Kyle King is an expert practitioner in crisis management. He specializes in working with NATO for the establishment of emergency management in conflict zones, unstable political arenas, and nation building localities. Kyle is the CEO of Capitol Building International.
Kyle King is an expert at, “building more resilient communities and human capital at the intersection of crisis, conflict, and emergency management.” He has decades of experience with military and political organizations including those associated with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Kyle and our host, John Scardena discuss the differences between the US and Europe perspective of emergency management and share ideas how each can benefit from identified best practice.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the disaster tough podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
Radio comms just got a major breakthrough with the L3 Harris XL extreme 400P. It’s the newest and toughest radio out there built by their space and tactical teams. The XL extreme series can take a beating, 1700 degree blast of heat, repeated three meter drops, rain, salt water, you name it. The XL extreme series by L3 Harris can take it. Visit L3harris.com to schedule your demo today.
The battle to monitor and contain COVID-19 just got exponentially better for us. We are officially introducing an electronic reusable yes, reusable COVID-19 test through our sponsors. It's called the COVID plus test created by Tiger Tech, distributed by FS global. This is the first FDA authorized rapid non-invasive pre screener. It's extremely easy to use. Forget those one-time use swabs. This is a disaster tough technology, for more information on the COVID plus test check out our show notes.
Host: John Scardena (1m 40s):
Welcome back to the show everybody! It's your host, John Scardena. I am so excited for this episode. I've been on this huge NATO kick for the last several months, as you know, gave that presentation back in September. Then just a couple of weeks ago, we had John Spencer from West Point talking about the Mumbai attacks that he gave at that NATO conference. Now we're, we're pushing this conversation even further because we have Kyle King on here. He's actually in Ukraine right now. We're going to be talking a little bit about his perspective and how he's worked with NATO and what he's doing. So it's really exciting, Kyle, welcome to the show.
Guest: Kyle King (2m 15s):
Hey, thanks a lot. I'm so happy to be here and I'm really interested to talk about this.
Host: John Scardena (2m 21s):
Yeah. So the US to Ukraine, I understand it's nighttime there right now. So thank you so much for joining on. We had a conversation just a couple of weeks ago, actually. This is why this conversation is going to be spurred on here about the differences between the US perspective and the international perspective of what emergency disaster services is. But before we get into that, can you kind of share for us some of your background and what you're doing? Why are you in the Ukraine right now, for example, and the background behind your company and your goals?
Guest: Kyle King (2m 57s):
Sure, absolutely. So, my name's Kyle King, I'm the managing director at Capacity Building International. I like to say we work at the intersection of crisis conflict and emergency management. From my view, I think emergency management is really a great tool to increase stability, especially in post-conflict and what we might call operational environments, you know, in different countries. I actually started my career out in the US Marine Corps, and I spent a few years in the Marines and I actually went into the US Department of Defense fire emergency services. I spent 17 years in the emergency services left there as a, the assistant chief of operations and training, and then actually started working with NATO in the civil artsy planning field. When I did that, I spent about eight years with Aidan. That was within the context of using similar to planning or what we might call emergency management, within what we call a security sector reform environment. So supporting NATO as a civilian in what they called an operational environment, as they train the security forces, train the military. The question was really about how do you integrate the military and the security forces in domestic emergency response and national response planning. From there after I left NATO, I founded Capacity Building National. We still continue to work in international and support US government efforts in terms of building partner capacities, especially in a disaster management and so much the planning field. Currently, yes, that's correct, I am in Ukraine. I am subcontracted to the organization for security cooperation in Europe, and I'm currently in Ukraine with these special monitoring mission as well. So it's sort of a second hat that I'm wearing at the moment.
Host: John Scardena (4m 32s):
That's pretty awesome. It's interesting because we have had military and first responder and all these other counterparts on here, and especially talking about the Mumbai attack and terrorism. But getting more into that conflict zone and or recovery mission, our side of the house, when we think of recovery from a conflict zone, we're thinking more of that humanitarian aid that gets out there. I love the idea that military personnel are looking at the tactics of emergency management, what emergency management can do to reduce impacts of disaster, whether that disaster is a manmade incident or a war, literally war.
Especially with your being kind of the highlight for the last several years with a huge migrations into Europe, and what does that look like in the conflict of other locations now spilling over into other nation states and having to worry about that. Of course, Russia and China making moves and I can ask all kinds of questions about that, especially with, what was that report that came out just a few years ago, about we have six years until China tries to take Taiwan and they're trying to follow that same blueprint of what Russia did with Crimea. There's a lot of questions that about the pool back, just focus on like basic terminology here for a second. We have been focusing on this podcast a lot about the meaning of words. One of the things have been calling out is the misnomer of emergency management. You know, are we more managers or coordinators? What are we, and the other, the other side of that is emergency. We think of first responders when we think of emergency, but it's, it's usually much bigger than that. As you noted to me a couple of weeks ago, Europe calls that crisis management, right? You don't necessarily call it emergency management where there you call it crisis management. Is there differences based off of your experiences between the US and the international community of what they think emergency management or crisis management is?
Guest: Kyle King (6m 51s):
You know, that's a really great question. I think that terminology is incredibly important. So once you leave the borders of the United States, the terminology changes, so outside the borders of the US there's a lot of talk about disaster risk reduction. Sendai framework and the UN and everything else that goes along with that. There's a global sort of perspective on disaster risk reduction and what that means. Then you start encountering terms in that response sort of phase, you encounter terms such as civil protection, emergency planning, crisis management, and other aspects that emergency management is still there, but it's not within the context that we know of as in the United States.
What was really challenging for me when I first started working nationally, is coming to an understanding of what that means in terms of what we are indoctrinated with in the United States, in terms of understanding FEMA, understanding the national response plan and frameworks and everything else that goes along with that. But then you encounter different societies where there's no reference point for that. Especially when working internationally in terms of, in post conflict and operational environments where everybody's focused and spending millions of dollars in terms of building police forces, rebuilding rule of law court systems, building the military and security infrastructure, but nobody builds fire brigades or fire departments, for example.
Host: John Scardena (8m 18s):
Care needs of critical infrastructure need to be protected. Yeah.
Guest: Kyle King (8m 22s):
Exactly, so it was really difficult to try and understand like what programs were actually functional and operating in terms of building out these capacities and you'll find them, there's really not any that are doing that. It just really became an issue of trying to understand all the terminology that's surrounding all these different things. What I had sort of discovered and found is that we all sort of have this same intent and what we're trying to do, which is build more resilient societies, if we want to call it that, or building more safe communities. But at the same time, we're using different terminology to phrase that and it goes through everything it's pervasive throughout the entire society. So it's issues with legislation, terminology, and legislation. The entire authorities and frameworks, and who's responsible for what, and it's really sort of a challenge. But it's interesting because it makes you absolutely question what you've been taught, right. Is your frame of reference actually the right one? Sometimes there is no frame of reference. There is no right answer and it's absolutely fascinating to me.
Host: John Scardena (9m 24s):
Yeah. That that's a big call out, actually, because whether I was at the Endem conference, a week ago or whatever it was. Whether I'm talking to experts on this podcast, there's a recurring theme that's happening. Something that we're challenging ourselves in our company is that there's no standardization. If I go to the UK, if I was spending time in the UK, we have gold, silver, bronze. If I'm here in the US we call those typed incidents, but even in the US, I can ask an emergency manager, what's a type one incident. They can give me a hundred different answers. A prime example is asking is 9/11. What happened to the twin towers? Was that a type one incident? Well, of course, because of complexity and new and game-changer whatever. Well geographically, and it was a recovery mission. In terms of like a response, it actually wasn't that difficult of a response. Even that, 9/11, the thing that changed the entire world, let's try to figure out what these types mean and you're right, that lack of standardization. When you get in there, especially dealing with conflict, and there is no framework, there's no baseline. What do you start focusing on? What is your personal baseline of what you build off of?
Guest: Kyle King (10m 51s):
That's another really good question. Really, every situation is very unique and mostly what we start with is at an inter-agency level. There's a large assumption of okay, you've got something, is it functioning? Then we want to start looking, and it's a basic question, right. But it's kind of what we got to know. So we go in and we start assessing, okay, do you have a capability to respond? It doesn't matter what it looks like. It doesn't matter if they're wearing the same uniform or not, or if it's mostly a military role, that's the first response. But we want to look at it first, are you capable of responding? Are you capable of addressing those needs? You know, you want to, in terms of more of a military context, which you've heard probably before, which is, can you shoot, move, and operate?
Can you do these things? Can you be able to provide communications and support to society inside that in your country? So we really started at an like an inter-agency level, and it's a bit more of a top down approach. Then we start looking at sort of the risk map or mapping and the hazards and everything else that go along that inside that country. Then we look at sort of a capabilities assessment, okay, if this is where we are, this is our baseline. Can you at least cooperate, can you function and work together? Even though that might be in a limited capacity. Then when we, of course look at all the risks and hazards, and then when we see the response mechanisms and what they are responding to on a daily basis. Then when we look at a capabilities assessment and say, okay, where can we go from here? Now we can build those capabilities to increase the readiness and the response for the national agencies and things like that. We have to really start with where they are, and this has become a real issue in terms of providing, say, partner assistance from the US to other countries. Which is, we sort of walk in with this assumption that we have the answers that we know what we're talking about that, well, we have FEMA and we have everything else. You know you just need to do this, or it's the application of technology that will fix all your problems. More often than not, what I have found is that technology is often not the answer because it's the decision makers that are often sort of hindering the development in these areas. This is where it takes a moment to step back and trying to assess and identify where the perspective that you're coming from. Then how has that applied across a nation and the people that you're talking to, it's a lot of, sort of what we call cultural intelligence and making sure that you've got the right frame of mind when you're talking to people.
Host: John Scardena (13m 18s):
I like to have that process. That's kind of the process that I go through as well. So I immediately address competencies, capabilities, the ability to deliver, and then providing a hazard vulnerability assessment, looking at all, man-made a natural threats. Then if it's an organizational base, you could even do this with society at large, but just a general impact, a business impact analysis of if this gets hit by something, is it strong enough to basically not have an issue? If it's going to have an issue, how quick can you bounce back? Now, you were talking about this concept of like resiliency and maybe a difference in resiliency of how good people are. That's like kind of the reasoning behind Disaster Tough, is we want disaster tough communities. Like as you know many years has it been where the keyword has always been, we want resilient communities. You want to bounce back. I don't want to have to bounce back. Right. I think what you're saying is the same thing, we're kind of saying is we need to create systems in place, disaster, risk reduction, understand what resources we have available so we can start preventing things from escalating. If you can't escalate, of course, resiliency has its part, but it shouldn't be the goal, right. The goal should be stopping. If you don't, if we don't know what the resources are, or we're starting to talk to some of those partners, so stakeholders and they are over promising, but we know they're going to under-deliver then there's, there's another issue there.
So competency capacity has a vulnerability assessments, I think that's a phenomenal place to start. So if you've done that in some of these other different areas that you're looking at, and there's nearly no standardization, and you're trying to create systems in place to protect infrastructure and people, how does that come into play now in the Ukraine? Because it still seems that there is a ton of tension between Ukraine, the US, and, you know, Putin you know Russia. And so what is your general role there and what are you essentially, what are you in charge of doing? Are you in charge of building up those fire departments? Are you in charge of creating systems or are you trying to figure out how to mitigate those in case something happens, mitigate issues?
Guest: Kyle King (15m 47s):
Yeah, I think before sort of getting to that Ukraine issue, I think we understand that there's many layers to resilience, right. I think I heard one of your previous podcasts that sort of discussion around resilience is often very confusing because there's, nobody really can agree on a definition. We have to have an understanding that in terms of like with NATO, right. At least in my opinion, anyway. So in terms of with NATO, the issue of resilience still, already coming up because of the events, like in 2014, with Ukraine, with hybrid warfare, undermining society and general governance capabilities. It became an issue with NATO in terms of how do we build more resilient societies now that has evolved over the years. Now we're starting to see a bit of a convergence between the emergency management community and also this resilience to discussion that's happening. In recent summits from NATO, they've issued out these resilience baselines, which in our previous discussion is very similar to the community lifelines from FEMA, right? So then we start really looking at the issues of, okay, let's look at communications and infrastructure and all these sort of pillars of society that we need to effectively govern. This is where NATO sort of has moved into this resilience space and in terms of societal resilience, which is again, very hard to define right. When we're talking about.
Host: John Scardena (17m 7s):
What does that even mean? Right. Yeah.
Guest: Kyle King (17m 9s):
Yea and it's extremely difficult, you know, if you and I can't really define it where we just have a discussion about what it actually means. Imagine having 30 nations sit around and try and define what it means, and it just becomes utterly complex. The challenge is, again, in terms of with NATO as well, it's not only just having this abstract sort of societal resilience thing, but it's also what can actually, what can NATO actually contribute to that discussion? Then that is where it starts to get into that similar to planning field within NATO and sort of that your Atlantic disaster response coordination center, where they can offer disaster relief from other nations and things like that. But then it gets into an issue of where you get to these, say more discussions at a diplomatic level about what it means and the good things that we should be doing and we're striving for.
But ultimately at the end of the day, everything is a national responsibility and the United States must implement these things. These other countries must implement these things and agree to these guidelines in order for it to be, and try and be more resilient in the eyes of NATO. It's a challenge because we get this sort of top-down focus, which is very vague and sort of diplomatic. Then we'd get that community piece that you were talking about. How can we have a more resilient community in a disaster for tough community? How can we put those two things? They're not too far apart actually. But the difference is the fact that we've got to pull these two different strands together. That's why I'm happy to be here today because we're actually working on two opposite ends of that spectrum and kind to try to connect these two dots.
Host: John Scardena (18m 42s):
Yeah, it's interesting thinking of. I like how you said they're not too far off. I think the considerations are different. What's my immediate consideration. One's probably much more political, you know, strategic planning and other ones like immediate life saving, life sustaining missions. So how can these mesh, I find for myself that if they don't mesh though, you have a huge problem. Whether it's a lack of resources or people don't get it, and so they're extending the response. There's this huge play here. I think the pandemic has really highlighted that if this is misaligned, then you're going to have a bunch of other issues. I think that's what an emergency manager can really do is just pull them a little bit closer together and, and see what's happening there. I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier. Actually, I have two things you've mentioned, one about a military and then two about technologies. You're mentioning technologies versus leadership. You said it wasn't so much about technology, as is about leadership. I've been finding on my end, that leadership has historically an issue with embracing technologies to support the decision making process. IE I'm just going to follow my gut here when there's a whole team of GIS people down the hall that can tell you actually where the floods are going to go and how to get that competency at level up. Can you just clarify maybe what you meant and what leaders, especially if leaders are listening to the show, what they can do to not fall short essentially?
Guest: Kyle King (20m 24s):
Well, it's been my experience that when we go to different countries, when we start having discussions it’s at an inter-agency level. When we started talking about cooperation, we talked about roles and responsibilities, and maybe the legislation is defined. Maybe it's not really defined as well as it should be. So we end up into a discussion of where we, let me step back a moment. Most of these environments, there's multiple actors, right? There's generally multiple parties that are trying to help many different nations. Maybe it's USA, maybe it's other programs are out there, but anyway, you'll get into a space of where there's often a solution and the easy fix, right? So if we just buy this GIS system and then set them up for a year, they're going to be all good to go. They can implement it, we'll train a couple of people and it's going to be great, and they're going to use it. Then the world would be perfect. Right? The unfortunate reality is if people sort of stick around long enough, is that the people you train change jobs, they don't have a budget to continue the license for the commercial software. Then all of a sudden it sort of just sitting on their shelf somewhere, no longer in use, then they revert back to where they were, which was simply they talk to each other. So the application of technology is always a nice idea, but you have to have that fundamental human component behind it. So then it's like, okay, are you financially sustainable? Is this a sustainable decision that you're going to implement?
You'll find it's very, I mean, the extreme sort of version of that conversation is they want helicopters to help with wild land support. You're like, okay, well, that's gonna eat up like 40% of your budget. You know, that's not really a sustainable decision, but it looks great, right? So you get into these sorts of conversations and at that inter agency level, especially when there's conflict among the institutions, it's the technology isn't helping his people. Having to sit there and to work these things out is sometimes not a quick solution. It's not an easy solution. You can't simply buy something off the shelf and, and enable a capability, but it requires people working together because that affects everything sort of top down. So the leadership hits the budget. It's the people, it's the resources, human resources, and resource allocation that goes along with that, and especially even with legislation.
Host: John Scardena (22m 38s):
Yeah. I love that answer. My one funny story about GIS is we were on a coordination call for a mass flooding event in 2017 for Midwest floods, like Missouri. FEMA counterpart got on there. She goes, okay, so I'm, I'm usually the SIT situational unit lead, SITUL. They gave me a GIS computer and I'm going to be doing GIS for that disaster. I was like, hey, that just means it has more Ram. Like, you can't do GIS from like, what is this device? She had no idea. So I'm like, hey let me help you out with a couple of different resources, assets, people who can do this stuff. That's what I mean by technology is a great assistant, a great resource to be able to apply, but I love what you said. It ultimately, it does come down to people and their competencies to be able to make the decision-making or go through the decision-making process. I was at USR training last week, another example where we were talking about technologies and basically we were telling the participants, it's really hard to break an axe. The power goes out, your axe still works and you can still get through this rebel pile. I think just understanding what the different tools can do for you, but not to rely on them only is absolutely critical.
So let me switch gears here for a second, because you're the NATO guy. You're my NATO guy right now. That's why I'm going to call ya. So I have been focusing on, especially with my experience with NATO and talking to them about the systems in the US and what it can do for their individual nation states. Again, not look at NATO as an organization, but the individual countries, a lot of them just run out of the military. It's a military run organization, military setup. We have systems like that in place, but because of our laws we're not going to have the army takeover emergency response in the country, right. Title 10 forces or whatever. So could you just name for our participants, what lessons you've learned in the international community that could help the US and then maybe what the US can provide the international community? Some different things that we can all gain from each other.
Guest: Kyle King (25m 6s):
That's a really interesting question. No, I think one of the most shocking things that I've seen and maybe shocking is not the right word, but when I've been in some pretty terrible countries, and what you find is that even with limited power, limited water, people are extremely resilient. What I have found paradoxically right, is going into some of these countries where it's just a system systematically, poor, you know, and just lacking infrastructure and things like that. The people are just dramatically more resilient than what you would find in downtown New York city. Right. So when power goes out and is off, that's like another Tuesday, but you do that in the middle of New York and it's riots in the street. Right. I think to a certain extent, we have become more fragile because I see that people are incredibly resilient and some of these nations, because what they've gone through for sometimes prolonged periods of conflict. What that has also done was, and just in sort of my view, in my personal opinion, it has forced a sort of locus of control and focus on the family unit. Right? So what you've seen is families and neighborhoods are actually drawn together to be able to support each other.
So when power goes out, when floods happen, you know, all these things, people are coming together and you see that organically within these communities because they've lived through this tremendous experience. I don't know that that would happen in major urban cities in the United States, as much as I've seen it in other areas. Right. That's generally a by-product of having a very sort of harsh conditions and harsh environment for a long time, which fortunately we haven't had in the United States. But that's just sort of, to re-emphasize your point about communities and strengthening communities? Because it has been very evident to me, the fact that these communities, when the power goes out and we think, oh my God, power's out for an hour, and then people lose their mind and really people go about their business and some of these other societies, and it's actually incredible. It's just another thing, they go to lunch or something like then that's it. That's something that I observed sort of these differences between societies has, and we could possibly learn a lot from that. We need to sort of reemphasize communities and community resilience, because that's the foundation of everything
Host: John Scardena (27m 41s):
There's man, I could talk about this forever because you're hitting on this core concept that people don't want to talk about, but it really does come down to families. There was an SDI assessment at 17 years, the 17 year period after Columbine. I'm sure someone's going to correct me because I'm going to be wrong here. But I believe it was 17 years. There was only one active shooter that didn't have a father in the home. That's not a call on mothers. Obviously mothers are like the bedrock of society. Right. But it just shows that like a family unit, a well functioning family unit does a lot for people. There's like all this data of clinicals, there's a journal of clinical psychology that talks about the role of families and the first eight years of your life. If you can be taught to make good decisions, then it will propel you throughout the rest of your life, it will determine the rest of your life. There's a lot of stuff. But I, as an emergency manager go to my city council and I say, hey, we need to focus more on families. Or how about we build another school? Or how about we make another program? You know? There's a lot to be said of, what is the actual data telling us to do versus, what's kind of easier because it's kind of a hard topic to address. Or, it's an uncomfortable topic for people talking about nuclear families or whatever.
That's really interesting from a data perspective, the other to call out you were talking about, again, going back to this core and creating great communities just for the listeners sake, a great case study would be a Tsunami in America. No, not American Samoa just to Samoa and because of the cultural affiliation with families, all the fisheries, as soon as they went out, those families moved up into the mountain, started working with the farming communities. When the waters receded, they went down, they used that same sheet metal, the same material that had been blasted by the tsunami, definitely would not happen in the US, they rebuilt their fisheries. In three months, the economy went back to leveling out to where it previously was, now was the economy like Manhattan. Absolutely not, but it shows that there's something about a family culture and communities and studies like that. I actually agree with you that in some ways we were much more vulnerable because of the power goes out for three days, people freak out, because they're not used to it. How do you build in to that, I wouldn't say hardening of systems with, as in human systems of how do you get people to be more resilient without actually having them to have to deal with years of conflict? Is there a way to level the field? That'd be my question to you.
Guest: Kyle King (30m 43s):
Yeah. So before I can answer that or at least get my opinion on it, let's talk about sort of that transitional period for the military through conflict and into what crisis management to what I believe emergency management has a role. When we initially start with a conflict or there's a conflict occurring and the US goes into a country of something like that, there's a tipping point that's genuinely there that we switched from fighting off the bad guys to having partner forces, right. There's a lot of sort of money and time and effort spent to be able to get to that tipping point. Then we have these partner forces. At that point in time, when we realized that we have a host nation, that's a partner, then we have ideally create a more stable and secure environment. That's where in my belief anyway, and where I've had my experience is that when that's where an emergency management sort of ideas and concepts that come into it, because then we need to sort of freeze what we've learned at that community level. Right. Okay. You've been through hardship and we need to remember that as we build the rest of the systems around you to support the fact that you have critical infrastructure, that your phone systems are working, that you have running power and water, let's still remain resilient. Don't forget what you've been through. Don't forget your family is important, that your neighborhood and your community is important, but we need to capture that. Then to be able to build a systems around it, to where people are able to function and freely move within their community and still retain that.
But there's all the supporting systems around them have been, as you say hardened, so that they can start to live a more consistent life in terms of security in that community. We get to that piece, and then there's a sort of a maturity that comes along through that process, to where the institutions are more developed. The police is going through its reform, you're building out the court system, you'd be building out the fire brigade. We started looking at pre-hospital care systems, levels of trauma centers and everything else that goes along with that. But that's usually terms of years you've talking, you know, five to maybe you've been a decade away in terms of development. So really to your point about how do we capture that? This is where I, coming to your point about when you go talk to somebody on the city council, what sort of struck me about that was if we say we're just getting to build another school, isn't that just another version of applying technology, right? Isn't that just another version of what can I just pay to fix that problem? I think the human factor is discounted there. I think we have to get to a point where we dress the human factor and have these discussions, because when you work in post-conflict or operational environments, it's all about that relationship with people on the ground. It's that human terrain factor that we have to manage in order for us to create effects. Now reverse that, and then look at that the United States, well, how are we creating effects in the community? So it's going to generally be through people because you can throw resources, but with the school is only as good as the teachers and the people, right. If nobody shows up, there's no university, right? This is sort of where we can build a building all day, but nobody wants to go, nobody's going to go.
I continued to sort of center around that idea of the fact that we have to start with the human element and have those hard discussions like you're talking about. When we have to sit through it, I think as leaders, as you mentioned, we have to be comfortable with those discussions. We have to be okay with being uncomfortable and saying, we don't have the answers. I can't answer a question when somebody is complaining to the fact that they have had a court case for 10 years and it's past the statute of limitations because the court systems corrupt. Or for example, when I'm going on a bit of a rant here, but for example, in some countries, the fire brigade is the most corrupt institution in the nation. So you can imagine if for us, from the US you're saying the fire department is the most corrupt institution is a little bit unusual, right. But in other countries, it's absolutely the most corrupt organization because they have all the permits they allow you to build or not build, or whatever the case. It's hard to have these answers, but you have to sit in that sort of uncomfortableness and be able to have that discussion.
Host: John Scardena (34m 38s):
Yeah, no one's ever going to write a song, FC fireman in the US that's for sure. Traveling outside the US and working with the police side, that's how I felt. I felt like some of these police agencies that I interacted with were the most corrupt. I didn't like the Grinch analogy, or I didn't want to talk to one of the nine and a half foot pole or whatever, but those people moving to the US, I understood much better of their hesitancy and why they push back against dealing with police, because bringing, the US has a hodgepodge of culture and it should be, it's what's great about the American experiment. But the idea that, if systems are corrupt in one area, that means there's going to be a lack of trust in others.
Host: John Scardena (35m 32s):
That goes back to kind of what this general discussion is about that human element for my master's thesis, talking about anthropology and disasters, one of the worst mistakes and emergency manager can make is going and bringing your culture and your culture of response to another country. There's plenty of case studies out there to show, oh, the UN just got eight aid workers killed because they were putting people in black body bags, which is in some cultures considered a curse body black bag. There was an uprising, and just a lack of understanding of where you're going to. I think that's a really good thing that emergency managers can do.
Host: John Scardena (36m 13s):
Maybe they can't change the fact that we should all focus on families more, but what you can do is say, hey, if I'm hired to work in either a different county, different country, whatever, then I need to learn the local culture and customs, and to be okay with that, some things in culture are wrong, but most things are just different and understanding what is the acceptable level of success for them? Start building that process off of that. That would be my 2 cents. If you're going to give advice for emergency managers about what they can do now, to think about the human element, especially from this international perspective, what would you say?
Guest: Kyle King (36m 54s):
I would say question your assumptions. So when you are talking to somebody, we're constantly thinking in our mind that we know, and somebody who can say, we know where they're going, we were sort of predicting the answers before they happen, then sort of the conversation as well.
Host: John Scardena (37m 11s):
That’s what a podcaster does.
Guest: Kyle King (37m 14s):
So if we take emergency managers outside the United States, and there's sort of assumptions about how society works and what if you land into a country where there's no insurance. Right. So what role does insurance play in the United States in terms of emergency management and disaster relief and recovery and all that? Yeah. What if there's no insurance people don't trust the insurance mechanisms. There is no property and insurance. It doesn't exist. Nobody likes it. It's not a thing it's for corruption and that's it. Then what do you do if insurance doesn't exist? We have to question our assumptions about how we think things are. So if you were going to a new community and you were going to go into a new environment, and you're the outsider at that point, from what I do internationally, from my perspective, my opinion, I would spend time with people talking to them, listening and trying to understand. Don't assume you have answers and be like, oh, this is just like that, right. That I had this experience before, because we just did one, two, and three, and the problem was solved. It's not always the case. You have to keep your experiences in mind, but disregarding any assumptions that you're making about the communities that you're working in and talk to people and spend the time understanding what's happening first, before you make any decisions. Especially if you're going in at a higher level, because if you're going in at a higher level, you obviously feel like you're under pressure and you want to show some progress very quickly and how you're changing the world or whatever the case is. You're on a timeframe you're on probation, whatever the case is, you want to get things done, but you might be pushing in the wrong direction.
One of the best things to do is just get into the community, talk to people, figure out what's going on, ask the really simple questions of, if you were going to change something, what would you change? What would you make? What would make you feel better? What would make the community safer and find out the real answers and find the underlying causes and then try and work through it. I think this is because there's been a lot of discussion around, what is emergency management. It was sort of writ large over the last year or so, especially since the pandemic. I tend to venture now into the society of where I think emergency management starts to get more into about how do we effectively govern in our communities, right? So it's the delivery of services. The way that I look at that internationally is if you have a fragile state already, and you fail in the delivery of basic public services in many countries, it causes the collapse of a government. Especially in terms of smaller governments, right? So you might have a nation of just a few million people, which could be an average size city in the United States, but that will force them into elections. Then, a prolonged period of two to three years of political instability, just because they can't effectively respond to a wildfire, or the pandemic or anything else. So it creates political instability and the entire system collapses. That's what we generally have at riskier. If they can't effectively deliver service, that they can't affectively govern and take care of the public and public safety. Those are kind of where my head goes when we talk about those things.
Host: John Scardena (40m 15s):
I think that's a great launching point for people to think about. If you're going to ask my opinion about changing anything in this conversation, I want it because it was a great conversation. Kyle, thank you so much for coming back on or for coming on the show. You've actually been on another podcast of ours, EM weekly with Todd Devo. So if you really like this conversation, if you're one of the people listening to the show, make sure you check out Todd Devo on EM weekly and try to find Kyle King's episode there, because this is really big stuff and this is like game changer. The way you think the way you process is huge. Kyle, I'm so grateful that you came on the show, for sure. With that, we're going to switch gears here a little bit. Kyle King is with Capacity Building International he's with the NATO.
We've had this really great conversation. If you got something out of it, here's the shameless plug. Please give us a five-star rating and subscribe, send us a comment. You can do it on one of our videos. You can send everyone likes, send us emails. Emails are great, but try putting it out on social media. We make that plug every time for the Disaster Tough podcasts and so that Kyle can respond directly so that we can help you out. As we create a community as what Kyle was just talking about today, and we'll see you next week,