September kicks of National Preparedness Month so we brought on one of the most popular FEMA Administrators, Pete Gaynor, to talk about, “The Year of Repeat,” and how emergency managers can prepare for the future, as they are helping others become Disaster Tough. Additionally Pete shares his thoughts on the Afghan Exit. We fully support and agree with his thoughts.
This is the Year of Repeat- with Hurricane Ida slamming into Louisianna on the aniversiy of Hurricane Katrina, Wildfires forcing thousands of evacuations in CA, a catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, and now the rise of the terrorist group, the Taliban, in Afghanistan. This, "Year of Repeat," causes us to wonder how emergency managers should be preparing for future actions. Former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator, and Former Acting Head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Pete Gaynor, comes on to share his insights with the emergency management community.
We also asked Pete about the Afghan Military Exit to shine some insight and perspective to emergency managers.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
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Host: John Scardena (1m 41s):
Welcome back to the show, everybody, it's your host, John Scardena. I am so excited for this episode, we're kicking off national preparedness month with the man, the myth, the legend, Pete Gaynor. If you recall, he's been on the show before he led FEMA who is also acting head of DHS during the transition between presidencies. So he has a whole wealth of knowledge. He's being hit by Ida right now, up there in the Northeast. Hopefully he's going to be okay, Pete, welcome to the show.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (2m 7s):
Hey John good to be back, thank you.
Host: John Scardena (2m 10s):
Hey it's always a good time talking to you. You know, you have a wealth of knowledge and experience and national preparedness month, our spin is taking it from preparing emergency managers. You know, we always talk about external facing, preparing the public. I think that's kind of the traditional sense, but we as emergency managers talking to emergency managers, I think we have the great opportunity to talk about that this month. BBut I want to back up real quick because I'm calling 2021 now, the year of repeat, because we've had so many incidents and we talked about hurricane Ida itself, hitting on the anniversary of hurricane Katrina, we're seeing the rise of ISIS and the Taliban, which is a whole other scenario that we have to deal with. Now we can choose to get into that or not get into that, or you feel we had, you know, catastrophic wildfires that are happening right now that are still record breakers. It's like, COVID is still happening. It's the year of repeat. It's really frustrating as an emergency manager. What is your take on just the year of repeat idea? If you had similar thoughts.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (3m 20s):
Well, I was hoping for a year of common peacefulness in 2021, as we say good bye to COVID-19 and we will get there. You know, it's one of these things that we have to continually be aware of and defend against and encourage people to get vaccines, right. It's, you know look, and it just has to look at the stats. The majority of people that are in hospitals with Delta are people that aren't vaccinated. So get the vaccine, protect yourself and your family and then it's everything else that's happened, right. I think you hit the nail on the head about, what do emergency managers have to worry about or have to prepare for?
It's all the natural, it's all the natural disasters. So, hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, right. We've got to still do all that. You have to do all the human caused disasters like hazmat incidents, oil spills, and contaminated drinking water, and then technological disasters like bridge collapses, dam failures, and train crashes, right? All those things are kind of in the wheelhouse for emergency managers. Then you look at 2020 and 2021, it’s pandemics and supply shortages, right? Medical supplies, shortages, civil unrest.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (4m 45s):
You know, when you're talking about FEMA, unemployment insurance, we thought FEMA would be an unemployment insurance business, immigration border crisis, and you mentioned it most recently, Afghan resettlement, right? So it's never any gift is, you know, how do we get ourselves out of this while you call your emergency manager and they're going to help you coordinate and integrate and guide you to the end right? So no longer is it just the human caused, it is then man-made and, and technological, it's all the other things. I think that is really what the future holds for emergency managers. It's going to be much more than the traditional post civil defense kind of world that we all kind of grew up in. It's going to, it is now changing to something different.
Host: John Scardena (5m 33s):
Yeah, I agree. I think that the field is rapidly changing for basically two different reasons. One, the frequency of disasters and how it impacts systems. Two, well I think there's a third reason there too, but you know, outside of frequency, you have a general public who's much more aware of the role of emergency management and seeing how public health really wasn't the mechanism of that, of doing a response specifically. Then I guess the third one is education. You know, this idea that you retire and then you get this cushion job is, you know, you focus on evacuations if you're fire. If you're a police, you focus on physical security. I think that that world is kind of dead and so between education and the general public's perspective and what they think that we do versus what we do, I think, you know, I'm one of those people who actually thinks we should cater to what they think we should do because you want to build their confidence in what we say. There's this idea that we shouldn't be in response, I think is just absurd to me, but, you know, that's just my perspective, but yeah, you're right. It's changing dramatically for sure.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (6m 49s):
You know, you'll never get out of response and it's not necessarily emergency management that responds in a tactical way. In some cases you may, depending on where, how you set up in your jurisdiction. You know, FEMA has tactical assets, like USR and generate teams that will respond out there and many more things. But it’s responses short and the hard thing is recovery. So let's just go back down to the Gulf coast, Ida, and Louisiana now that responses is still happening, right.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (7m 31s):
So clearing roads, we're getting power back on, or trying to keep people in their homes. All those things are happening, but it soon is, and it is right now, it is recovery, right. That is the long pole in the tent. I may have said this in our last chat, is that as a profession, we have to become much better at recovery because that's where it counts right. That's I think ultimately, you know, you get scored on response. But as a nation, we’re great responders, you know, police, fire, public works, public health, the response in the moment, we're really good at it, in the moment throughout the nation. When it comes to recovery, we really have to up our game on it.
I think if you want to have an emergency management program, that is first-class right, you have to do all those things, but you really have to do recovery well. So again, I think the dynamic is changing a little bit, it’s still the response, but I think we're ultimately going to get graded on how well recovery went and how did we prepare for recovery, right? You just don't walk in recovery without a plan, right. You have to have all those things. So we had to make a better investment as a community, and as a profession when it comes to recovery.
Host: John Scardena (8m 55s):
As a professional planner, especially an emergency planner, there has been a lot of instances lately that have seemingly happened without a plan. That has been really tough to watch and to observe and to say I know we can do this better, like we have the capability, we have the intelligence, we have the situational awareness. We have all these things in place to be able to make better decisions. So, you know, a great call-out for emergency managers this month, especially as we get better at planning for the plan, planning for the recovery, for sure.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (9m 35s):
Yeah. A couple of years ago, I got to hear Rudy Giuliani, who was the mayor of New York city during 9/11, just talk about the opening hours of 9/11. I may not have all my facts straight, but generally they had just done an exercise in the past couple of weeks, a big exercise in hospitals and tested all their plans when planes went into buildings. So we headed into the 20th anniversaries, took when planes, one of the buildings, and he looked at his staff and he said do we have a plan for this? The answer was, no, we don't have a plan for planes going on in a building. We have a plan for lots of things. Well, we don't have a plan for a plane going into a building. Then he said it took a little bit, you know, a few minutes where he said well like I'm screwed.
I don't have a plan for a plane in the building. Therefore, how am I going to respond? Then he realized, right. You know, he says, he took a deep breath and looked at his staff and says, well we have all the other bits and pieces that we can use, right. Not necessarily planning to a billion, but bits and pieces that we can use to get ourselves out of that. That's essentially right. As you know I love planning, and I'm a believer in the thing that you plan for today is not the thing that's gonna happen tomorrow, right. So you're going to have to be ready for the thing that you haven't planned for it exactly. I think that's the beauty of emergency management. We are problem solvers. If we don't have the full, robust plan, we're going to cherry pick from the things that we have done in the past, to good plans, procedures, and tactics and all those kinds of things to get ourselves out of it. That is the beauty of an emergency, that they can do those kinds of things when it counts.
Host: John Scardena (11m 14s):
So this happened with you last time, it's a problem for me because we always try to find like a quote from the show. As soon as you say, emergency managers are problem solvers, it's like dry drop the mic, walk out of the room. I's true, like, you try to explain to people what emergency management is, and you say, protecting life, property, and continuity of operations, but no one really knows what it is, but like problem solving. That's the job you have, this chaotic situation happened and hopefully you know who your stakeholders are, you know who you know, what the resources are, you know who to call in the time of that crisis. All of a sudden, you start putting the pieces together. He walked through a response, he started to walk through a recovery. My big thing, right, is mitigation, mitigate before the disaster disaster, it's just still going to happen. That's just the nature of the world we live in. How do you apply great mitigation techniques to the recovery process? You know, as a former FEMA guy, you can see my side of the background.
You're a former FEMA guy, I really didn't think that we did recovery that well because we had to build back to what it was most in most cases, but in my mind, that's just as vulnerable as it was before the event happened. So how do we apply better building codes? Here's a great example, coffee park, so I went up to the Dixie fire like two weeks ago, I responded to the Napa fires in 2017 and I saw basically the new cabin. That's what I call cause it was just field of Ash. When I went into coffee park, they, they had chosen not to put commercial sprinklers on the roof that has code in Arizona for wildfires. I'm like, your entire neighborhood just burned down, you already have vegetation just down the road again and they chose not to do it. I'm like, man, that's stupid, you know, as a single pipe to the top of your roof could have saved an entire neighborhood. If it happens again, what is your take on that? Is that an extreme view? Is that a not extreme view? What is your take?
Guest: Pete Gaynor (13m 18s):
Well you know, out there, there is some organizations that their plan is, my plan is to wait till FEMA arrives and they're going to help me out on my problem. But that's like part of the plan. I don't, I boo boo that all day long, right? I think you have a moral obligation as an emergency manager, whether you're a local tribe, territory, state, county, federal, right? You have a moral obligation to do all those things, to keep your community safe, right. But to have a plan that says, oh, we'll just go for the feds to get here because they can do it all is a bad plan because we've learned that again.
Take the pandemic, the federal government cannot do it all. It's virtually impossible, you have a true natural disaster, you know, emergency in every state, a hurricane in every state major disaster overnight that the federal government doesn't have the resources to it. So the only way that we're successful was that the whole entire community works together. So local, state, federal all work together. If you own it, you own it. So I've had the opportunity to work for two mayors, a governor, and a president. I told my mayors, hey, we own what we own, right? We're not gonna wait for the state to come rescue us, or we're not gonna defer to the state. we're not going to defer the feds. There may be a time and place where we run out of resources and that's how it's worked, right. You go to get resources. So, you know, we have to take responsibility for the things that we own. So next big disaster, it's going to be this common don't worry, right? It's going to be something that we haven't planned for, or we planned for but we all kind of say that will never happen. Right. That's too crazy. So we had to do a better job and we have to hold ourselves accountable right. In doing so, and just don't paint over, you know, it's like hey, we're gonna put a fresh coat of paint on this and we're going to say, oh we're all fresh.
Really have to get down and dirty about how we plan and prepare and what we think, the apps, the results of that may be when we're faced with a challenge. I think the opportunity is now, especially based out at COVID and everything else is emergency managers across the country, really have to have a heart-to-heart talk with their elected leaders about what's going to happen next and who owns what? Right. Just don't wait for the federal government show up, because that is a plan that will fail.
Host: John Scardena (15m 56s):
Okay, so I usually stay away from this topic because it's like the nail in the coffin type of topic politics. But I mean, you have a ton of experience. You just mentioned it to mayor's, governor, president, you talked about accountability. I feel like right now with a lot of different disasters, there's not a lot of accountability. It's like, well this will blow over, you know? Well the obvious one that probably nobody wants to talk about and we can skip it if you want, but there was a terrorist attack at the airport we're trying to evacuate people. What was the response to that?
It was like, oh we're going to find the planner and blow up one building and move on. I'm like, but there's still people in danger, you know? So my frustration is at an all time high and I'm not a veteran, you know, I come from a family of veterans, thankfully you're a veteran, thank you for your service. But it's just so frustrating to think about that. Now when I talk to clients, where I talk to friends in the field, or I talked to other friends who are actually responding to Ida right now, so big shout out to them. I'm like, when I talked to them pretty much, everyone's the same thing. Well, I guess it's time to brush off the counter-terrorism plans. You know, what do we do in a terrorist attack? It's like, man, it's so frustrating. Can you provide some wisdom or insight to the audience who might be filling this?
Guest: Pete Gaynor (17m 21s):
I'll try to keep my composure. So, you know, I'm a retired Marine, spent 20 years with the Marine Corps. So what happened last week really pisses me off, right it's totally unnecessary. We could have done it another way and we're not done in Afghanistan, right just because we're not there. If people think we've done that wrong and I think part of the problem, and I think this is like the American laziness, right? When it comes to politics, it's not real, there are some in government, right, congress, governors, but you know, we're talking about congress, senators, and Congress men and women, that are not there for the long term, for the long haul, they're there for the short-term gain right?
What can I get out of this? This sounds really bad, right? About how politics works in America, but it's true. What's my short-term gain out of this and not really think about how can I improve it in the longterm. Part of my displeasure with being in DC and having, and I'm not fabricated, i's number of hundreds of conversations with elected leaders, mostly congressmen and senators about what FEMA has done, what FEMA is doing, what FEMA did. No one ever called me to say, hey, good job FEMA right now. No one, maybe one, maybe that was like, they had a bad day, but everyone's calling you by how bad you did. If they had long term view of FEMA, we do much greater things, much better things than we get credit for. We do screw some things up, it's just the nature of the business. But in all those conversations, it's a short term, it's a nine second blurb about what FEMA did, how bad they are, and we're going to hold you accountable and then it’s all over.
Then no one wants to talk about, hey, you made a mistake, but let me help. How can I help you make FEMA better? Not just in the short term, in the, and the 24, 48 hour news cycle, but in years to come. How can we make a better FEMA? This just not applies to FEMA, it probably applies to every federal organization out there, but how can we make you better to get better results, better efficiencies, all those kinds of things that as taxpayers we expect. So yeah, the politicians are in for the short term gain. It’s maddening sometimes. And again, we think about what happened in Afghanistan. It is completely unnecessary, could have done a totally different way. We lost lots there for absolutely no reason, right? No reason.
Host: John Scardena (20m 28s):
Yeah. Since senseless death, you know, it's a lot. So I also lived in DC, I worked for different ABC agencies, I don't get into too much on the show. But one of the reasons why I actually liked going out to FEMA, even though FEMA does do the man-made stuff, and the nationals team does prepare for large-scale catastrophic terrorist activities and I've been to many of those trainings or whatever, but a majority of the responses, I think Joe, Della Mura said it best, FEMA’s basically a hurricane agency, right. So like it was kind of, it makes more sense to my brain that if somebody chose to stay in a hurricane and unfortunately they died, like I could reconcile that a little bit better than a terrorist attack, a lot better, right, especially when something's preventable. I was just talking to a friend about this yesterday, it's like, we're not talking about 25 different countries that also have major humanitarian issues, we're talking about the US actions and US laziness. I actually liked that a lot, way to say that of just things that we could have done, that we can do, that we chose not to do. I said this to a couple politicians who maybe, probably I shouldn't have, but it's like one of those things, oh, you thought you could do better, sit in the seat because every single time a politician sits in the seat, it screwed up. Who knew like somebody who does this for a living who's focusing on this all day, every day, probably will do it better. Yeah.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (22m 0s):
Yeah. I've had many of those moments being yelled at by elected leaders and I never said it to them, but it's okay. I'll be happy to trade seats with you and you go, you come do it. So I have people, you know, rock throwers and naysayers, it never really bothered it, never, I don't think it really bothered me before, but after my tour at FEMA, I have disdained for those that just throw words around for whatever purpose without a purpose, right. Without a purpose, just to get a rise or to get a quote or to get a reaction, right. I have distain for those people that do that because what I really want you to do, right. If I screwed up, tell me I screwed up, I'm a big boy and that helped me get to where I need to be, right. Just don't throw stones and walk away and say, yeah, we'll see where it all goes.
Host: John Scardena (23m 8s):
Here's my last comment on all of that. It's like when people say do more than thoughts and prayers, and I have to remind people that, hey, did you know faith equals, you know, hope plus action. And so if you are praying with faith, that means you are intending to do something. So anytime I hear a politician say like, I'm praying for it. I'm like, well then where's your action. So that's really what it comes down to, religious or not religious, do something, you know. I like Rodney Milicic, my old boss would say, he also now works at Doberman and we're lucky to have him. He would say doing something is always better than doing nothing You know, because especially in emergency response and so in that vein, pulling it back over to us, I'm glad you feel the same way because you have all that experience. You're definitely a leader, a lot of people are go listen to that and agree with that. I think for our end, for our action, again, not trying to become a political show, but holding elected leaders accountable, choosing to do something, obviously legally, you know, polls and voting and all that. So calling them up for rating them saying, hey, this isn't going to help you out. Long-term I think that's kind of what's needed. I'm not really an activist kind of guy, but man, they just don't listen. So like, talk to me about that forever. So national preparedness, yeah.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (24m 36s):
It's a good trip, I think a good transition from do something, right. So national preparedness month is about doing something and start today runs through the end of end of September. There's four themes throughout the month. You know, we've all seen these make a plan, build a kit, low cost, no cost preparedness and teach about preparedness. But so let me just give you like my, one of the things I try to do at FEMA and I think I got a little sidetrack with COVID and other things I had. So I have a theme, there's a resilience branch who owns preparedness and ready.gov and all those kinds of things, but all the things that we do year round and you know, so it's good that we bring awareness, preparedness in September, but preparedness needs to be a year round thing, just not one month out of the year.
I know we have programs through the year at FEMA and I'm sure it's like this across the country, you know, local, state of emergency management that have a theme or have a focus throughout the year. But one of the things I challenged the staff with is, hey, we haven't, and this isn’t just FEMA, and I think nationally, right. You know, emergency managers as a whole, we really haven't found that solution that promotes preparedness, that changes the culture, like a marketing strategy and something that sticks with people. We haven't figured that out and I relayed to the staff is like, hey, how come we can't get a preparedness campaign, like the seatbelts, right.
If you remember way back, and you're probably too young, like Ralph Nader wrote a book unsafe at any speed, right. Click it, or ticket kind of changed the culture. When’s the last time you were in a car with somebody that refused to wear a seatbelt, I can't even remember like driving with somebody that I don't wear a seatbelt it's against my religion or it's against, you know, whatever, it doesn't exist. Quitting smoking, you know, has a great series of great ones, but you know, tips from smokers, the one you see on TV, smoking has taken a dive, right. Wildfires, we all grew up with smokey the bear only you can prevent fire’s, right. Then, you know, Nike, Nike just do it, right. It's these things, we need, we need a campaign, a marketing strategy that people like connect with right. But when it comes to preparedness, we haven't figured it out yet. So again, I challenged the crew to do that, you know, made some strides. But I think as a nation, a platform for emergency managers, we really need to have the, you know, click it or ticket kind of campaign, only you can prevent wildfire campaign that makes people prepare year round. We haven't done it yet. We have to figure it out because we won't change the culture if we don't do it.
Host: John Scardena (27m 44s):
Okay. I can provide two perspectives on that real fast. FEMA will never be popular in my beloved OHIO state, because it's freaking blue and yellow. You want to do any kind of branding with FEMA. I told this too, when I was at Georgetown on my masters, you know, somebody came up for an external affairs and said hey, nobody wants to even put up the FEMA, like preparedness anything in their stores because it's blue and yellow. It's just not going to happen. So like, just even thinking about your own branding, I understand it's a federal agency or whatever, but hey, screw Michigan, like Michigan sucks. So that's what I'm saying, lke, you can't have that. You can't have like, Satan's colors, like in my storefront, but going on that religious thing. But you know, the other thing is, I'm pretty sure we did find the slogan by the way, become disaster tough. It should be, it's a star. Right. You know what they'll like, that's what I've been. That's what I've been thinking about. Like, that's interesting. You talk about marketing.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (28m 49s):
I thought it's all about marketing. It's nothing more than that. Just think about all the successful campaign, like commercial campaigns, all the Wendy's, where's the meat, right? I mean, all these things that like we take for granted, now we need a kind of Wendy's, which is the meat thing that gets people to say, oh, I have to do that. I have to put my seatbelt on. I have to prepare. Did you see those people in Louisiana? Well, you know, were they prepared for that? Do I want to be Dwight? Do I want to be without power for 60 days? So yeah, we need to hire some really great wall street marketing, get people, spend a bunch of money and come up with a campaign that everyone understands and can get behind.
Host: John Scardena (29m 37s):
I agree. FEMA you're welcome to hire me at any time to help you out with that. You're bringing up so many different topics. COVID 19 response has been a marketing nightmare. Talk about marketing. I agree with you. Most of it, turning something into common sense. Oh, this one's going to ask you about, do you have about saying can put blank. Do you have a marketing for your LinkedIn posts? Do you, do you team up with somebody at LiRo to do that?
Guest: Pete Gaynor (30m 12s):
Yeah I have a marketing person that helps me, but I generally do all the work, you know, themes and stuff and they check my spelling and grammar and make it pretty and do the graphs. I kind of pick what I want to talk about based on what's going on.
Host: John Scardena (30m 30s):
I thought you actually had a brilliant marketing concept is like using sarcasm. You're basically like, hey don't have a plan, it's hurricane season. You said that at the beginning. I swear, like I saw it, a lot of my friends saw people were texting me about Pete Gaynor. He's like, you know tell people not to have a plan. That's hilarious. It caught people's attention. Hey, listen, preparedness is a waste of time. Right. So I love sarcasm and I think I took some pleasure in writing that, but yeah you know, totally unprepared right now. I think somebody had that as a catchphrase, somewhere in the country. But it's like, I don't want to be prepared, you know, why would I want to do that? I wonder how many people would have like an emergency kit if SNL did a skit about being totally unprepared and just like walking to every situation like, oh no, I definitely don't want insurance get a car accident. Or, you know who cares about preparing my house for a hurricane, you know?
Guest: Pete Gaynor (31m 37s):
Yeah it's a tough problem and I think if we had a good answer, we would have had it I guess already. But one of the things I told the staff, one of the more famous advertising companies in the country is J Walter Thompson, their two longest clients are Ford motor company and the US Marine Corps, right. That J Walter has kept and they others, but like I think for the Ford motor company has been a client of them for like a hundred and some odd years. But as an example, that investment in J Walter Thompson has kept the Ford brand consistent through time, the same with them, consistent through time. It’s deviated a little bit, but never lost their core. Like again, could you get a home grown inside of US government idea about preparedness? You could, but we don't spend enough money on preparedness. So let's invest in a big brand name, a company, and let's have them help us with this, right. Because now's the time look, what better example than all the things that have happened in 2021, right? The year that just keeps going, 21. It's like, why not just take advantage of all that? Right. We have peoples attention.
Host: John Scardena (33m 15s):
Yeah, that's right. There's a lot of money there to, like there's money there. There's a tension there and everything's coming together. I think branding is a big thing. Speaking of branding and things that are happening on your end, we just mentioned Libra, a little bit. Yup, let's round this out, this topic out, to talk about the Natural National Disaster Emergency Management conference coming up in November. One of the podcasts that is associated with Doberman emergency management on the readiness lab is EM weekly. They're doing a live show at that conference and you are headlining there. You're going to be one of the major speakers there. So we also know that LiRo doing a booth there just want to let you know, our audience know, that as of today, Libra is not a sponsor. We're just happy to promote this for Pete. We think it's a pretty exciting. So can you tell us a little about what Leroy has been doing, what you guys are gonna be doing, and then we're going to be talking about at endemic.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (34m 8s):
So this is the first time that I've been to the expo in New York. I think it's, I'm not sure it's history, but I think it started out as something different and it's morphed into a commercial manager, disaster management. So I'm going to be on stage with Craig Fugate. So two, four, administrators, we're going to talk about, I think all things preparedness. We're probably gonna talk about a little bit about COVID response. Maybe the state of play when it comes to where we are as a country and preparedness and where we want to be. I think there's going to be a Q and a that that's there. So I'm looking forward to get out of my house, go to New York city, meet real people, see real people again, and then obviously see Craig and try to share some of our experiences with the profession.
So I think it's going to be exciting, you're right. We're going to have a booth LiRo, they are a New York company been around for 30 some odd years, mostly a company that specializes in architecture, design, project management, construction management, we don't build things, but we manage things right on the construction thing. We're part of a bigger company called GISI global infrastructure solutions Inc with 13 other brother, sister companies, mostly construction, but LiRo has been in the disaster response game for a while, mostly regional.
So Sandy, we've done some stuff in Louisiana. I think we did some stuff in USBI in Puerto Rico. Part of the reasons I joined is to help them expand their brand across the country. So if you're in New York city and I think it's November 17th, 18th, check those dates, I'm doing it from memory, come see us. I’d be glad to talk to you about anything to include what LiRo can do for you. So I appreciate the, the shout out John, on my new company.
Host: John Scardena (36m 12s):
You know what, I think it's exciting that to see where he landed and see what you can bring to LiRo now. Now that we're associated EM weekly and to see all those dots connected, I think it's great. We've already had you on the show twice. We're probably gonna have you on the show again, just because you're a cool guy, but like, I honestly think what if people have the opportunity to see you in person to be able to talk to you and to hear your perspective, especially you and Craig. Craig's been on the show as well, I think that will be good for everyone. In fact, I know it would be good for everyone. So that's why I'm happy to promote it because this show's all about promoting best practice. Now you're bringing on two heavy hitters who have had a ton of practice.
We talked about the election, you know, emergency managers work with elected officials all the time. So you're able to talk confidently to that. You're able to talk about competently, to all phases of emergency management and response recovery mitigation. So just be able to hear that in person is great. Then to be able to switch over to the project management side with LiRo too, I think it's as good things and I'm happy to promote it with you guys and move forward.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (37m 23s):
Yeah and it has to be exciting. I've never done anything with Craig, so I'm looking forward to that. I think that he and I have the same outlook on, hey, we'll tell you what we did well, and we'll tell you what we did bad. So no lessons learned, just not positive lessons learned things that we screwed up. I think we're both pretty upfront about things that we could do better, whether we were the administrators or what FEMA could do better, or, you know in more global what emergency management needs to do better to meet the needs of the new world we see around us. Right. I think that really for me is the key. How do we change the culture of emergency management, because we are a young generally immature profession, right. We need to, we're going to grow. We continue to grow, we've grown a lot in 2021, right? So the time is right to point those things out and encourage others to take risks and make those changes for the better. So I'm excited by that.
Host: John Scardena (38m 29s):
That's awesome. Your last thoughts, emergency managers who are trying to learn a better preparedness for getting ready for the next big one, as you noted your final thoughts.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (38m 39s):
This is one of my sticks when I went to FEMA as the administrator is if you're from a jurisdiction that hasn't had a disaster that that can get generally comfortable, right? Because you haven't been challenged yet, I encourage emergency managers from across the country, so whether you're a director of emergency management or you're in the world of emergency management, you're a mitigator, you're a planner. Develop a relationship with, you know, some of the more disaster prone locales, right, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, California, right, North Carolina. Develop a relationship and see if you can get like a 90 day tour, like exchange tour, hey, I'm going to go to North Carolina for 90 days and I'm going to see how they do it.
Maybe you'll actually be part of a disaster response. Well, maybe you've been part of recovery, but you know, I think some, one of our challenges in emergency management is you don't get any experience until it happens. Right. That is not the way to operate. You should, you should try to gain, expose staff to real events where you can. Sometimes that's a risk because you're going to send people away for a period of time. But when you get them back, you will be much stronger for it. You'll be smarter, they'll be smarter. They'll be more confident. They'll bring, you know, new lessons learned and practices back to you.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (40m 11s):
So, you know, go call one of your friends, or maybe an acquaintance that you've met at a conference and ask them hey, can I not to interfere with what you're doing, but can I come down and just spend a week with you? Maybe I can help, right. Maybe I can help take some load off because I'm a professional emergency manager, but I just want to see how it works. I think if we did more of that across the nation, right. I think we'd be a stronger profession. It can be, you know, if I'm in a disaster, do I want somebody around my neck bothering me, not necessarily, but there's a way to do it, right. There's a way to do it and I think it's better for everyone. If we figured they figured that out, so if you're thinking about what can I do next to make my community stronger, go visit a disaster.
Host: John Scardena (41m 1s):
Okay. I a hundred percent support that I just learned that big lesson this year with going to USR training, everybody heard about that last week on the show about the outcomes that go into that USR training and be able to help out somebody else that I never interact with with USR. Now we're in close collaboration, be able to help out tactical and strategic, a huge call out. Also big call out for individual appointments. Sometimes FEMA's, Ford's sometimes humans against it. Screw everybody's against it. You just said you're for it, I'm for it. Get people out the door, get your team out the door possible, but get yourself out the door.
Guest: Pete Gaynor (41m 37s):
Yeah, I think John, I think he was for you. The national qualification thing has a ways to go. But the goodness in that is you get qualified, right? You get nationally qualified. Then if you can, you can deploy. So when I was a state director, you know, when people want to go to disaster, if they weren't qualified, I'm not sending you. Right. Because I'm not going to be a burden to that, although the director, but if you qualify, you have all the checks in the box. Then you're, you're an asset. So national qualification system, I think, is important. It has a ways to go, but it is getting to this thing where we can all help each other when it counts, because there's not enough of us.
Host: John Scardena (42m 18s):
Yeah, man. You're coming back on the show, we're going to be talking about that because I have lots of thoughts on that. You're a good man. Pete, thank you so much for coming back on the show. You're obviously a value added. Yeah. We'll talk to you soon.
Everybody, if you liked this episode, you should have give us that five star review and subscribe. We're going to put in our show notes for when the endem conference is, so make sure you go out to that. I think Pete, said it right, I think it’s the 17th and 18th of November. So if you're in New York city, you want to go out to New York city, learn from the man himself. Good to do it. All right, we'll see you next week.