming down. But it is insane to look at it. You watch the video and I mean, you're talking about seconds, you know, if it's the spine of the building goes away and usually the spine is associated with the emergency stairwell that collapses everything else falls. And that's exactly what happened. You see the one main column go down and then everything falls on top of it and you're just, oh man, this is nuts.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (9m 59s):
I want to talk a little bit about the pre-collapse. Right. And there's been a lot, I don't know, again this is the stuff I'm reading. This is all open source. I don't have any inside information. You can find all this stuff on various different news media outlets that are asking us to do some research, but there's been some concern about these buildings since they were built basically. Then I guess a maintenance worker was taking photographs of some of the walkways and starting to see some of the shifting in the concrete, reported it and what happened when they reported it. But this just kind of goes into things that we should be doing.
If you're an emergency manager or risk manager for a facility or something like this, you have to start doing risk assessments of the building, I suppose, of the building, there was a great piece in Forbes magazine this morning, talking about the fact that there are some real risks that are out there and our infrastructure is older. Right? I mean, think about, think about some of the bridges that have collapsed just out of nowhere. Well, no, these aren't out of nowhere, you know, they have a D and F rating on the infrastructure rating and then they go deferred maintenance on it. Right. We have met multiple buildings that have deferred maintenance on them, even in the governance side of things.
Oh, we'll maintain those later, deferred the first different. Then all of a sudden, the roof collapses or, you know, we we've seen this happen time and time again. Right. But this really shows that we really need to be paying attention to these risk assessments and what they say.
Host: John Scardena (11m 38s):
Well, I was immediately thinking of hitting on all in all positions, they're like the assessment that's been done from Army Corps of Engineers that 90% of the dams in the US do not have an evacuation plan for the base of those dams. Dams are only typically built to last 50 years, every 50 years that there should be a major assessment done and, or, expected repairs. It was something almost all, again, like 80% plus of dams and levees are beyond that 50 years. But I don't hear major plans of updating levies and dams and hearing, even in Sacramento, it's the worst levy system in the United States because they have so many lovely levies that are just crumbling and like makes you think, okay, this is what happens when you don't take care of the man-made stuff.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (12m 39s):
Well, let me read this to you really quick and this was Ford's magazine as of this morning, it says the lane assessment report that in 2018 found major structural damage to the Florida condo that collapsed last Thursday is a wake-up call for business leaders to act quickly to help prevent crisis situations for the organization. Well, the cause of the bills and classes, you have to be determined, best crisis management practices to address any problems with the issue before they can spiral into a full-blown crisis. Don't wait to find out too late, what you should've done that could have been prevented a disaster scandal or any of those other emergencies. I think this is definitely, I hate to say this because we say, it seems like a broken record, right?
When a crisis happened or along the spine, oh, this is the wakeup call. This is the wakeup call. This is the wakeup call. You know, it should not be a wake-up call. This should be, oh yeah, this is something that we should have been doing a long time ago. I say to my class in the day, or talking about the fact that there is a price, unfortunately we always say, oh, every life is priceless, but insurance ledgers have put schedule that said, should say, have put a price on human beings. Right. The thing is, is that price too much to pay? I think it is right. So, we need to go through here and take a look at these buildings. We've got to stop doing that for maintenance. Yes. It's going to be costly, but this think of the lights and everything with this has costs. United States, which cost, the people that died, the people that are missing, the families that are grieving, you know, it's the 4th of July weekend. They should be celebrating. Now their grieving is sad, and it's just because it's been done by proper maintenance. Again, I'm talking a little out of turn here because I don't know what the cause is, but just from what reading some of the stuff, it looks like a proper audit, proper maintenance. For the condo association to know that in 2018, found major structural damage to this building, this could have been prevented. I think we're going to see some lawsuits and whatnot come out of this.
Host: John Scardena (14m 50s):
This is the problem most people, right and this is kind of a cultural thing too, to be honest, if somebody says, oh, there's major structural issues with this building, most people are going to respond with, but it hasn't fallen yet. They don't understand what they're saying when they say that. But what happens if it does fall? One of the most heartbreaking stories for me is the family of seven that came in for the funeral for somebody else and they were staying, the funeral of one of eight. Yeah. Plus like the family who's living there so there's a lot of that going on.
The first responders on it are exhausted. Right? I mean, I guess we're talking pretty right now, but here's a lot of mitigation is like the key to success on so many different things. You know, the really hard thing for an emergency manager, if they're doing a very honest hazard vulnerability assessment, they do have to weigh the cost. Sometimes saving a life is the most important, in fact, most of the time is saving a life. But there are systems out there that if they go down, everything goes down. I think of Fukushima, the 21 men that said, Hey, we have to stay in, we will likely die.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (16m 19s):
It wasn't even likely that they knew they were going to die.
Host: John Scardena (16m 21s):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They knew they were going to die by staying back, but they knew like how much worse it was if they didn't. That's kind of what it is, but I'm kind of tired of first responders having to take an insane amount of risk because of the incompetence of others. It happens every day, man. I know but I'm saying like emergency managers to be able to bridge that crap gap. Right. So, I don't know how do you fix a system where people are designed to not do anything until something major happens? Like that's how we're built?
Guest: Todd DeVoe (16m 60s):
And that's worldwide though. That's not just here in United States.
Host: John Scardena (17m 4s):
The human race, whatever. Yeah. Like we look at problems and we're like, eh, is a really a priority emergency manager has to convince somebody else that it is a priority before it's actually a problem and that's a very hard sell to do. It was funny.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (17m 19s):
I'll give a personal example. So, I had to buy an iPad for my son the other day because he needed a new one and it's for school. Right. So, it's not just to suffer games or anything like that. So, all right. You know, good deals going on, I'm like, okay that's fine. Right. At the end of the day, oh, and I got a pair of Air Pods or whatever this is called, right because they're only 90 bucks, normally 250 bucks, you got it for 90 bucks. Long story short, you know, I'm dropping what $699 or whatever it is on apple goods. Right. I call, you know, and then I go to Costco and I'm looking at a generator because I need a new generator or I want a new generator. At least I'm like, oh, it's 550 bucks. That's a lot of money. But I'm like, what new iPad, generator? Oh man.
Host: John Scardena (18m 20s):
That is so messed up, I did that. So, our business needs another computer. We need a better basically for our podcast studio. And we were operating on good stuff where obviously we get the job done, but it's not really great. It makes some frustration stuff on the, on the backend. To get like a really nice computer, it'd be like $2,500. Right. My wife's like, yeah, that's great. But you're spending eight hours on this and it's taking away from the business on that. You’re hiring somebody at, you know, this much and you're doing all this other stuff that costs all that stuff. But this is just like a one-time cost for the next five years. But I'm like, oh, but I'm spending that like daily on everything else. So, I don't know.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (19m 7s):
You know, I mean and to go back to buildings, right. We can bring it back to buildings where we're talking about roofing. Right. So, the other day I was this Ruby company in Orange County, California with ANSYS roofing, but not a sponsor by the way.
Host: John Scardena (19m 23s):
Not a sponsor. Yeah.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (19m 26s):
Right. But he's a big slap at this though. Right? I mean, he's one of the largest roofing companies in Orange County. You give so much money back to the community, Charles Anderson. And he's a great guy, right. If you don't follow him, then you should, because he just does some really cool stuff. Anyway, long story short, we're just discussing roofs. Right. You talk to a roofer, he's talking about roofs. Right. He was saying like, how people will skimp on a roof. Right? Like they're going to buy a new roof and they go for the lowest there he says, so then you ended up buying. So, a roof should last a long time, 30, 40 years somewhere. That's not like, what did they skip on the roof?
They bought a roof and only last 10, 15 years. Right. So that means they're going to pay double the roof costs that they would have paid if they got the good roof the first time around. Then, when it rains or whatever, you know, we're talking about less house Sandy, and you had George on the show here. I had him on EM weekly as well, talking about, how that building was built, it was built about the roofs. Then on my other podcast, prepare, respond, recover. We actually had a fortified, which is an organization that task, these ones, this is a really cool job. That's a job, actually. I want you build a house inside of a structure, and they have these huge fans on there and they blow the fan.
Host: John Scardena (20m 50s):
It's fun, but wind tunnel. Yeah.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (20m 52s):
It's like a wind. It creates a cat three hurricane. Yeah. So, they throw things up these homes and the ones that have the fortified roof on there, which is three more nails than you'd normally put in these home stand. The ones that go with one now fall apart. So, the roof is the most important structure on your house. Yet. We skimp on that every single time when you're looking at, because it's not sexy, right? No, one's like, Ooh, you have a nice roof you know.
Host: John Scardena (21m 21s):
We did my roof and I was like, dang, that looks good. When George actually shared that same style with me about the nails. I looked into it and I watched his documentary that talked about that too. And I was blown away by the level of effort it takes to fortify your home after a tornado or a category three, whatever. And it was just like looking at that. In fact, I was looking at the tornado side because we're moving to Missouri. I was like, oh man, what would it take? Oh my gosh, they figured out, it was something like they spent $300 more on materials, nails and whatever included on homes. They could withstand an F three tornado. You're like, okay, I understand that, that you multiply that over a subdivision, but still you can easily build that into the cost of the home. Like, oh, here's my $300/400,000 home, I guess it's now $400,300.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (22m 23s):
Yeah. I mean, that's less expensive than the other, I've kind of just taught myself. Just think about that.
Host: John Scardena (22m 30s):
Right? Yeah like you get a two I-pads for the cost of your freaking home. Yeah, Holy Cow.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (22m 41s):
You know, speaking of this, I live in California for now, but we live in fire area and we think about that. We think about the heat that's happening today throughout the specific parts of west, which also includes British Columbia. Right. Canada and village.
Host: John Scardena (23m 2s):
No, I think today is Canada day. The day we're recording. Oh, it is Canada day. Yes, it is. But I saw the American flag. So, suck it.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (23m 8s):
All my Canadian friends, happy Canada day Canada. On the 4th of July, happy 4th of July, you guys could come join us by the way.
Host: John Scardena (23m 17s):
Yeah. They could have had greatness. People always settled, man.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (23m 20s):
Yeah. The Canadians were like, screw you because it was all the French Canadians were like, we're not going to fight with you guys because he just fought us.
Host: John Scardena (23m 27s):
You know, if it makes you feel any better, the French Canadians don't really like the Canadians either. So, if you go to Montreal, that's like division.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (23m 36s):
Look at my last name.
Host: John Scardena (23m 38s):
DeVoe, you're French. Are you French Canadian? Are you French? French Canadian. How many generations?
Guest: Todd DeVoe (23m 44s):
Three.
Host: John Scardena (23m 45s):
Okay, nice. And then who came to the U S grandfather? So, he was the smart one.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (23m 56s):
Yeah. I mean with my family up from upstate New York, you know, Saratoga area. Yeah.
Host: John Scardena (24m 8s):
So, by the way, I love making fun of Canada because there's actually nothing to dislike. It's like, it's beautiful up there. Oh, is that a moose or a bear?
Guest: Todd DeVoe (24m 26s):
Can Canadian mountain man. Bear.
Host: John Scardena (24m 30s):
I see him. Nice. I'm like what? Okay. But I mean…
Guest: Todd DeVoe (24m 38s):
Okay back to Canada, right? I mean there's some serious issues here. I mean, it's very sad by the way. I don't want to make light of it by any means. So, they get the heat wave up there it's 120 degrees. Right. I don't know what started it, but a fire starts in this town and the brush fire burned 90% of the village. So yeah, today, wow. Yeah, it says the Brad MIS as the prime minister or mineral minister of parliament said the fire had caused extensive damage to Leighton and British Columbia and the surrounding critical infrastructure.
Jan Polderman, mayor of Leighton, told the BBC he had been lucky to get out of his own life and there won't be much left to late. And he says, there's fire everywhere and the video is just very, it reminds me of paradise. Right? So yeah, 120 degrees Fahrenheit, temperatures and Canada has recorded 486 deaths over the last five days compared to the average of 165 is normal days. So yeah, it was heat. Terrible.
Host: John Scardena (25m 54s):
Yeah. You're thinking about a building collapse of 151 people you think of heat waves, you know, killing people like people don't really ever think about. That was like one of the things I would have to like constantly remind people like heat waves, kill people, straight up. It's not like just like people playing in the sun for fun or like, you know, swimming. Like there's some real impacts there. In Vancouver, one of the reports that I was looking at just from the other day was when I was 18. They were complaining that even though they were on the river, most of them didn't have air conditioning. So, they were having major problems with that. So, things are changing. Things are changing and it's causing a lot of problems for a lot of people.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (26m 37s):
Oh, I want to share a picture if I can. Yeah so check this out. This is a picture on the left-hand side here. I'll describe it for those that are listening to the podcast. Not watching it. It was a very, just like a fall sunny day buildings up main street, you know, looking there, the picture on the right-hand side is what happened after the fire. It's just complete devastation. It looks like a bomb went off and just knocked everything down. The trees are burnt. The building that was right there on the right-hand side is completely gone. It's just, it doesn't look like the same place. I mean, if it wasn't for that little walking center there, I wouldn't have said that was the exact same place. You know, it's just amazing how that looks.
Host: John Scardena (27m 20s):
One of the ugliest fires or one of the ugliest disasters I've ever been to was Napa. I don't know, down south was pretty rough too, but Napa was insane. The coffee park I've been to all kinds of disasters and is a horrible watching people having to like literally scrape nine feet of mud out of their home after a hurricane or a major flood. But I've never seen anything like that. When up to that point, at least it was, like you said, like a bomber and it was like a nuke. I thought I was walking into an apocalypse, everything was white Ash, everything was gone. Engine blocks had melted.
Like how does an engine block melt like an engine block melted? And it looked like a silver river, dried silver river on the ground everywhere. The most bizarre thing ever was as I'm walking down the streets, serving data and the national guard was there sifting for bones before the families got in there, there was one house that was totally fine. Well, I was asking why that happened? And apparently the homeowner on his way out took his sprinkler. Yeah. It was on a hose and he just intuitively took it and threw it on top of his roof. And when he threw it on top of his roof, you know, wildfires burned top down, not left. Right. And so, as the embers were hitting the roof, he had just put it out. So even though it was thousands of degrees around his house, it was essentially unscathed. It was like a video game, it was. Did it make sense?
Guest: Todd DeVoe (29m 2s):
I mean, I've seen this too, like on the fires that I have responded to throughout the years and one that I did the TEDX talk on was the Blue Cut fire. It burned down a very famous restaurant on route 66 and same thing you'd go through. The fire hops bounced over homes and burned some down, some were burned completely. This one guy has two homes on the property. One he was renting out and the other one was his dream home, was a log cabin and the log cabin was burnt to the ground and his other house we had on the same property. I mean, very bad smoke damage to it obviously, but no other damage to it. So, you know, it's just amazing how these things work. Mother nature is a fickle beast. Right.
Host: John Scardena (29m 54s):
I actually think we're really the beast because one of the problems are man-made costs. Like we build systems and we don't think of the impact. Then we're surprised when we're impacted by it.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (30m 11s):
There’s a movement right now that's out there. The idea that there's no such thing as a natural disaster, there's only natural hazards, but disasters are all manmade. The argument there is that this man made, because it's the built environment that really is causing the disaster. Right because if you think about it this way, this was a wildfire in the middle of Yellowstone nowhere, right? Yeah. I mean, there might be damaged smoke things within the environment and things like this where suddenly a disaster. So natural phenomenon actually has to happen to clear out the underbrush. Right. I mean, the fire is a natural thing that happens in the forest. Right. We just happen to build a host in the middle of it and then when that burns down, then it's a crisis, which I agree, you know, I'm just as guilty. I live on the WUI you know, so.
Host: John Scardena (31m 8s):
I mean, tell that to Australia. What was it like six or seven times the state of New York burned in that fire? I mean, it's just wild to think about just size of that.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (31m 22s):
Right. But think about this, the homes that burnt down on that huge swap of fire, the homes that burnt down and the human death were very low. Right. Absolutely. Very low. It didn't impact because it was not a very built environment. Now we had tragedy for the animals, you know, like a little qualifier that they are rescuing. Absolutely. And yes, this terrible, I'm not saying it's bad. I'm going to say it's not bad.
Host: John Scardena (31m 52s):
My analogy is, I actually used a hurricane, the ocean, nobody cares about like, it's not going to really impact a lot of things. Seeing you can move ships around them. Hopefully it doesn't impact a lot. It's not a big problem until it hits land and then land really, it's a problem for everybody else. So yeah. I mean, there's a lot of truths in that, like hazard. That's why, like think of disaster tough as being tough enough to be able to deal with the hazards. Some people think as disaster tough as like you're having a tough day or a tough luck or, you know, preparedness even. But for me it means mitigating everything because, you know, I don't want to bounce back. I just don't want to have to have the problem. You know, that's what it means to me. That's kind of the behind a shell, right?
Guest: Todd DeVoe (32m 40s):
No, absolutely. I agree with that premise and you're not going to talk about this a lot. Right. The idea of resiliency versus the fragility and what that really means and what fertility, I'm just kidding. Yeah. So, but you know, the idea, and then the side of it though, is what's the difference between preparedness and readiness, right? And it's the same, or the words don't matter, but they do, right. They do matter because it sets the tone of what you want to do. Right. So, I think that we need to, as I think readiness and creating an empty, fragile reorganization or community or disaster tough community is what we really need to be striving for as emergency managers, as practitioners.
You know, if you think about the fire department, right, the fire department has building codes and whatnot has pretty much put themselves out of the job of fighting fires in structures these days. Right? Matter of fact, there was a fire at the studio at the security of studios and the fire was out by the time the fire department got there, their job was pretty much just mopping up and making sure it didn't spread. I mean, they did a good job. Right. But it was pretty much contained to the one room where the fire was sprinkler system turned on to this job. It was more water damage than it was fire damage.
Host: John Scardena (34m 15s):
I actually remember when you text me all those pictures and you're like, there's a fire. And you got up to the studio when the fire alarm was going off and everyone's just waiting. You're like, isn't that a fire alarm? Shouldn't we get out of here. That's so crazy, man.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (34m 29s):
So, my point about it though, is not that we humans are knuckleheads for the most part. So, you know, we hear the fire alarm go off, we don't leave, but the fire department's job was pretty much done for it by the sprinkler system. Right. You know, if that was 20, 30 years ago, there would have been fire burning from the seat. It's not necessary, it doesn't happen. We've seen this happen time and time again. But realistically they do mostly EMS response right now, wild land fires, a whole different story. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the fact that, you know, your structural fire, right.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (35m 12s):
Now with new construction going on in single family homes, they're putting sprinkler systems, you know, which is great, right. So, you're seeing less and less of single-family homes burning down now, which is awesome. But at the end of the day, fire has moved their focus from firefighting and fire prevention, which is still key, but to EMS. So maybe as emergency managers, if we can move away from managing the large-scale disaster, right. If that's something that we can make everybody disaster tough, if you will, right. Can we manage others? Can we do other things like mitigation issues and making things stronger and better?
Guest: Todd DeVoe (35m 53s):
I think that's one of the things that we could do to improve as a disciplined professional.
Host: John Scardena (35m 59s):
Absolutely. I love that statement. Hey, let's make everybody disaster tough. Like by the way, let's just talk about the things that you have teased so far that you've teased after action reviews, which is something that we're working on, you've teased antifragile, which is, I know a very specific project that you're working on, you've teased, updating the field. You've teased the podcast with all of us in the last two minutes, by the way. You teach something else. You teased the work in general and you teased podcasting.
So, I think its time to tell some people announcing on here too, because this is pretty exciting. Then we're going to get one very serious point at the end. I'm going to ask you a question. What about readiness? Oh, that's what it is. Readiness. Yeah. So, you nailed that one. So how do we want to do this? I'm going to let you, I'm going to announce one part of it and then I'll let you actually know how do I want to do this? I want you to announce it. Yeah. We'll go from there. Then I'll build off the top of it. I know this is exciting. There's lots of parts. Everyone's like, what are they talking about? How about we talk about the lab first? Let's talk about the lab. Second. Let's talk about what you just signed. Oh, where are you going? What are you doing?
Guest: Todd DeVoe (37m 31s):
Well, that was a couple of documents. I just find today and a formalized agreement relationship. If you will like a song, John earlier, I felt like we're going through prenups. So, EM weekly and Disaster Tough and Doberman have formerly combined forces and yeah, that's what we're doing. We are now one big happy family. Although John did not walk me down the aisle.
Host: John Scardena (38m 4s):
No, I have a wife. I love her dearly. My true family of one family of one wife. Oh, you have
Guest: Todd DeVoe (38m 11s):
Your child.
Host: John Scardena (38m 17s):
To clarify that with I that yes. So, our business is Doberman Emergency Management is officially joining government emergency management, and he's going to be leading our west coast operations. So, we're really excited about that. As I've alluded to times at the show talked about, we're moving to St. Louis for our companies move in there, but we have a lot of good things and we have good people, even better people now with Todd joining us, or at least a larger grasp on good people, they'll be with us. So very excited for Todd. Congratulations. In fact, I'll be the audience here for you really quick. Nope, not that one.
No, there we go. Yeah. Everyone's cheering for you right now. I'm really glad to have you part of our team, you are going to be one of our advisors. So, I'm the owner of the company we've been doing this for a while. We are emergency managers exclusive and we work with emergency managers. People who are very experienced, obviously very experienced in emergency management. He's actually first responder, former military and now is in emergency management and actually teaches emergency management, let alone leading his own podcast and brand. So really excited to have you on board time. So as mentioned, that leads us into the other thing. Okay. Now that we have EM week let's go down the list of what you brought over EM weekly podcasts, EM weekly webinars series, EM student podcast, which if you're newer to emergency management, definitely wanted tune in there.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (39m 54s):
A great series going. I want to talk about EM Student for a second, but Franzie Economy, she is amazing. First of all, but she is doing a series right now for the summertime. It's a seven, maybe eight-part series on various different interviews. She’s coming from the pure side of curiosity of what emergency management is and what you can do with it. She's really working hard on that. Then Dan Scott, who you may know if you guys watched, you know, EM weekly, and he's also been through it as well, he was a student for a while. He's actually working on two areas. One is the core competencies of emergency management. What does that mean? And bringing in the people who've actually written the core competencies for FEMA are going to be discussing that and how we can bolster the profession of emergency management and what are the core competencies and why are they those core competencies where we're at? So, I think there's two series right now. I'm excited about, I don't have any previous on them. I've been doing editing for them, but that's about it. So, I can't wait for the out as well.
Host: John Scardena (41m 5s):
You know, and speaking of Dan and Franzie, and even John, he's got a guy who walks behind that works fine, the Siemens. I met all them. I'm very excited that they were associated with and now they're going to be associated with Doberman in this aspect on EM weekly, you know, material and yeah. Highly depressed, especially all three of them are very impressive, but as you noted, Franzie, I mean, she's newer to emergency management, but she's doing everything right. As you would want to do with the person who's getting into our field. I'm excited to listen to what their materials and Dan provides another great experience. He also works at a university. It's just a great team that you guys brought over and I'm happy.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (41m 49s):
Finishing his PhD in emergency management and leadership. I got to tell the front of the story though, and I'm probably going to embarrass her a little bit, but I think it's important. So, she reached out to me, this is a powerful, this is the power of network. She reads us up to me on LinkedIn and says, hey, I want to learn about emergency management. So, she shoots me a direct message and sustains us for a while. I said, sure, absolutely. Let's set up a meeting. We got on a zoom call from Google meets or whatever we got on a call. We talked for a bit and I said, hey, look, I'm teaching an emergency measure program at UCI. You should get involved with it. Right. Take your pick the course. She said, okay, she registered for the class and she's going to finish, actually, this is our last class this semester. She'll have her certificate in emergency management. She has a degree; her last name is economy and she has a degree in economics. Yeah, absolutely. First of all, the school name, and second of all, the disaster economics is really something I'm very interested in. You guys can't see it right there. There's a next to the duck head. There's an economics book sitting right there. Two of them, three of them economics is very, I find very fascinating, especially disaster economics and what that really means and how to recover from disasters and things like this. She brings that perspective and she's very methodical and inner thinking thought process she looked at trying to see what this was all about. I think she likes it.
Host: John Scardena (43m 20s):
She likes it because something you don't know that I was going to tell you a little bit later, but it's fun to tell you now we were going to wait to tell you. In fact, she hasn't technically signed it yet, but she gave us the verbal this afternoon that we are actually hiring her to do some of that stuff for us. So, she will actually be working on some of that. We're calling her an emergency management analyst because I'm a data guy with a data background. She has definitely data background and an analyst background. I was like, oh, this is going to help out Doberman a lot. So, we're even able to bring into that atmosphere more about data and technology into our offerings. Man, talk about an awesome person.
Kudos to, oh, wait wrong, kudos to you again for identifying her as a great talent. We totally agree. But we have to, we have to name your last one, very important one with speaking spark, the EM Speaks webinars series that comes out every quarter. Really cool stuff. They identify, basically thought leaders to come on and to be interviewed, it's come more like an NPR style kind of stuff. So, the company and Holly and her company is speaking spark. So definitely big fans of them. They identify some of those people and EM weekly of combined forces on that webinar, it's called EM speaks.
So, the way our listeners, if you're listening to the podcast right now and you're like, oh my gosh, you just named like three or four different things, how do I find it? Well, the other part of the announcement is Doberman emergency management in collaboration with our new friends here from the EM weekly podcast, and some of the other friends that we haven't talked about yet, we're creating something called the Readiness Lab. The Readiness Lab will be the readinesslab.com. We'll put it in our show notes. It's going to launch here in the next couple of weeks, that’s going to house all of our content on there for all of our different shows. You can check out any show, you want check out EM weekly, obviously is a great speaker himself. He has a lot of insight that you can use, but you can go there, check that out. Then in the future, as we get into other things like training and certificates, and maybe even conferences, I'm working with different partners, different groups, as our podcasts are growing for you. If you have any in podcast or emergency services podcast, and you're listening, hey reach out to us. We might even showcase you on our lab. So, the readiness lab, big, fun stuff that's happening. We just went from on the Disaster Tough’s side, dormant side, one podcast, two in September. I think it'll be eight, which is really exciting, including another one that we can tease right now, man. It's like all about announcer. Yeah. Our Movie AAR is movie after action reviewed. You want to give us a preview?
Guest: Todd DeVoe (46m 22s):
Absolutely. I have to give some credit where credit's due and Charles Lane, Chuck lane, he is an awesome guy. He had a podcast that I'm kind of sad that went away, I'd like to bring it back. If you want us to do it, you can be on a Readiness Lab, absolutely state of emergency. He had me on a Halloween episode and we basically spun the wheel of death and Optus thinking the idea of how do you respond to the state? Puft marshmallow man exploding in New York city from Ghostbusters, right. I thought that was brilliant and I've been wanting to do this for a long time. I told John this story, he's like, oh, we got to do it. So now what we're going to be doing is looking at movies, not necessarily disaster movies, movies that have a disaster image or things like it, the same football exploding, and we're going to break it down and we're going to take a look at it and say, what's real, what's not real and what would you do in that situation? We're going to a lot of fun with it. This is the day we'll talk about some serious stuff too. It's about having a little fun with our professional.
Host: John Scardena (47m 34s):
Yeah, I'm really excited for the in fact, our third host on that show, it would be myself and another individual, he's actually been on this show twice, Patrick McGuinn, he's a lot of fun. So, the three of us looking at it from the different perspectives of the nonprofit world, from you know Patrick's world, to first responder, up kind of his background there and my background of like that strategic level, you know federal level. So, all of us are emergency managers. All of us also have a different background and perspective and we like to have fun. We can poke fun at it a little bit because it's what we do for a living. So, when that comes out, we'll probably get Patrick on this show. The three of us, we'll talk a little more about it then, but a lot of things are happening together, it's all coming together. We've been working on this, I think since March right, which is kind of fun. Even before that I think when I talked with you in December, I kind of put it in my head. I was like, oh, I want to work with, so how are we going to make this work? So, you're looking at potentially seven months here that we've been kind of working the kinks out on this and it's coming together. I'm really excited and yeah, stay tuned for more from the Readiness Lab. Okay America so, I'm going to ask you, speaking of America, it's a July 4th episode. This is a really serious question, but you know, I want your honest feelings on it and I might share my feelings on too.
There's a lot of problems in the United States that are being addressed right now. Some are real concerns and some don't feel like real concerns based off of the party who you talk to right. But what I find fascinating is the flag is used on pretty much every angle, whether you're for or against whether you are for one topic or you're from an opposite viewpoint. I'm one of those who I'm pretty hardcore and thinking that what happened on January 6th was despicable. They are carrying the mag, the American flag, but the riots in the summer over, you know, over protests, they were also carrying the flag two totally opposite perspectives, carrying the flag, but the flag means something. It should mean something, and so outside of political use, as a veteran, as a first responders, you as an emergency manager, as an American, what does the American flag mean to you?
Guest: Todd DeVoe (50m 1s):
Wow, that's a deep Verde question. I first have to state that I do not belong to any political party. I actually believe that the political parties are bad for America I just want to seek that out. So, the George Washington, by the way.
Host: John Scardena (50m 17s):
I agree, George Washington, I'm a George Washingtonist, which would make me politically affiliated, which ruins the thought process anyways back.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (50m 27s):
So yeah, I don't subscribe to the party politics, you know. Again, like I said, I really truly believe that that it ruins it anyway, but let's talk about the record flag. So first of all, the American flag does mean something. For all those people who I'm going to stand on my soapbox for a minute here, for all those people that say, oh, when you burn the American flag, you're just burning a piece of cloth, it's whatever. First, you know, absolutely. You know, it's your first amendment rights to burn that flag. I say this, but the symbolism, what you're doing, right. And then just burning a piece. You know that, right? Otherwise you wouldn't do it. You're trying to incite anger or messages that you're putting across to something and that's why you burn it. You stand on it, poop on it, pee on it. You make it, you know, disgrace it. You're having people today say that we need to change our flag because it stands for something that does a stand for, and that others have picked it up in the banners of racism and all these other things. The flag has meaning you should learn what it means.
You know, we used to have a day, what was the base till there June 14th? I believe it is flag day, right? Where, when I was a kid, we used to have a day where we do flag stuff, right and we were still in school in July 4th or June 4th. You know, the day we would honor the flag and talk about the flag and what it means. The fact that the white means that the purity, the red is the blood that spilled. The blue is a field that we're on. The stars obviously stand for our seats, right? Those seats stand for all the seats that are here and all the people that are inside of them. It doesn't mean that they're white in the sense of the race of anybody. It really burns me to hear people say, we should change our flag that doesn't stand for America. It does, because if it didn't stand for America, if it didn't stand for what you're saying did, you wouldn't be burning those, you wouldn't see that Iranians burning it. You would see Hezbollah burning that and stepping on it and spitting on it and do one of the things they do to it. Now I honestly believe that if you feel that you need to do that and you want to stand in the public square and you have the right to do so.
If you purchase up, like you need to steal from somebody and if you want to burn that flag, do it right. I don't agree with you. I don't agree with that. The fact that you're doing it, but you have the right to do it and I defend your right to do that. Right. But understanding that you do it for a purpose, not just a piece of cloth, but it has meaning, that symbolism. We drive, we put that flag on top of those who died for our country, right. So, serve whether it's first responders and whether it's military veterans, you know, we raised that. We lower that flag to half mask when, in the honor of people who serve our country, right. When they've died, or for those that have been, you know, grievously killed with like mass murders and whatnot, right. There's a reason why we will lower the flag in their honor, that flag does mean something, right. This 4th of July, you'll see the American flag. You know, it's not a symbolism of racism and you can't make it that way and I won't allow you to make it though.
Host: John Scardena (53m 42s):
Yeah. The that's a powerful statement, right? The way I feel about the American flag is that I'm sad when those who disgrace the country wave the American flag. I think the reason why some people don't associate the American flag with the symbolism that it does represent is because you see hate groups using it. You know, I can understand what the perspective of, like, I don't know if I can trust that symbolism because one, they don't know the history behind it, but they also just, they see the hate group. So, I actually get infuriated with like you are not, you're not acting like an American. You're not acting like a person that I would want to be associated with, so don't carry that flag because that flag to me means, it means everything, right? It means doing better, it means not recognizing you're not perfect, but you want to do better. It's called the American experiment for a reason, they knew that they would always have to build on the constitution. They always knew that they would have to do good things that they laid a strong foundation and that foundation is represented in the American flag that people should be free, that they should have the ability to choose their leaders that they should, that they were all part of this, that there's been people that have given their lives for this and we need to respect them and honor them. The symbolism, just showing that you know, other flags don't show all their provinces on their flag, right. We show every state on the flag for a reason, because we're all in the same fight. I think when we start segregating ourselves and we start separating and we start looking for ways to say, like, I could be offended by that, even though you didn't mean to offend me when we start doing all those things in deteriorating, what it means you have a real problem. The American flag is the symbol of hope for America.
So, if you burn the symbol of hope, then you are essentially giving up on trying to be a part of this. You want to be something else and something else is scary. We see scary all over the world, we don't want to be like that. So, on our July 4th episode, I just want you to know, Hey, there's two, at least two guys out there who still remember what the symbolism means. We respect everybody else's decision. Actually, I really respect their decision, not at all, but I recognize that it's protected and I respect the flag because of it. I respect the constitution because of it. So, thanks for sharing your thoughts on the flag.
I'm kind of a Debbie downer way to end the show, but Hey, yeah. It is an important way to remember, Hey, like I'm proud, I'm really proud to be an American. Like, there's a lot of stuff out there that makes me like think oh, you shouldn't be proud to be American. I'm very proud of my country and very proud of our history because our history shows people can change. Our history shows people can improve. I want to say one more thing about this because you and I both traveled outside of the United States, right? I've traveled throughout Asia, tremendous Australia, I've been to the middle east. I've been to Africa, you know, and as you go there and people talk to us as Americans, they always want to know what it's like to be in the United States and that they dream one day to go now, do they agree with some of our policies? Probably not. Do they agree with our politics? Probably not. But the idea is that what I mean by politics is the way we do things, right?
Guest: Todd DeVoe (57m 39s):
But the idea is that we're a place worldwide that is known where you can come and you can better yourself, right? Even our poorest support the homeless, right because that's a whole different issue. But the poor support those, that's our minimum wage earners, those that are struggling in every day are a hundred times richer than the poor, the poor in other countries. I've been in developing nation where they're literally living in dirt, right. We helped build a school. I want to be on building a team, the school, the Navy and Marine Corps team built the school in Malaysia. You know, going through a project, they were so grateful, right. The kids are so grateful because we're building the school and it was really nuts, much more than some wooden walls and it wasn't, it wasn't a school the way we think of a school year, it was pretty much a one room. We did put cement down on the ground and stuff.
Host: John Scardena (58m 57s):
Yeah. The one problem I have, because I've seen the same thing, right. Not just like, just nothing. The problem is as a kid who grew up super poor in the US, stress is real. So, we have a lack of gratitude problem. We have a problem with self-lack of gratitude, right? We need to be grateful for all the opportunities and things that we have and a hundred times, a million times better than other places and anyone in the United States. There's a lot of BS out there. Anyone in the United States has so much more opportunity and so many other people at other places, I mean, you should be grateful for that. Doesn't mean it's perfect.
Now, does it mean we should improve it, probably, but we need to be grateful for it. But at the same time, those who are listening to the show and they're like, I'm worried. I'm not going to be able to make my rent, I don't know if I'm going to be able to buy gas, I don't know if I can buy food. You know, stress is real. So, always our call out on the show is mental. First aid is real and you should, you should get it. You should talk to people and you should make a plan, planning will help. From a guy whose kind of been there, it took forever. But you know, now we're kind of in a place where, it took a lot of grinding, but we're in a stable situation. So, I don't know, there's that call out too, but that's the American perspective, right? Show a lot of gratitude. Remember what the flag means, I think that's basically what you and I were both saying, have gratitude for what this nation has done for people. What it does for us to dissemble the country is the flag. You know, move on and be better, be a good person, help other people around you.
Guest: Todd DeVoe (1h 0m 47s):
Well, one other thing, too, this is my last piece of advice just in life, I think I'm older than I look before. I always surprised all day, but the idea here is surround yourself with people that care right. I think it's one of the reasons why John and I get along, you know, you have to care. I think those of us that are in this business, right, you're listening to the podcast because you are in this business. I think most of us can say, all right, we're going to paint with a broad brush, but say most of us care, right, that's why we got into this. That's why we became first responders, that's why we became emergency managers is because we don't like to see human suffering, right. I think at the end of the day, we have to take that into consideration and what we can do to help stop human suffering. I think that's what that flag stands for too, is the ability for us to stop human suffering, the best that we can. It's not perfect. It never will be perfect. Right? We're all human, we're all firewall, right? But we can strive and to work hard, we can put our best efforts and I think that Canada gets the reputation of being all the kind of cool people, which they are right. But I think at the end of the day, when you see us and when disasters occur, I've seen it firsthand. I've seen people come out to help people, come out to help and they care. They come up with a hug and they come out and they cry with other people who have lost and I've seen it today in Miami when people come in from across the United States, in the world to help with that, with the response to that. I think as much as we think that we're inside a bubble and that no one else matters when at the end of the day, our communities’ matter, right? At the end of the day, we do this because people matter. I think at the end of the day, as emergency managers can do this, because we all have that soft spot, our heart we're caring. Otherwise we could be making millions of dollars, making microchips somewhere and spying on people, sorry.
Host: John Scardena (1h 3m 1s):
Well, I think that's a good note to end on. I really do like full circle. Now we brought it back to the surf side. We talked about, we talked about the iPad. You ended up with the microchip. So, everyone, hopefully you got some good things to have the show. Hopefully you're excited about that. The Readiness Lab and with EM weekly, the brand definitely check it out, some really good content there. If you like the show as always, you got to give us that five-star rating and subscribe. We appreciate ratings, yes, the big five. Hey, check out our YouTube channel some time, check out our Instagram Disaster Tough. Check out our business Doberman Emergency Management, would love to be able to help you out and we'll see you next time.