As response operations sunset on the Miami Surfside Building Collapse, we review the strategic actions that were taken in response with USAR legend, Joe Hernandez. Joe was on scene during the incident.
The Miami Surfside Building Collapse Incident required local, state, and federal assets deployed as well as a complex system to support responders, family and friends of those missing, and potential survivors. This was an urban search and rescue operation with support across the emergency support functions.
Our host was invited and instructed at a USAR conference in May, many of the participants were deployed to this disaster. Joe Hernandez leads Disaster Medical Solutions, the group who put on the training- he self-deployed to support teams on the rubble pile. His perspective improves our next mission.
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Host: John Scardena (0s):
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Host: John Scardena (1 min 41s):
Welcome back to the show everybody, it’s your host John Scardena. I'm back with a frequent guest, I've never been able to say that until now, a frequent guest, Joe Hernandez. He's an urban search and rescue expert. I've been to his training, he's been out there at the Surf Side, Miami building collapse, economy collapsed. We introduced it a couple of weeks ago, right before Joe went out there. He actually spent several days on the site with a lot of people we both know and he was actually on CNN for several days as a correspondent there. So, he's providing some perspectives now that the response has been officially been called and we're moving into recovery. Joe is going to come back on here and he's going to be talking about some of the after actions that he observed when he was on site and to help better coordinate in the future. Some of the winds that he saw and just kind of walk through the process, Joe, welcome back to the show.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (2m 33s):
Thank you so much, John and thank you for having me and I hope everybody is doing well.
Host: John Scardena (2m 39s):
Yeah, I hope everybody's doing well too. Especially the responders who are on the site and you know, I've talked a little bit about that. Hard to make the call, that response needs to end, recovery needs to start, you know, my perspective and we were talking about this before, but once they dropped the building, it was like, okay, they're moving away. So, can you walk us through that decision? And what do you think about the decision and the timeliness of it?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (3m 9s):
I think the time factor for being a realist is right about that time. We were going into the 13th day, the factors that were involved from start of the disaster to basically making that decision, including, as you mentioned, bringing down the rest of the building that was left, occupying a good portion of the pile and enabled, leaving them unable to search that particular area. Again, creating a really unstable piece of it. But it was a decision by the folks that were there, the engineers, as well as the command and supported by the mayor and finance through the governor and the state.
I think they made a good decision and the dust impaction that creates, even though they did try to cover most of the pile is significant, the shifting underground, et cetera. I'm okay with the decision that was made as hard as it is for not only the victim's families who you can't even imagine the feelings that they're going through, but the rescuer themselves now changing their mindset to go from a rescue to a recovery.
Host: John Scardena (4m 23s):
Let's talk about the dust dropping the other building one. Do you think that was necessary to drop the building when they dropped the building?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (4m 34s):
It was, if they wanted to continue them working in the area, if not the closure would have been a lot harder. I believe that that controlled bringing it down allows for another area to be searched for belongings and foreclosure. Even though there will not be a DNA for human remains, there are items belonging to those people, but it had to be done so that they can continue closure. Even though recovery sounds gruesome at times, there still is the procedure of collecting tissue bodies and the conditions that they are and bringing closure to that family that there is an answer.
Host: John Scardena (5m 15s):
Yeah, I think you and I talked about this back in December, but just to re bring it up because it's a question that's brought up frequently, is in large-scale incidents like this, you find a limb, you find a toe, you find a thumb. At what point do you tell the family, Hey, like you got to cut it off. That's kind of the worst terminology ever, but you know what I mean? Like, Hey, we found one body part, this is your closure. What happens in four months? If you find a bone or find more DNA, do you notify the family? Do you try to get them to not be notified? What do you think is the best course of action?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (5m 57s):
I think that, and I'll speak from a personal experience from a personal friend who, one of my sons, while he was in Afghanistan, close to gold star mother, one of the platoon sergeants who stepped on an IED and of course, tragically took his life. Six months later, they did recover his leg. It was a question of back to the, the mother, do we send this back to you? Do we assume the body and add that to that? There goes the mind, did I even need to hear this type of information? Would it have been okay if I was never told the rest of that now hearing it from her and the emotional scar that rekindled. Was it really going to make any difference in her life and her in her family's life of finding part of Brian's body? Again, that it really mattered if she didn't hear that, would she have been okay with that news as well? She said that she would have been okay if they would've just not mentioned it to her at that point in time, because it wasn't going to change anything.
Host: John Scardena (7m 6s):
Do you know if in Surfside they had the family sign a document saying that if you find a body part, your window closes? Did you know that?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (7m 16s):
No, I did not know. I know that they were going through a multiple step confirmation on scene and then send those remains again to a lab to confirm. Again, take swabs out to my knowledge. Would they, again, contact that family member if they were able to check them off the list, I'm assuming that there's so much going on, that they probably wouldn't reach back out to that person to tell them that they found more. They would already assume, that was a closure for them.
Host: John Scardena (7m 49s):
Got it. Yeah so, in terms of the after-action perspective, your personal preference and it sounds like as a professional and also from the personal experience that that encouragement should stem from, hey, once we find some DNA, it's time to close the conversation, just to help people emotionally, that mental first day we've talked about that before, we walk through that process. So, you were at Surfside for several days, you actually sent me several pictures of like Walt that you saw. You saw Walt worked on the pile, you saw some other people. I actually talked with Armando, he was out of town when it happened, so he wasn't there initially from an after-action standpoint, coordination and collaboration, that kind of stuff. What did you observe? The good, the bad, the ugly, what can we improve in emergency management?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (8m 55s):
From start to finish while I was there, they did a really good job. I believe that the incident commander who was given that scene from Miami Dade County Fire Rescue, it's a 2,500-member department, one of the largest in the entire east coast. It has plenty of depth within that agency and technical savvy within that agency. If you add to that, all of the neighboring departments within south Florida, all a kind of dual role cross trained fire rescue, EMS, fire-based system, he had everything that he needed in the Christmas tree, along with the city of Miami, being the host agency for another federal task force that made it to federal task force each carrying a $3 to $4 million worth of equipment that's federally owned. The state really was just waiting for the federal nod of a declared disaster for those assets to be used. And again, utilize all the members in a different role from a fire rescue and department base now to a deployment within a national response system deployment. If you add the state teams that he had his stands available to Florida having eight total teams to be in federal and the other six being state assets as well, maybe not as large as the two federal teams is not as heavily equipped, but surely have the manpower, resources, knowledge, and train side by side with those federal members, as you are well aware of that, they do just as well of a job just don't happen to be part of a federal system. So, he had enough manpower, he had enough equipment, he had enough savvy and everything that goes along with it on that scene. Little people know that each team has several structural engineers that federal teams carry, two structural engineers on each team, but states usually have one. However, they doubled up on those structural engineers, the state itself, their structural engineers. So, there were at least close to probably 20 structural engineers over that time, making decisions, whether they came from the FEMA office, or local engineers that want to lend a hand with multiple deployment experience all the way from the Oklahoma City bombing all the way up to now.
So very well-orchestrated, having close medical infrastructure, still intact. It didn't affect any of the community. So, it's one of those maybe easier scenes to control from an emergency management point of view of saying is kind of localized instead of spread across my entire city. Even my health infrastructures that are there, University of Miami came through and just stopped all the physicians that have really belonged to those teams from a lot of those. Anyways, they had everything that they need, canines as well. I believe that he held on to his command as he should. There was no need for him to have a point of weakness. He was well-educated well-trained and had the resources at his hand, and he did a great job at it. Some of the other stuff we know we can take a look at after actions, IE the booth set up a base of operations, where they set up the tents. Did it take a while for fences to get put up and keep people at bay, keep even the family members that they just because of how it pulls on everything and make a corridor coming in and out? Not so much the responders who were looking for victims on that piles job, as you know, it's more for that law enforcement and emergency management to make those decisions of where are we going to pick these people and how well can we make it accessible for them to get every day from where they're staying to the pile from the pile back to where they're staying?
Host: John Scardena (12m 58s):
Well, you were talking about that for the Oklahoma City bombing, you guys call it like the Hyatt or something. It was a little box that was built right next to the site in terms of; I mean you've already shared several times, hey, it's very important where you put up the shelter or where you put up the facilities for the responders and the direction it faces. In your opinion, was that followed this time? Or was that a lesson learned this time?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (13m 23s):
Oh boy, here we go. 1995, and here we are 2021 and you know what, the lessons didn't get learned very much. They still put the responders almost caddy corner across the street in a large tennis complex, had an open area, hard ground, easy to set up what we call Western shelters. However, it was within the distance of smell, sight, and sound of what they were doing the entire week. To me, it compounds, it goes from PTSD. You call it complex PTSD is, why add to the pile in somebody's emotional tank when there's no need to. It bothered me at that time.
Some of the teams of course, would put a little bit further down the street. I think it was a decision because of space in the area. If there was space that they might've made the same mistake with the others. So, they play some of them further down the ID, a waltz task force, Florida task force four was basically on the beach at a park, those members woke up and got to watch the sunrise and the ocean rested. Trauma timeout as we call it huge working through that disaster tough emotion of what's going on for them and to see how much that decision wasn't correct to take the building down, they had to move the boot. They had to take both taskforces, Florida task force one and Florida task force two and move them further down the street because they were going to get impacted by the dust as controlled as explained it was going to be.
Host: John Scardena (15m 7s):
Well that's the problem with responders, real talk, you're used to wanting to be either in scene or on scene to be closest seen as possible just in case something happens. So, the idea of a multi-day response, if you're not trained for that, if you're not thinking about that all the time, then it kind of changes the mindset, right? People are shocked when they hear that the national strike team, when they get deployed for emergency management, they're typically not in the disaster. We're at the Capitol. It's much better to coordinate with the governor's office at the Capitol than to be actually in the zone.
But why would you want to be in the zone? It's starting to impact you? The idea of the dust was impacting the responders is just like, man, that's one-on-one, you said it right. Sound, sound, sight, and smell those three things. So those are your three factors of where you should put up a shelter and so that's a really good after action. Those people will seem to show when they're doing their emergency plans for where they put up other responders, great call-out for the logisticians setting that up. Yeah, I mean, that brings in so many thoughts in itself. Okay.
So you talked about the federal response, really interesting of the location, because if this happened in 90% of the country, there's not a federal team, literally right there, let alone two, let alone a huge department that as you noted it, tools, equipment, training expertise, even to understand how to operate in a large multi-agency or a large group function, having 2,500 people in your department, it really helps understand scale. But in terms of the federal response, I was reading reports that for a lack of better term, frustrated me on the timing of those responses, not getting into details too much, but in terms of an after action of timing of state assets, federal assets, who's in charge, that kind of perspective. What do you think that we can learn an emergency management or a leadership capability? I keep calling emergency management. What I'm talking about is leadership in emergency services, that's strategic level. What do you think we can take away from this disaster that can be applied to any disaster in terms of time and coordination?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (17m 49s)
Instead of a reactive, take a possibly proactive approach with emergency management and IE, the fire, chief police, chief city administration, and talk about those plans because depending on whose incident it is, IE in this fashion, it was that fire chief's thrown basically. From there came out the decisions and he held onto it pretty tight. IE, if we go over to the shootings and Orlando, it becomes a law enforcement scene. If you don't see the others in charge, they're basically part of that organization. So, what your capabilities are locally, and then within the state, I think is massive.
Being able to work those coordination’s out. I know that the state teams, the incident was rolled upon as a state asset before the 11-hour mark of when it was declared a federal disaster by Washington. So, for those 11 hours, of course, it wasn't only going to be a local event, the local job as we call it within their agency, but they were going to reach out and use mutual aid agreements within the other jurisdictions, city of Miami Hialeah, Miami beach, up all the way up into Broward county, Broward Sheriff's office, and bring all of those resources into health and then reach out to the state.
The state began its mutual aid system, which we have where they will now begin contacting the state teams and get the state same IST, IMT, incident management teams, into the support team from within the state. They were already beaten feet on the ground before it was ever declared a residential disaster. I really felt kind of blessed and lucky to know that our state had those capabilities and that it was able to be called upon that that was the best part. Then everything else was just kind of in the weights and was able to work out the kinks afterwards, even the political kinks.
Host: John Scardena (19m 58s):
The political kinks are always, in my perspective, usually the biggest kinks of every disaster. It's usually a holdup for lots of reasons, but they have the weight and they know it. I would say the cleverest thing an emergency manager or a leader could do is to figure out the difference between the law and rule and to figure out where, what rules you can break and what laws you should never break. Because when it comes down to like saving lives and responding and getting the job done, he has to be able to be sometimes pretty tough, right.
He had to have tough skin and be able to say no, we're just going to do it. But at the same time, if you're not clever and you do that, if you're just bullheaded and you're dumb and you rub everybody the wrong way, they're not going to want to work with you and you're just going to slow down the response. So, you have to be clever at figuring out how do I be most effective and help without pissing everybody off. That's kind of the name of the game, right? Yeah.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (21m 6s):
And that's not always going to happen here. It's always going to make somebody angry.
Host: John Scardena (21m 11s):
Yeah, and again, that's part of the game of like how far you can push somebody's button, but you also have to be able to roll with the punches. You know, people are going to do that to you. I've been in plenty of disasters where, you get in a, let's say a yelling match. I don't really yell at people, but a disagreement one way or the other, I felt like I was usually right. That's why I was arguing with my point. Other people view what they thought was right, a decision will be made and you move on and. You know, I've had great dinners and great conversations with those same people two hours later and I think just like understanding that chess match the test match of a disaster. Going back to that political point is not only the responder standpoint of like, how do you deal with a rubble pile, but how do you deal with people?
People are kind of your biggest issue, right? The people who want to get a picture, the people who are distraught about their family, of course, the politician who wants to look good or make their opponent look bad, you have to deal with like all those different things. I think a lot of those things came out in Miami as well. So, when you were walking away from this incident outside of the shelters, what are your top three things that you think, okay, if we're going to have another building collapse, this is what we need to absolutely make sure we implement so we can find success based off of this event?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (22m 51s):
I would say not only preparing as they did for the rescuers and the responders and possibly where they were going to stay. IE ground zero, they were actually busting and we got to stay a couple blocks away at the Java center. So, there you are removed every day and then came back to that area every day. So, you had that break along with that is corridors keeping the public away as far as you can. That includes the coverage of the media, even though they are there for a good purpose at most of the time. If you are going to allow them to be there or centrally locate them and prepare the area before you start allowing them to come into that particular area at the same time, be there for them, they did a great job.
I believe in bringing those family members one time by bus. So, the emergency is setting up parks and recreation, transportation, whatever bus system you do have in your community, whether they're small buses or large buses and bringing those members over to the site and allowing them to be there one more evening and say a prayer for those family members that they possibly have lost in that pile at the same time capture what the rescuers are going through firsthand and watch. I did believe that they did a great job in bringing that. I think they also did a pretty good job from what I saw on individual decision-makings, not sure if it came from an EM side of the responders also going out and looking at the Memorial that was being set up for those persons that were still missing. Whether that was an emotional trigger, it somehow gives them a sense of meeting that family member, meeting someone else, giving them a sense of purpose. It was good, I think, from both sides of what was done in that exchange of persons.
Host: John Scardena (24m 50s):
It’s an interesting point you're making in terms of, I mean, big picture, you're talking about big picture essentially right there. Right? I saw a report from, or something that came out from the mayor about the frequency of contacting the families who were asking questions in terms of staging, did you get to see an idea or how they were interacting with the families at all? Were they putting them in a facility nearby where they were there? How was that coordination piece happening between them?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (25m 30s):
To my understanding, they were in a facility close by. However, some of the family members just lived in the certain areas. I met a daughter of one of the women that was missing, who her and her husband lived in Jupiter, Florida. They both worked for Florida power and light. I was able to speak a little bit with the husband and then with her later on. So, some of them traveled back and forth and just kind of wanted to be generally in the area. They weren't really a problem, they weren't really trying to approach the rescuers in any fashion.
However, that's not always the issue. So there still needs to be some type of a coordination effect to make sure that that doesn't go in a certain way. Emotions can run really deep and family members. At times they can even become aggressive. We've seen that in calls and just in EMS, in ordinary situations, let alone knowing that your loved one is somewhere in the rubble pile hasn't been found yet. So that needs to be strengthened up. Of course, the biggest scene was having a member of the city fire department, paramedic firefighter well-trained, however, wasn't exactly rostered to be on the task force. However, met all the qualifications and because his daughter seven-year-old daughter lived in that building with his ex, the task force felt this is extremely important for him to be part of the mission and be part of the search as well. Ironically, he was part of the team that found out once they started finding the remains of what he was used to seeing in her apartment and in her living space, he knew that she was around.
Host: John Scardena (27m 20s):
I have conflicted thoughts. Okay. First of all, that's heartbreaking. It's hard to talk about logistics when you hear a story of like that. But in terms of the professional experience, I don't know how I feel about somebody looking for their, even a professional looking for their own family members. It is in one sense, almost the irony, but it is amazing that he was part of the team that found his own daughter and kind of in a weird twisted way, the peace that comes from that. I was part of the team that found my daughter, but at the same time, the emotional impact that we talked about, mental impact. A lot of potentially mistakes could have been made because he's working through a highly technical process of removing carefully and to be able to keep his composure and other people are aware, I have to be aware of his. Did his team know that he was looking for his own child?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (28m 33s):
Just the task force, none of the other task forces. No, none of the other people knew, the media doesn't even know his name yet. I understand the feelings and thoughts on the other side, however, because that's what he does for a living and that's where he has been trained to do, to not let him at least have that opportunity to do that for his own daughter would have been I'm over the fence on the other side. At the same time, we could say that his mind was in a different state maybe than the other rescuers, but at the same time, we could say maybe he was even more focused than everyone else because he had a mission that meant more to him than anyone else. It was a driving factor.
Host: John Scardena (29m 18s):
I can't even, I don't want to imagine what that is like. I will say though, that my now two weeks, because I've had basically two drains, but basically my one week of training with you guys, it wouldn't matter if I had no training. I don't know if I would be one of those people that everybody meet would need me to be on that pile. I would do absolutely everything. I would probably break 30 laws trying to get onto that pile, to look for my kids and my wife. So, I understand that, especially with training. But like I said, it's a conflict of thought because in medical, at the hospital, you can't work on a family member for that reason. You don't want to make mistakes, but.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (30m 7s):
Never in my career, early in my career, I was on a unit with two other individuals who rode three in a truck. Well, some people call an ambulance. We call a rescue truck, three paramedics and in the back of the truck, we go to call that cardiac arrest. The Lieutenant makes a decision and tells a friend of mine that they were not to mention his name, but it was okay that he got permission from the hospital called the code and he didn't fit, he didn't stop, he continued on. I was driving the rig and we were almost arriving at the hospital, kind of repeated it to him. Did you not hear that? We could call this code but he goes yeah but this is my dad. Changed a couple of things inside that truck and on that day, so understand totally things are always so ironic.
Sometimes we just don't understand why, you know, what the BDU jacket looks like and to cover all that they're wearing in those rubble piles to keep themselves protected, almost just like an army jacket that a soldier wears. You were around that scenario that we call the daycare and the bus. So, you could imagine that a seven-year-old, then you take off your jacket and draping it over that child or your own child, leaves without work for a little while.
Host: John Scardena (31m 33s):
Yeah. Man, I talking about lack of words in our line of work. We deal with death and some emergency managers, luckily enough, but some emergency managers had to deal with response and the way the world's going, they're going to be dealing with a lot more response. Those who are on a response and coordinating directly with DSR, make the decisions for life and deaths. Where do you send resources? Knowing the other people are going to be impacted, kind of like a call on ending response, knowing you're essentially changing your tempo. You're calling it. But because of that, because I've dealt with a lot of death in the field, it usually doesn't impact me because I feel like I've been desensitized a little bit to it, but for whatever reason, when you texted me that, because I found out from you what 12 hours before the news. I was distraught, I ended up calling a good friend of mine, Patrick. I was like I don’t know, weirdly, not weirdly, maybe it wasn't even so much that he was like, oh, it's because you're a dad. I was like, I don't think that's it.
I think lately I've been so focused on learning how much sacrifice a first responder has to give, a lot of the first responders in 9/11 have cancer. That's still a possibility for you and that scares me. But when you see a rubble pile like that, you know they're putting themselves in harm's way, they're sacrificing time for their family. They could get cancer. There's, widow makers hanging from there. They're putting their lives at risk. So, they already are sacrificing so much and then you had to get your own kid out of the pile. Then later on barry your child, you know, it's beyond not fair, seems wrong. The one solace that I get from all of that is that in terms of an eternal perspective, life is a blip of a moment eternal.
Obviously, I believe in eternal perspective. So, the idea of that, you're happy for billions and billions of years. Okay. You have a horrible moment for like a blip on the radar, then that makes up for it. I'm also grateful for everybody always talks about mercy. We're grateful for mercy. I'm also grateful for justice because that's not just basically manmade, whether intentional or not a manmade incident as you know. I'm trying to say it sucks.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (34m 34s):
Absolutely being grateful for that static, that eternal clock that we all get to focus on and enjoy it. That's where we are, what we believe in. I truly believe in that same way too. It kind of strengthens everybody and has a place to pull their strength from. I tend to be strengthened by that as well. Their family backs that up a hundred percent. So that kind of is my drive and your drive to continue forward and doing what we're doing and teaching that next generation enables us to teach, deliver this information to those that will be responding in the years to come, who would've thought at all, John, that May 24th to 28th, we were doing a FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Medical Team Specialist Class and half a dozen, a dozen of those individuals would be putting their skills to practice in a disaster that had over 159 people.
Host: John Scardena (35m 36s):
I've said this multiple times, disaster medical solutions, your company has the best training I've ever seen. The instructors, everyone was a top-notch. I said that a couple of weeks before the disaster, I'm so grateful. I mean, I already had a ton of respect for search and rescue, obviously, but I'm so grateful to know that half a dozen people who are on that pile happened to go through the best training in the country weeks prior that's the mercy side. The justice part is that I'm beyond belief at this point, there is a God in heaven and there is an eternal perspective, and there are ways to figure that out if you had to put in the work.
That's a whole other thing outside of emergency management. But the mercy part is that people went to the best training in the country weeks prior. The mercy part is that these people, men and women are sacrificing, are willing to sacrifice that much. The mercy part is to allow a father to go look for his daughter that that's mercy justice might say, hey, probably shouldn't be on the pile, but I can't imagine robbing somebody of that, especially if they're trained as your point.
So, I mean that's a great call out. You and I always do this on each of our shows. We start talking about the details and then we get a heart. The heartstrings part starts coming out a little bit, but I think it's because you and I have, you way more than me, but been around the block a few times and know what it's like. You know, we feel for the survivor refill for the responder, what we want to do on shows where you come on, especially because you're a tactician is to be able to help out from the strategic level to make sure the tactics run more smoothly. So, what we've been calling out today are things like, hey, where do you put your temporary housing smell, sound, sight.
Those three things to be aware of when you're putting people up, things like they're surviving family members, how do you give them closure? That's something really important. When do you call response versus recovery? That kinks of the political perspective in terms of like an after-action on initial after action, based off of your perspective, you've already highlighted so many things that if I was in Hoboken, Wisconsin, or if I was in Columbus, Ohio, or Sacramento, California, or Miami, Florida, those things apply everywhere. So, I really appreciate you coming onto the show and sharing that we always do this. Next time you come on the show, it's kind of has to be ended on a positive note because this is like breaking my heart right now.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (38m 46s):
There will be good times for that too, when we can really encourage everyone to focus on some good things and keep their mindset. Unfortunately, we went through the July 4th holiday, it’s a different event this time around. Ironically, on this side of the coast where I've retired to from east coast to the west coast, I had to prepare for Hurricane Elsa.
Host: John Scardena (39m 10s):
We would talk about that. Like the rain was impacting, this is sounds miserable. That's the problem with disaster services is like, oh man, it is kind of becomes kind of doomsday preppy. When you think about like, oh man, we didn't even talk about that. In terms of the after action, the actual weather impacting a building collapse, it basically turns all the dust and debris into like mud and concrete, right?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (39m 38s):
Yeah. Well like building a sand castle and taking that bucket of water to create the wall. Gosh. Yeah, it's just me or making just a solid mud pile most credible. Then the irony as we just kind of mentioned here, these guys are the ones returning to North Florida, the panhandle team, the Jacksonville, the Orlando and Tampa, and saying, are you kidding me now? I got to go home and board up my windows. I have to cut my grass. If I even can make it before the rains come and I got to pick up everything around the yard, it might be a direct hit up in north Florida.
Host: John Scardena (40m 18s):
Hey, here's a question for you. Are there groups out there that take care of the families of the firefighters?
Guest: Joe Hernandez (40m 26s):
I'm glad you asked that the answer is yes and no. So as an emergency manager from that community, IE you are the emergency manager for Pinellas County and the Clearwater area, Tampa area, Hillsborough county. You know that your teams are over there. You know, you've got 80 responders over there. If the fire department or the union of the fire department or the benevolence of the fire department doesn't do something, it sure would be up to those emergency managers to stir up that pot and say, how can we help get someone out there to go take care of these loose ends while these members are on a deployment for the last 10 to 14 days because we know it is an incredible situation. You should bring my wife on and call the show wives of USR because if anything could go wrong, when you're on deployment, it goes wrong. The refrigerator breaks down the car doesn't work anymore. In case someone's sick, you almost need powers of attorney for them to fill out the paperwork and pay bills. You're gone and you know, it's crazy on either. If it's a man or a woman deployed it just throws everything in a kink. Then the funny part is when you come back home 10 to 14 days later, and someone else has been in charge, you try and take them out.
Host: John Scardena (41m 53s):
Oh, I know sometimes they want you to, that's a hilarious thing. Hey, you just got back. Hey, welcome back. We’re putting you to work and you're like, ah, you don't know what I just went through. I will say this on the FEMA side, I'm going to call out FEMA here really quick, they don't do that. I deployed for months at a time. I had deployed for months at a time with a two-hour notice, not knowing what I was going to come home, no support. You're talking about people, everything that could go wrong. My freaking wife, I'm like in a tornado response and flood tornado and flooding response in Georgia. My wife was young, healthy, beautiful, the whole deal. She like texts me and says, hey, I got shingles and I'm like, what? How did you get Shingles?
So now, I'm worried about her and how she's doing. She had just started a new job, right when that happened. So, then you you're gone for months without notice. Of course, you don't like we have this rule on social media, I never tell people when I'm deployed or not, because my wife's at home alone you know, with kids. So maybe you and I can collaborate on some ideas on, even your wife, you know, wives of USR, she just started a podcast, but yeah. Thinking of resources for people who support the responders, you know, my wife is kind of our family emergency manager for when I'm deployed. Right. You know, she has to make that those coordination calls. So, yeah, she's my incident commander at all times, but absolutely.
Guest: Joe Hernandez (43m 26s):
Agreed a hundred percent. I've got one of those two and I rely heavily on it now trying to carry that load too while I'm here and taking care of our daughter really presents an incredible load, but I love the way that you're thinking. I do agree a hundred percent that FEMA does not fulfill that role. I know that on my personal department, it was fulfilled to a certain degree by our benevolent. So, the guys would take turns to come out. Would you have you said, dude, I'm busy going around all the trees, can you cut some trees for the next time? At the same time, for some reason hurricanes changes directions and our home got impacted. So, our city task force sent units up to take care of the check on the welfare of our houses and our spouses and make sure if they needed a roof put back on because the hurricane actually impacted those homes as well and it was a welcome relief to those individuals.
Host: John Scardena (44m 25s):
I think that's a kind of a mic drop moment. I just want to thank you again Joe, for coming on the show for talking to me about the after-action of response of the Surf Side, a Miami condo collapse, and walking us through your own personal experiences. I know you because you've had so much personal experience, it was really hard for you to be out there. I just want to say again, we're thankful for everything you've done on a very positive note, Disaster Medical Solutions, big fan of your organization. Thank you again for inviting me out to that USR training because I got to understand perspective before this building collapsed and I know you're doing another training on November 30th through December 3rd, I'm promoting your company.
I should start getting paid for it, but no, but seriously, if you're a firefighter, you're listening to the show right now, or you're a paramedic and you want to get more USR training, there is a FEMA course that Joe puts on his, him and his company. Again, just the best in the country. It's absolutely phenomenal. It's a medical perspective and they go all out. You really get to walk out of there as a true expert. We're grateful that those people were on the rubble pile. I'm glad that they were trained by you. So, Disaster Medical Solutions again November 30th through December 3rd and we'll see you next week. Thanks.